Microsoft Will Make Steam "Progressively Worse" With Windows 10 Patches

Zion Halcyon said:
That being said, I actually hope this means UT will go the Vulkan route, and I hope more games going forward go Vulkan, not because of any anti-MS resentment nerd rage, but because when it comes down to the early numbers when done right, Vulkan just outperforms DX12.
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That's a huge leap with little data. So far neither DX 12 or Vulkan is proving to do much for nVidia hardware. There's still a ways to go with all of this.
 
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So, Epic is going to make their shit not work with steam etc. Usually when someone starts talking crazy shit about someone else, it is the shit talker that is actually going to do the crazy shit.
 
GotNoRice said:
Yeah, I just don't see that happening.
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If I had a dollar for every time someone has sworn that in the last two years. "Microsoft would never do that"..."They wouldn't want a lawsuit"..." That could never happen".

And then of course it happens, GWX happens, Telemetry happens, forced installs happen, the shills move the goalposts, and you get pussy stuff like this:

And sure there's been certain issues in the past with certain things
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Reading the article he is ultimately more bitter that mobile/closed platforms are becoming popular and is the trend. Microsoft is just trying to position one of its primary products to fit that trend.

Techies need to get a grip imo. Just like cars have adopted computers and thus become more difficult for common old school wrench enthusiasts to tinker, the computer ecosystem is becoming more restrictive AND thus reliable and easier to use to meet the demand of a majority of its owners.

He is complaining about changing a core application framework from win32 to UWP... booo ho... things change. You would think someone in the tech field would understand this. Complain about UWP deficiencies, lack of features etc. MS will fix them in most cases its in their best interest ultimately. UWP is MS answer to Apple's popularity and success. They are a business obviously they would try to get a piece of the 30% pie of having a store.

Win32 isn't the end all be all... I work in software customization and deployment. Lots of vendors do lots of crazy crap with their apps because MS is so open with reg hacks etc. Many vendors think they are smarter than the "standard" or MS best practices and ultimately it costs their customers money in tech profressional help. Technology like UWP forced vendors to get their apps to work properly instead of using lazy 10 year old code/features.

EDIT: Fully admit UWP isn't ready to replace win32 right now... which is MS's fault. They tend to let immature solutions out of the gate and then people pooo poo them until everyone ignores the them when it finally is ready.
 
What is MS supposed to do? Not write any software, because of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about them breaking competitors on Windows? Dumb. This makes about as much sense as not buying food from a store or restaurant because it could be poisoned. Yea, could be, but it's still paranoia.
 
Microsoft has been trying to replace win32 for years (unsuccessfully). UWP is the latest attempt and I hope that this time they get it right. Sandboxed, power aware, dpi scalable, portable, etc apps are a good thing overall. They definitely have work to do still, but I feel like they are going in the right direction.

Can steam be a UWP app that sells other UWP apps? I doubt that's possible yet but I think it could be in the future if MS wanted to support that. Of course it's entirely possible that if the windows store ever became a true steam competitor that microsoft could release a new RT style windows and disallow competing stores or make it technically impossible to implement another store or whatever. But there would be a large consumer base that wouldn't move to it. So many companies still use windows to run a handful of corporate apps or whatever. Backwards compatibility in windows land is huge.
 
DPI said:
If I had a dollar for every time someone has sworn that in the last two years. "Microsoft would never do that"..."They wouldn't want a lawsuit"..." That could never happen".
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Except that unlike your extremely generalized and vague comments, I was referring to something very specific for which I even provided a specific quote from the article. Just take a look at how many computers (especially business computers) still run XP, and how big of a flop Windows RT was. It will be a VERY long time before Microsoft will be in a position to even dream about phasing out Win32 programs.
 
Solhokuten said:
I just read an article about Microsoft adding more of their titles to steam. Seems silly they would try and cripple the program, then again I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
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I wouldn't allow those titles on Steam. It is probably what is starting to give Steam its problems. Can you say "Trojan Horse"? :D
 
why creating a war for nothing, Microsoft don't do this, or your business will be ruined, don't mess with the gamers out there. Let us decide what we really want. I still prefer windows 7 over 10.
 
GotNoRice said:
Except that unlike your extremely generalized and vague comments, I was referring to something very specific for which I even provided a specific quote from the article. Just take a look at how many computers (especially business computers) still run XP, and how big of a flop Windows RT was. It will be a VERY long time before Microsoft will be in a position to even dream about phasing out Win32 programs.
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And the other part of the problem is, well where's the problem? I've purchased about 3 dozen games on Steam since Windows 10, most of them in the last couple of months since I got new hardware that made gaming fun again. All installed on Windows 10 perfectly. So sometime in the next five years this is just all supposed to stop working? Old games? New games? Both? So I'm supposed to stop using Windows 10, which is working great for gaming for me and use what? Linux? That brakes most of the games I bought recently instantly. At least I have five years with Windows 10.
 
heatlesssun said:
This an insane amount of work just to sell the same game without the additional work on Windows.
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The reason isn't to sell the game twice, but to get your customers to another platform like Linux. The more people that are comfortable on Linux, the more future proof your business will be. It's not like everyone is happy to be using Windows, especially Windows 10 which is just annoying people like crazy to update. Right now I don't see popular new games being ported to Linux. It seems only Indie games have releases for Linux as well as Windows. It maybe hard work to get a Windows compatibility layer on Linux, but that is really the only solution.


Right now installing Steam on Ubuntu 16.04 is a bitch. You need to do this to get Steam to start.

Code: 
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak

Want to get Portal 2 working on open source drivers from Oibaf PPA? You gotta do this as well. This is a script btw.

Code: 
#!/bin/bash
DIR=$HOME/.steam

echo "Removing libstd"
find $DIR -iname "libstd*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

echo "Removing libgcc"
find $DIR -iname "libgcc*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

echo "All Done

WTF, this is Ubuntu for gods sake, not a distro from China made to look like Windows Xp. It's popular, and common. Why do I have to do this shit, Valve? There needs to be a lot more effort put into Linux.
 
heatlesssun said:
That's a huge leap with little data. So far neither DX 12 or Vulkan is proving to do much for nVidia hardware. There's still a ways to go with all of this.
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2 things, 1 how did you quote me and it says I'm LurkerLito? 2, I have an AMD graphics card so I'm better situated than those of you guys with Nvidia cards. :p
 
Zion Halcyon said:
2 things, 1 how did you quote me and it says I'm LurkerLito? 2, I have an AMD graphics card so I'm better situated than those of you guys with Nvidia cards. :p
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My bad, fixed. And that's great for AMD cards except well, even with Vulkan and DX 12 AMD's got nothing like a 1080 right now. What's really going to make these new API interesting is if and when they can push top level performance even higher.
 
30 years of observing MS abusing their monopoly and yet the fanatics are still defending them.

Amazing.
 
If microsoft were to abandon xbox some time in the future, I could easily see them come out with anticompetitive tactics to gain more a foot hold on pc gaming. Doesn't have to be steam, little things like making all new "dx12.1" games run like ass outside UWP could be very effective.
 
Derangel said:
MS has competed with several programs in the past and has never gone out of their way to cripple any of them. Gaming is such a minor part of their business they have no reason to put effort into crippling anything now. Stop listening to crazy conspiracy theories and think about issues logically.
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Yes, they didn't use underhanded means to sabotage products like DRDOS or Netscape Navigator or Linux.
 
Netscape = dead
Wordperfect = dead
Microsoft = alive and well.

What exactly failed in their strategy?
Paladin21 said:
They nearly got their company ripped in half for doing this with Internet Explorer vs. Netscape and Office vs. Wordperfect. I'm pretty sure at this point they realize that it isn't a realistic option to pursue that strategy again. Microsoft will never be able to force everyone to use the Store, they'd be bitch-slapped by AntiTrust issues so hard they'd have to offer Windows exclusively as an XWindows GUI choice to satisfy the EU they'd learned their lesson.
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Paladin21 said:
They nearly got their company ripped in half for doing this with Internet Explorer vs. Netscape and Office vs. Wordperfect. I'm pretty sure at this point they realize that it isn't a realistic option to pursue that strategy again. Microsoft will never be able to force everyone to use the Store, they'd be bitch-slapped by AntiTrust issues so hard they'd have to offer Windows exclusively as an XWindows GUI choice to satisfy the EU they'd learned their lesson.
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He isn't claiming they will ever force anyone to use their store over Steam. He is saying they will simply patch their OS to slowly make steam run like junk vs their store. Nothing technically illegal in that. I completely believe that is exactly what MS is planning to do... you can see it with Chrome even. The Chrome browser runs better under Win 7... for some reason it acts odd in Win 10, if you start specific types of downloads in other programs (the types some game updates use, such as Steam) it kills the connect chrome makes. Try it out let steam update a game, and then go and try and just browse in Chrome.

Thankfully for me Windows is just a game OS for me.... I really have to break my MMO addiction so I can just delete my MS partition. Better yet I just just break down and buy a second Video card so I can just run stupid Windows in a VM. :)

Anyway, Yes MS learned their lesson. You can't just shut the other guys out. They have learned the way to do it is to dual stream your OS software branches... and close one up, then if stuff doesn't play nice its the other guys fault.
 
And then the repotoids from Niberu will arrive and make you uninstall Ubuntu and run DOS with Win95 instead. Dun Dun Dun.

Running Win 10 here and glad to be doing it. The only thing I miss is Media Center, but hey I got a TiVO now so...
 
ChadD said:
The Chrome browser runs better under Win 7... for some reason it acts odd in Win 10, if you start specific types of downloads in other programs (the types some game updates use, such as Steam) it kills the connect chrome makes. Try it out let steam update a game, and then go and try and just browse in Chrome.
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Do you have any proof that Chrome runs better in 7 than 10?
 
Derangel said:
MS has competed with several programs in the past and has never gone out of their way to cripple any of them. Gaming is such a minor part of their business they have no reason to put effort into crippling anything now. Stop listening to crazy conspiracy theories and think about issues logically.
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java
 
Android isn't exactly a closed system though. Change one setting and you can install any apk you want. It's probably more the fact that rather than going onto the internet and finding software to install, people have become used to getting everything from one central source.
 
Tsumi said:
Android isn't exactly a closed system though. Change one setting and you can install any apk you want.
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Same thing exists in Windows 10. Now it's technically for developers and not meant as a way of software distribution. And really neither is that setting in Android, it comes with caveats.
 
DukenukemX said:
The reason isn't to sell the game twice, but to get your customers to another platform like Linux. The more people that are comfortable on Linux, the more future proof your business will be. It's not like everyone is happy to be using Windows, especially Windows 10 which is just annoying people like crazy to update. Right now I don't see popular new games being ported to Linux. It seems only Indie games have releases for Linux as well as Windows. It maybe hard work to get a Windows compatibility layer on Linux, but that is really the only solution.
Click to expand...

RE: the compatibility layer- You can't get ahead with that strategy. It'll result exactly in the WINE project. Anytime you reverse engineer Windows calls to the point of feature parity, the goal posts will have moved due to Microsoft releasing a new version. As they're not obligated to release code or even publish how certain APIs work, you'll always be behind the curve, even with infinite funding. The better strategy is what Valve set out to do by creating a Linux target for developers to code against. If you get developers bringing new projects to the platform at a decent pace, then you'll have a strategy that could eventually result in you getting ahead of your competition.

Now where they've dropped the ball is what you've pointed out below. They really should be working with major distributions to handle integration and overall QA better.

Right now installing Steam on Ubuntu 16.04 is a bitch. You need to do this to get Steam to start.

Code: 
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak

Want to get Portal 2 working on open source drivers from Oibaf PPA? You gotta do this as well. This is a script btw.

Code: 
#!/bin/bash
DIR=$HOME/.steam

echo "Removing libstd"
find $DIR -iname "libstd*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

echo "Removing libgcc"
find $DIR -iname "libgcc*" -exec rm -rf {} \;

echo "All Done

WTF, this is Ubuntu for gods sake, not a distro from China made to look like Windows Xp. It's popular, and common. Why do I have to do this shit, Valve? There needs to be a lot more effort put into Linux.
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The effort needs to go both ways, too. Canonical, RedHat, SuSE, and friends need to be interested in collaborating with Valve to maintain a working system as it makes everyone look bad when things break.
 
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Frobozz said:
RE: the compatibility layer- You can't get ahead with that strategy. It'll result exactly in the WINE project. Anytime you reverse engineer Windows calls to the point of feature parity, the goal posts will have moved due to Microsoft releasing a new version. As they're not obligated to release code or even publish how certain APIs work, you'll always be behind the curve, even with infinite funding. The better strategy is what Valve set out to do by creating a Linux target for developers to code against. If you get developers bringing new projects to the platform at a decent pace, then you'll have a strategy that could eventually result in you getting ahead of your competition.

Now where they've dropped the ball is what you've pointed out below. They really should be working with major distributions to handle integration and overall QA better.


The effort needs to go both ways, too. Canonical, RedHat, SuSE, and friends need to be interested in collaborating with Valve to maintain a working system as it makes everyone look bad when things break.
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That's really the inherent weakness of an open source project. Without top down control, anyone is free to fork as they see fit, regardless of what others do or try to collaborate on.
 
heatlesssun said:
If you're worried about shills, maybe you should let these PC gaming sites to stop reviewing with Steam games running on Windows 10. Like pretty much all of them. And good luck with that.
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HE called YOU a schill? PFFT!!! That's so badly wrong its hilarious!
 
Paladin21 said:
They nearly got their company ripped in half for doing this with Internet Explorer vs. Netscape and Office vs. Wordperfect. I'm pretty sure at this point they realize that it isn't a realistic option to pursue that strategy again. Microsoft will never be able to force everyone to use the Store, they'd be bitch-slapped by AntiTrust issues so hard they'd have to offer Windows exclusively as an XWindows GUI choice to satisfy the EU they'd learned their lesson.
Click to expand...

While I agree, and I am hopeful that regulators keep an eye on them, these things are terribly difficult to prove. Whose to say Steam isnt just buggy?

This is how Microsoft has gained dominance in most of their non-OS ventures, including Office. There were many competitors at one point. Ms. destroyed them all through shady efforts like this.
 
DrLobotomy said:
So, Epic is going to make their shit not work with steam etc. Usually when someone starts talking crazy shit about someone else, it is the shit talker that is actually going to do the crazy shit.
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Yup, it really does smell like something Microsoft did with UWP totally shit on something EPIC/Sweeney had been working on and now they are attacking them every chance they get. And no I don't for once believe they are embarking on this crusade against UWP for anyone's interests except their own.

This Nvidia lapdog can keep on fighting windmills for the rest of his life for all I care.
 
polonyc2 said:
as I mentioned earlier MS has crippled Windows 7 updates to take forever to load updates (no conspiracy theory, I know from first hand experience plus a Google search will turn up tons of hits as well)...I wouldn't put anything past MS at this point...with Windows 10 they really went full 'Breaking Bad'
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No it's just problems associated with running a 7 year old OS. Download the servicing stack update, and the windows update update before installing the convenience update and it's fine. That issue that was going on a month or two ago affected everyone, not just 7 users.
 
Tsumi said:
That's really the inherent weakness of an open source project. Without top down control, anyone is free to fork as they see fit, regardless of what others do or try to collaborate on.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's so much forking or an actual flaw in open source development as it is Valve & distribution maintainers ability to manage the rapid development currently happening in some key areas. The biggest breakers I can think of recently was the move to GCC6 which I think is responsible for a lot of the script-fu to delete related libraries in the SteamRuntime, and some API change happened in libcrypto that borked stuff up in Mesa that was compiled with it.

A lot of the issues should be caught in development versions and pre-release testing. However, things that need to happen are:
A. Steam is tested in the first place. - Automated testing like OpenQA, Jenkins, etc... could catch if something recently committed breaks your app.
B. Steam gets weighted as a blocker. I have not clue what Canonical thinks if everything works, but Steam.. Ship it anyway, or work to iron out that bug first? Feels like "ship it" with 16.01.

It isn't exactly a new problem. Other projects have had issues with rapidly changing APIs and such which is why the LTS releases are a thing. However, the bleeding edge changes are extraordinarily attractive to improving the gaming experience on Linux that it's tough to lock down. (ex. Steam Runtime breakage)

Tough exercise in Project Management. I hope they can get a handle on it.
 
heatlesssun said:
So if you're running Steam and its games without issue on Windows 10 you're a fanatic?
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I don't think anyone is arguing that this scenario has already played out, but that it is a potential future scenario, if Ms follows its historical playbook of how it deals with competing platforms running in its OS.
 
Paladin21 said:
They nearly got their company ripped in half for doing this with Internet Explorer vs. Netscape and Office vs. Wordperfect. I'm pretty sure at this point they realize that it isn't a realistic option to pursue that strategy again. Microsoft will never be able to force everyone to use the Store, they'd be bitch-slapped by AntiTrust issues so hard they'd have to offer Windows exclusively as an XWindows GUI choice to satisfy the EU they'd learned their lesson.
Click to expand...
What makes you think they realize this isn't a realistic option to pursue? This is the same company that tried to give us a half-baked touch interface for desktop PCs in Windows 8. This is the same company that tried to launch the Xbox One with a plan for it to dial-home every 24 hours along with mandatory kinect monitoring or else it wouldn't work. This is the same company that tries to strongarm DirectX upgrades by artificially tying it to its most recent OS. This is the same company that tried to (briefly) trick people into upgrading to Windows 10 by having them click on the X button. Microsoft is a monopoly and has a certain amount of delusion in their company culture. Their track record shows they're not afraid of trying things that seem like bad ideas to the rest of us.

Dekoth-E- said:
Personally I don't think MS would risk this. They have little to gain and everything to lose. That said and being someone who isn't a huge fan of Steam in the first place (though I have grudgingly started using it recently), This is precisely why 90% of my game collection is on a disc. The only games I have through steam are a handful of indi titles or games I otherwise got for less than $10. I'm willing to give up some of the control of my game "IF" the price justifies it. I won't ever purchase a game at full retail digitally, that is just straight foolish.
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Your discs can go bad. Digital games aren't the issue, DRM is. You get a game from GOG, you can make a copy of it, you can back it up for life. Unfortunately they're about the only company respecting consumer rights like that. As for them not risking this, they have a LOT to gain is the thing. Microsoft is still chasing the walled garden dream that Apple laid out for them because there's no end to the money if you have a captive userbase. At least that's their reasoning anyway.

LurkerLito said:
Sweeny never said they'd completely break the win32 system. I diagree with him that they will do anything at all to cripple it "intentionally". All they will do is accomplish the same goal of crippling it without any risk of lawsuits by just letting win32 stagnate while spending most if not all resources on improving UWP. This is no different than the Win 7 Update thing. I doubt they did it "intentionally" but I don't doubt they "intentionally" took their time to identify it and fix it because there was no reason to fix it quick since Win 10 was available as a fix for the issue.
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Exactly. For everyone saying "that's ridiculous, they would never do that", this is exactly how it would happen. Neglect and stagnation.

DPI said:
If I had a dollar for every time someone has sworn that in the last two years. "Microsoft would never do that"..."They wouldn't want a lawsuit"..." That could never happen".

And then of course it happens, GWX happens, Telemetry happens, forced installs happen, the shills move the goalposts, and you get pussy stuff like this:
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Post of the year.
 
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From the article: "The risk here is that, if Microsoft convinces everybody to use UWP, then they phase out Win32 apps." Uh, no, not going to happen unless you believe that one of Windows weaknesses is that it has no backwards compatibility. :oops::rolleyes::cautious: I guess it takes to much thought for Mr. Sweeney to think about what he is trying to get at.
 
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