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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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You are giving props to the Apple store (among others) for a couple of things here 1. Good Development Tools. 2. Handling payments. 3. Handling downloads. 4. A good OS.
So okay. Let's break this down a bit. Apple is a closed system. It provides a lot of the tools you reference because you literally cannot get those tools anywhere else and meet the standards required to publish anything to their store. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is important context in comparing steam to Apple and their ecosystem.
I'm also not sure what debugging tools you'd expect to get from Valve in regards to Microsoft as a platform. You have to pay Microsoft for help because they're the ones with the source code and other system elements. Steam doesn't have control over those. The same goes for Apple. So for the record I don't know that this is relevant unless you're specially comparing their steam OS and what it should provide as a platform for designing games for steam OS and working within the steam ecosystem with that of other players like Microsoft, Apple, and Google.
Steam handles payments and even refunds.
Steam handles downloads.
My understanding and use case is that steam OS is pretty decent as far as gaming OS's are concerned and I haven't seen them catch a whole lot of flak for that. However I actually don't know and can't speak to this but would be happy to have you or others elaborate on the experience of developing for steam OS specially or just Linux. I'm sure it has its own set of pros and cons.
Followup question. Do you receive any of this stuff from Nintendo? Sony/PlayStation? They also take an 30% cut. They also have closed ecosystems as far as development. They also appear to handle payments, and downloads. I know that devkits have historically been exhorbitantly expensive but don't know what the barrier to entry is now or how that compares.
Borg is arguing in bad faith, don't give him more attention.
A good part of what the said about Apple is not even true, and nothing he said has anything to do with Steam vs Apple Store.
From the first line, recently Apple released an OS update that broke some software from the Apple Store, like MS Office. They made people call the support from the app developers, Apple did not help anyone with that.
Borg went on an unhinged rant about how bad they are at deploying software to specific hardware, and how little they know about the industry. Completely unrelated to what you are asking.
It is not worth spending time, please don't feed the troll.
If you want to talk seriously about the industry, there are better places to do it.
I mean. On the one hand you may have a point. But I wouldn't have learned any of what I have learned in this thread by not engaging with the people making comments here. I'm not sure that Borg intends to be a troll. The rant was unhinged but Borg is correct in that Apple and their app ecosystem aren't comparable to Steam and their storefront. They obviously have some feelings about development for app stores vs development for steam and obviously this wasn't the place to do it, but I'm not sure they were intending to be a troll.
Some people in this thread are obviously laboring under some pretty interesting and unfounded assumptions. We can't understand how they came to such conclusions without interacting with them. Some of these discussions may be worth it. Others may not.
SteamOS can really only be a good thing for devs, as I understand it. The steam deck gives them fairly limited hardware to target for development if they're inclined to do so, and Valve's effort with Proton have done wonders for general Linux compatibility, even in the absence of a native Linux version of their games. That's opened up a sizable market for them that was previously unavailable.
My point was that you can’t really compare them because Steam provides a lot less value than Apple to developers, yet they still take a 30% cut. With Apple you get a lot more for your 30% than you do at Valve.
I don’t develop for consoles but a quick Google search shows that PlayStation provides support and even free development kits (special console hardware for development) to indie developers. They all obviously provide SDKs as they are the only ones who can.
Steam is great, but it’s just a storefront. Steam doesn’t get involved until your game is done and ready for sale. This is very different from Apple/Google/Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo who are much more involved in the entire development process than Steam.
I guess I'm trying to compare the bits and pieces that are the same across these platforms and that's why I was wondering about developing for things like the steam deck. I agree that providing a development space and tools for development when you are the entity providing the hardware is different than acting as a management and aggregation tool with appropriate included services. I'm still reading this https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/home
And seeing if I can find answers to some of the questions I have about what services they do provide on the development side for the hardware they do sell.