“All of this work is broadly applicable to the PC platform, and it’s going to continue to expand over time. Supporting multiple platforms, multiple chipsets, controllers for different machines that are out there and even ones that aren’t out yet.”
[…] Valve’s goal with the OS is to have it compatible with traditional PCs, laptops, portable consoles and any other formats.
That’s pretty much the difference of philosophy in a nutshell.
Microsoft: We gotta kill the competition.
Valve: We gotta make our customers happy.
Yeah I hate hate hate that mentality where you can’t exist if you’re not trying (and succeeding) to eat the whole world. Who cares about windows when you can build a great device like the steam deck, sell a few millions and make a bunch of cash in the process.
Valve makes money whether you use windows or Linux - that’s probably more their attitude.
I mean sure, but you could definitely conceive a Microsoft/Google/Apple style business model where they try to lock people into an ecosystem where they control both sides — the OS and the software — so that the OS can discourage third-party software and the software offers benefits for using the OS where they have home field advantage.
They don’t really need to, cuz they’re the de facto standard for Windows anyway. Specifically because they never went the Microsoft way. So now their OS is just another nice perk instead of another way to control their customers. And it’s also way cheaper for Valve this way.