Steam Deck was made possible by the plethora of the Windows games developer market and Proton.
Most of the studios that own those games, and target POSIX like OSes on mobile phones and game consoles, are yet to bother with GNU/Linux versions for SteamOS.
Wine and DXVK are already running on Android and they play Windows games with the rendering and computational complexity of Fallout 4 at playable framerates on many of the latest smartphone SoCs. It's still WIP, but it's already gone beyond proof of concept, people are using them. Valve don't need the developers to be on-board in order to run their games on anything else, that's why Proton exists.
What Valve want is the dissolution between platform/architecture and store. By my eye, it's the driving force of their efforts, more so than them selling hardware or being the open source good guys. Not to undervalue their work in helping make Linux a first class citizen for gaming, but the core of their business model is getting people to engage with their store, full stop, and being able to sell their games on Android (and elsewhere) would massively extend their reach.
This may go both ways too, there's also been indications that Valve have been tinkering with Waydroid, meaning Steam could also become a store for Android-native games.
That's a small part of it, I think. They've almost certainly spent a lot more on pouring time and effort into Linux than they ever would have saved on license fees. It seems like Valve doesn't want to be beholden to Microsoft in any way. They support Windows because that's where the users and the games are, but they don't want Microsoft to be able to rug-pull them either.
As far as I am aware, neither Valve nor the independent Wine/Proton developers are bound by any licensing agreements with Microsoft. They are clean-room implementing the same technologies, but they are not beholden to Microsoft in any legal way. Of course, drastic changes in laws or policy regimes could alter this dynamic, but those are out-of-context risks.
In order for Microsoft to rug-pull the technology (which is quite different from rug-pulling the business model), they'd have to break compatibility on Windows itself. Video games remain a major reason for home users to run Windows. Making ABI-breaking changes to Win32 or DirectX is just not very likely to happen. And if it did happen, it would be a boon to Valve and not a harm.
The biggest risk (and this would be a classic Microsoft move, to be fair) I can foresee is aggressive API changes that make it hard for Valve/Wine/Proton to keep up but also make it hard for game developers not to. I'm not exactly sure what this would look like, and a lot of the core technologies are pretty stable by now, but it's a possibility. It's not, however, going to harm anything that already exists.
They can restrict .NET and the C++ stdlibs so that you can only run them under Windows (through a license change or by introducing a code check), but if they hadn't done that in Ballmer days, I don't think they will now.
I don't remember how officially it was stated, but original push by Valve for steam on Linux with Proton was to remove their dependency on Microsoft - a hedge against possible future ecosystem-impacting decisions in Redmond.
Making SteamDeck use windows wouldn't impact prices much, Microsoft is really friendly for putting windows by OEMs. Could even run modified to act like current steam deck.
Instead, SteamDeck is there to drive up testing on Proton or straight forward porting to Linux, which just availability on Linux and the previous steam machine didn't drive up
Close, but the root is more nuanced. Once upon a time, Microsoft was talking about regulating "apps" on windows like Apple does for the iPhone. Valve saw the writing on the wall: a potential ban on violent or otherwise adult-themed games. So Valve started the steambox project. Get the games running on linux/WINE and they could tell Microsoft to push off. Years later, we have the steamdeck as a revolutionary product and linux is the go-to OS for portable gaming.
If future versions of Proton break compatibility with older Windows apps, you can use different old versions of Proton for individual games. Steam makes this very easy on Linux, but rarely is it necessary.
I don't foresee many Linux distros breaking compatibility with Wine, which is good, as some devs argue Win32 is the only stable ABI on Linux. [1]
I don't foresee legal issues either, as Wine has been around for 31 years, and its corporate sponsors have included Google in the past. I've seen no indication that the project is on shaky legal grounds.
Microsoft could always create a new API that Wine doesn't yet support, but good luck getting developers to use it -- they've tried many times, but not much has stuck, and most devs just stick with Win32. [2]
Linux/Unix has been used as a base overwhelmingly in pretty much every new consumer OS for decades. Not to mention Microsoft certainly cuts deals with manufacturers when it comes to windows on portable devices (I think at one point they offered free licenses on devices with screen sizes under 8 inches).
The steam deck is 100% usable without leaving 'game mode' even a single time. Something that is genuinely impossible using Windows as a base. That's the important part
The amount of money Valve has pumped into Linux would have far exceeded the money they saved through licensing Windows. Like probably by an order of magnitude or more. For someone as smart as you seem to be, your points don't make a whole lot of sense.
I am a strong linux supporter and I too do not like what proton is doing to games. A few years ago there were many significant games coming out with native linux capacity (MineCraft, KSP, Factorio). Then proton dropped. Now, rather than support linux natively, even the most pro-linux developers are just expecting that their windows version will run under proton. And those who are running games under proton are essentially cut-off from customer support. I've had a few games where a patch suddenly stopped them working under proton. I have no recourse in such situations. That is not a good trend.
Genuinely what is the practical difference in this for 99% of users? They just want to play x game. Proton performance is pretty great, what else would be a problem for those people?
Also when it comes to breaking proton support (Which does happen) Valve + GloriousEggroll give you access to plenty of older and special versions. Surely that's better than rolling back entire software?
My game doesn't work ->
I go to protonDB ->
Users saying use X Proton Version or Y ProtonGE version ->
I switch the layer used in steam
Linux is not a stable runtime in the first place. Unless you are isolating, redistributing and sandboxing most of the libraries used to run your game, it's almost guaranteed to break when the dependencies are updated. Windows apps don't have that problem, natively or when run through emulation.
Just ignore the guy, it's essentially the reverse of "I run Arch BTW". Not just about Valve or Proton, but about pretty much every FOSS technology that's celebrated here.
It doesn't have to do anything for GNU/Linux games, that's been an option for years and it's a ghost town a-la Metal-native games. Valve (and the community) are doing the right thing by ignoring the Apple strategy of enforcing distribution terms they will abandon within the decade. Developers that want to program for Linux still can. It's just as stupid as it was when the first Steam Machine rolled out.
By supporting Proton, they are guaranteeing that modern and retro Windows games will be playable on Linux far into the future. Trying to get the next Call of Duty to support Linux natively is, quite literally, a waste of everyone's time that could possibly be involved in the process. I cannot see a single salient reason why Linux users would want developers to release a proprietary, undersupported and easily broken native build when translation can be updated and modified to support practically any runtime.
Yea. You either have to pump a ton of money into it like Apple tries to do to get devs to target your OS, or you can take matters into your own hands and do the unthinkable with Wine and Proton. Its unironically a silver bullet solution. Otherwise we'd all be waiting for years to make 1/1000th the progress
We don't have to imagine what Linux gaming would be like without Proton.
- CD Projekt Red: released Witcher 2 on Linux, didn't for Witcher 3.
- iD Software: released Doom 3 on Linux, didn't for Doom (2016) or Doom Eternal.
- Epic Games: released Unreal Tournament 2004 on Linux, but didn't for Unreal Tournament 3 or Fortnite. (A Linux port was being worked on for UT3, but it ended up getting cancelled.)
- Larian Studios: released Linux version of Divinity: Original Sin, didn't for Divinity: Original Sin 2 or Baldur's Gate 3
Many studios over the years have made native Linux versions, and many studios stopped because the cost of porting exceeded the revenue it generated. Proton didn't exist when Unreal Tournament 3, Witcher 3, Doom (2016), or Divinity: Original Sin 2 released, so Proton wasn't the reason those studios stopped developing Linux titles -- they stopped because it made no financial sense to continue to make them.
Now, with Proton, 79% of the top 1000 games on Steam are gold or platinum rated on ProtonDB. If you're fine with minor issues, 88% are silver rated or better. For the Steam Deck in particular, there are 5,500 verified games, and 16,526 verified or playable games. So I'd argue Proton is doing quite a lot for people gaming on GNU/Linux machines, since they now have access to a solid majority of the top 1000 games on Steam, both on a Linux desktop and on a handheld.
The practical implication is that one can click one button and buy install and play thousands of games on Linux. Only MS stockholders are liable to care about the implications for Windows.
OS/2's Windows compatibility was borne in the midst of Windows' rapid ascension, of rapid progress and change in the home PC industry.
We aren't in the 90s anymore. Win32 has stalled, Microsoft has a regulatory gun to their head and Wine's compatibility (at least in the domain of games) is extremely good, good enough to allow for a commercial product to be a success while being entirely reliant on it. In what way is any of this comparable to what happened with OS/2 outside of "it runs Windows applications"?
You are right that many developers don't care and haven't bothered with Linux, but one reason for optimism is that this seems to be changing. Just looking through the list of native Linux games today compared to what it was like a year or 2 years ago, there are a lot more options. I was looking through the list of Linux games on Gog, and it is likewise in a much better position than it was prior. I think there is much reason for optimism!!
Most of the studios that own those games, and target POSIX like OSes on mobile phones and game consoles, are yet to bother with GNU/Linux versions for SteamOS.