Like Reddit user @u/_RDX07 posted. Even the platform knows what is going on under the hood
Yeah mate, we all know that our beloved game has been underappreciated since it was born
24 Likes
I hope Steam breaks the monopoly Microsoft has on gaming one day.
8 Likes
Microsoft has a monopoly?
Xbox has been doing pretty bad in recent years. Playstation and Nintendo have been doing a lot better.
I think he means PC gaming, as Windows has more than 90% of users according to Steam Hardware Survey.
Microsoft isnât really making any money with that though.
Also playing on GNU/Linux has been getting a lot easier in recent years thanks to Valve. Weâll see how well the Steam Machine will sell, currently the hardware prices are exploding so the timing is kinda bad.
1 Like
Indirectly, selling the OS. Gaming computers use Windows and the license to the OS is included in the price.
I know but selling Windows has become a very tiny part of Microsofts business. Wouldnât be surprised it they will make it free in the foreseeable future. They want you to pay for their services, every month. Thatâs also why they made Game Pass.
But yeah they do have a huge market share when it comes to PC gaming operating systems. Weâll see if that will ever change.
1 Like
Not going to happen bro. Windows is not a game that you could make a permanent trial of it
Have you been living under a rock?
Microsoft owns most AAA franchises after buying Activision - blizzard.
Why not? Itâs like the only operating system you have to pay for nowadays, and I think most people can agree that itâs not particularly good.
Microsoft has the risk of loosing a lot of subscribers to their services if people stop using Windows, thats why it has become cheaper and easier to get over the years and they provide free upgrades from Windows 7 all the way to Windows 11. They also do practically nothing against piracy. You can find software to unlock Windows on GitHub which is owned my Microsoft. And yes they know about that.
Itâs piratically almost free if you build you own PC. Itâs just a âtaxâ you have to pay on prebuilt ones.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2025-q1/segment-revenues
At the bottom you can see âWindows and Devicesâ.
They are already adding a lot of Ads and stuff to Windows and I could see them make a version of Windows that is just payed with Ads.
Ok and what successful games did they make in recent years?
Activision is just trying to milk CoD with less and less sales every year while Blizzard basically just has WoW at this point.
I didnât say they were making successful games but the only big AAA publisher left that Microsoft doesnât control in some way is EA. There are smaller ones like epic but those target mostly mobile. Microsoft clearly goes all in on AI which is why the quality dropped, but they are simply too big to fail unless a new player, like Steam, comes along.
If we look at the best selling video games you will notice that there arenât many Microsoft owned games other then Minecraft. None of the games on the list were originally published by Microsoft.
You underestimate how big GTA is. And there are a lot of other AAA publisher out there too like Ubisoft or Bandai Namco.
New player???
Steam has been around for 22 years and Valve for 29 years, they are certainly not new.
Steam is so dominant on the PC market now that both Sony and Microsoft publish their games there. Pretty much every Microsoft game in recent years was on Steam, which you should know as an Age of Empires player.
Or are you talking about a new player when it comes to Operating Systems?
1 Like
Steam is just a publishing platform. It is like saying google or apple are dominant in the gaming industry cause all games go through google play/apple store.
Microsoft tried taking them down with the Windows Store, but evidently failed cause they are Microsoft and canât plan a coup properly.
However, Microsoft decides the pace of the gaming industry cause they have both the OS and the programming platform (DirectX). If microsoft could, they would probably ban the .exe of steam from running (which they did on windows 8 RT and the Windows 10 noob mode) or block out the APIs Steam is using, but that would be akin to customer suicide.
There is a reason Steam is trying to break free of windows, they know microsoft would cut them out if they could. It is only the customers that are keeping this in balance and a happy streak of past decisions that prevent Microsoft from being a full walled garden (they want to be a walled garden, it is just that they cannot).
And Microsoft friends, Intel and nVidia, are actively trying to prevent Linux from becoming relevant in the consumer space by not providing drivers for their devices.
1 Like
Microsoft could technically prevent Steam from running on Windows, but that would hurt them more then it would hurt Steam. SteamOS was originally made because Valve was afraid of Microsoft locking down Windows.
Many people would rather switch to SteamOS then lose all their Steam games.
Itâs more likely that Microsoft will migrate Windows to the Linux Kernel. That would make a lot more sense for them. It would reduce the effort they have to put into maintaining Windows while making it more stable and flexible at the same time. The Azure Cloud is already mostly build in Linux.
Itâs kinda wild how many Microsoft tools I use at work without even using Windows.
Intel provides good drivers for Linux. Only Nvidia is being complicated. Not that they care about gaming anymore anyway, they are a pure AI company now.
great, I am glad you have a basic understanding of the problem.
They donât want to, and they canât do it even if they wanted to. The windows kernel contains a lot of stuff that many applications depend upon. You canât just swap it out. Even Microsoft themselves couldnât do it when they tried a slim down kernel with windows 8 RT and Windows phone/ windows 10 mobile. For all the questionable business decisions that Microsoft is making, the kernel is actually a pretty complex piece of engineering.
Vastly different use cases.
Wine is great, but has its limitations that prevent mass rollout to everyone.
2 Likes
I bet for MS to keep losing money than giving Windows for free. Not going to happen
On the other hand Piracy means another special
They could probably relatively easily make an translation layer that sits in between. Similar to wine but they got all the insider knowledge plus they can just use as much of their own code as they want to.
I donât use wine. Just services that either run on Linux or in the web.
What do you mean by that? The sentence doesnât make sense to me? They would rather lose money then make it free? But wouldnât making it free lose them money???
I hope Valve venturing into RTS one day
They made Dota 2 so it wouldnât be impossible. But unfortunately they only released one real game in the last 10 years, which is a VR only game.
Half Life RTS? Could be awesome.
1 Like
