An interesting article, which gives pause for thought.
https://techreport.com/blog/25491/are-valve-and-amd-about-to-ruin-pc-gaming
Can’t wait for nVidia’s answer to Mantle.
Problems with this article. On basically their only two points.
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Steam OS will mean PC dev’s will have to support both. No, we know this not to be true because pleanty of dev’s don’t support Mac OS. Mac’s OS getting major steam support didn’t hurt the games industry at all and in fact judging by its adoption it helped. Worst case scenerio, game devs support whichever has the larger install base (my money is on windows for at least the next 3 years even if steamOS takes off) and once the game has made its money back port it to other OS’s much like I see with Mac support.
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AMD is pushing for market dominance. Because hurp the fuckin durp companies don’t always try this. Why do you think Nvidia runs it proprietary PhysX and sends out employees to help game devs optimize their games to run better on their hardware or how Nvidia always pushes really hard to have better drivers. This kind of push sounds great to me because Nvidia and Intel are going to have to respond to this, this is the result of competition is inarguably a net win for PC gaming. The distance from the hardware has always been a complaint from devs.
This article is just using typical click whoring techniques. Mention hotbutton and big names in the industry check “Valve” and “AMD”. Take an extreme stance, it is either going to be ruined or the best thing since sliced bread check typical “X ruins PC gaming”.
Also, the article seems to be assuming Valve will succeed on all fronts. They could fail just as easily as all the other failed console manufacturers over the years.
Pc gaming is always ruined or dying or dead.
And yet the fact that ANYONE can develop for it makes it the platform that will survive for the entire lifespan of the technology age (apocalypses don’t count).
The article writer also forgot how savvy people can be. Even if the SteamOS won’t support DX initially (I think; I haven’t heard if it doesn’t or does).
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone eventually comes up with a plugin for the SteamOS to use DX 11+ and windows elements. Give it some time, even after the initial release, it may come in to its own. Remember when Steam itself first came out? It was a hiccup.
Exactly. Everyday computers will always be the easiest way to access games, because it doesn’t require you to pay a lot of money for a machine that only allows you to game. PCs are simply the most open and therefore the most accessible.
Consoles are basically just very specific and very closed computer designs.
Edit: ^yeah, couldn’t you at the very least just use WINE like you would on any other Linux OS? Although obviously that doesn’t work for every DX game.
My point still stands.
And Consoles can be made to run Linux and things with some modding (I have no idea how to do that). I’ve seen a few people do it.
Well yeah, that was meant to reinforce your point 
If anything, this will push developers to develop for more open APIs like OpenGL, because then they can support just about any system equally.
Jeez, so much exaggeration with that title.
A new OS geared towards PC gaming won’t hurt PC gaming, succeed or fail. C’mon.
A proprietary API is nothing new, and will only mean the competition will have to keep up.
I also find it kinda silly how the article assumes that this will make PC gaming so complex and difficult to figure out.
Poorly written article by a person who hates PC gaming. did valves push into OSX and Linux destroy PC gaming? More choices lead to better choices. I have a mac and If I want to play Skyrim, I boot into windows. Valve believes that Linux will negate any console specific benefits to game play, mostly because those benefits were because microshaft kinda sucks and only does the bare minimum with windows to keep its users complacent. And at this point, with Xbox runing the NT kernel, and steam os and playstation using a *nix kernel, we will get to see how much optimization will occur over the various platforms
Also isn’t the SteamOS Linux-based? Not sure how far that goes, but it certainly doesn’t sound like it’ll bring a huge support issue.
Pc gaming has always been a special point of concern for me only becaues of there good graphic design and some other user friendly features.