Will windows 10 destroy Steam?
It would be a suicide for Microsoft to even try destroying Steam, as it, as well as other gaming clients (Battle.net, Origin, Uplay) are the main reason why Windows is the most used OS in the world.
At the very least, they could try buying it, but I don't think that would ever happen...
Also, who is it who spread this rumor? Tim Sweeney? Come on, don't give him too much exposure, he's just being delusional...
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Well Microsoft has made a couple mistakes in the past, but I think they are smart enough to stay away from steam.
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I think that Tim Sweeney is wrong about outright sabotage, but I do think that Microsoft will try to compete more seriously with digital gaming stores, mainly by using Xbox-Windows cross platform as an incentive (both for users and for devs). It's kind of like Steam was a platform for Half Life 2 initially, and a crappy one at that. Only problem is that Microsoft is not that great at keeping up support for stuff long term, so it remains to be seen how far it will develop this. I believe that Microsoft can succeed in becoming a good store, if it puts its mind to it, I'm just not sure it has what it takes.
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No ,but win10 is likely to kill your computer at some point .
You're at the whim of Microsoft's enforced updates.
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so you are not going to upgrade? :) or do you already have win10
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I'm not going to say that Microsoft will do this, however... It is possible for them to control how things operate on their operating system, so it is quite possible. Personally, I'm at the point I think game developers should abandon building games on the windows platform and start putting more focus into Linux.
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let's see. Abandon approximately 88% of all computer users and focus on approximately 2%?
or, well over 2.5 billion potential clients for under 100,000
Yeah, sounds like a great business plan
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Nobody alright with his mind will do that, the only player that can enforce this is Valve, and they won't enforce anything until it's necessary, which means that Microsoft will attempt to kill Steam firstly, and Valve will react with announcements when it's too late.
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Windows 10 will kill Steam in exactly the same way that Games for Windows Live killed Steam.
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While Windows is the number 1 used operating system, steam is the number 1 used game streaming platform. And much of Windows lock-in comes from the fact that Linux just sucks for gaming right now due to lack of support from the gaming community.
If Microsoft attempts to push Steam out of windows, Valve will double down on Linux and push more into it and continue to do so with its considerable marketing strength and Microsoft stands to lose a great deal of users should Linux become a viable gaming platform for the games people are using.
So if Microsoft were to attempt this, it could hurt them more than it helped them and give the Linux a huge push.
Hell, if Microsoft gets too pushy, Steam could try to collaborate with Google and see if they could come out with an official desktop version of android and allow steam and their games to run on that since android is based on linux and hopefully it wouldn't take too much of a recompile to get them to work. And I have a feeling if Android came out with a decent desktop version of android that could play games decently, it would take off greatly so long as they allowed users to install their own software.
Edit: evidently they already have an unofficial version of android on desktop a group is working on called Remix OS.
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Steam already has SteamOS, besides - Android might look really cool but it's simply not suited for desktop usage. You can't simply say "okay everybody, we now use Android on desktops for gaming, everybody makes games on that". Linux is cool mostly thanks to the fact that there are hundreds of different distros and you can pick the one you like, you can pick community you like, you can pick software you like and you can customize every single thing however you like. Android doesn't even come close, and it's not 100% compatible - yes, Linux kernel powers both Android and GNU, but you do not code game for kernel, you code game either for device (platform-level) or OS (OS-level). If Microsoft really attempts what they're planning (if they're planning at all), then I suspect Valve pushing their SteamOS (and GNU/Linux, because SteamOS is Debian suited for gaming).
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I know valve has SteamOS and I hope it works out but, as it stands, it just can't compete with Windows in performance from what I have read.
As far as Android on Desktop, they already have an unofficial version out I read about right after posting that and evidently it is actually pretty decent. And I wasn't really mentioning that as anything but a possible aside as it would take both Google and Valve collaborating on that as it would take a recompile of source code at the least. But upon reading further, that would probably be out as well with how things are ran sandboxed in Android and is mostly Java based. So I retract that part.
So at that point, still comes to Valve pushing their Steam OS that much harder and hopefully get decent support for if Vulcan picks up.
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still comes to Valve pushing their Steam OS
Not really, SteamOS is rather low priority, Valve wanted something they can ship Steam machines with, and they constantly repeat that it's not really OS suited for desktop usage. Yes, it's based on GNU/Linux, and developing game for SteamOS is not any different from developing game for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora or any other GNU/Linux distro, but if they do anything, it will be GNU/Linux-oriented, SteamOS is an extra.
it just can't compete with Windows in performance
You should define performance. Yes, Linux tends to be slower when it comes to GPU stuff, but that is mostly due to a little mess with Xses and drivers, both which can (and will) be solved when Linux gets more popular. However, that's not any crucial difference. A game coded properly for Linux is not any slower than Windows equivalent - Dota 2 is best example of that, and Vulcan is the first step on making Linux catch up with Windows GPU situation and potentially heavily increasing compatibility.
However, everything else in general works as good or even much better than on Windows, so I can't really see how negatively it can affect the situation. I definitely won't consider sticking with Windows for 4-5 more FPSes - the compatibility is the crucial part, performance can always be worked upon - and not only by major players and big companies, but by community as well.
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I would think that for the major gaming, they would need to ensure many programs would be needed across them for compatibilities sake which would be the whole point of SteamOS. If all SteamOS would have been good for was to have something installed, they would have been better off installing another version of linux with its SteamOS being a program within it.
And as far as the performance was concerned, that was what I was talking about, what I have read on them basically said that even coded for Linux, they typically did not match the speed of their windows counterparts. Which I am hoping for Vulkan to remedy.
Personally, one of the main things keeping me on Windows at this point is the difficulty and speed issues involved with playing games I have seen. I rarely get the time to play games now so when I do get the chance to, I don't want to spend the time just trying to get the damn thing to work.
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Nah. But if they try - Steam can kill Microsoft. :D
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I don't care, I have win7 on my PC and I'll be OK with it for a few incoming years
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Windows is not going to kill Steam. If anything, it will kill itself as people will stop upgrading to newer versions and migrate over to Mac or Linux.
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Tim sweeney says it, whoever that is :) ( he was a developer on Unreal Engine and a bunch of other stuff)
I thought I'd ask the real experts over at SG.
I know some of you folks have put a small fortune into buying things for/on steam:
what will happen if steam disappears, what would you do ?
Does Microsoft have enough power to destroy steam?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y99g7Uj6irI
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/now-tim-sweeney-thinks-that-microsoft-will-use-windows-10-to-break-steam/
and also THIS :)
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