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Why STO is now losing money where the Steam Deck is concerned.
themightytigger
Member Posts: 28 Arc User
TL:DR at the bottom
When I first got it, I had reservations. Linux is not something I've played with seriously for close to 6 years and kicking the rust off was a continuing process I was less than enthusiastic to begin. And I won't pretend there haven't been some teething issues gettin games to play. But, by and large, they do. I've enjoyed my new handheld gaming ultrabook that is the Steam Deck.
And here's the thing; I'm going where no noob has gone before in several games. Does Soul Reaver work? Why yes. Yes it does. DCUO? Theres some tinkering at the start and it only wants to load from a removable MicroSD card (for me) but...it plays. I'm not going to go through 4 terebytes of game titles but suffice it to say what I've thrown at my Steam Deck (and taken the time to tinker in a few instances) runs.
This includes the vanilla version of STO on PC. Kudos to Arc for making a game that plays on Linux. This showed forethought oon your part and I want to make certain credit is given when its due.
The Deck has become my go to gaming machine for casual and long play sessions. Its couch cozy comfortable, lets others use the big screen and ensures some privacy with a pair of headphones. And with 1 million units reportadly shipped the Steam Deck is, I believe, cementing itself as a true contender for a bonifide gaming console. Case in point: I was casually playing Red Dead Online in the passenger seat on an extended trip when we stopped at a drive thru to grab some greasy spoon and the cashier nearly squealed as she leaned out of the window and actually into the car to explaim "Is that a Steam Deck!" to which I replied "Why yes. Yes it is."
Verified games are a pleasure to play. The console controls are, well, farmiliar at this point. If you game, you've handled a switch, a playstation or xBox controller. The Deck is all of those just writ large.
So why am I telling Arc they're losing money where the deck is concerned if the game runs?
In three words: ease of use. When i want to play STO, i plug it into the docking station, switch the hdmi display over, grab my blutooth keyboard and mouse and switch over to desktop mode. Load steam, load the game, and now we're in. Farmilliar.
I mentioned other games. If I want to play those, I hit the power button, browse to the game and hit play. No extra peripherals. No funky couch keyboard setup with the neices and nephews asking if I can get off so they can watch Paw Patrol or Cars for the zillianth time. Press button. Tap screen. Enjoy.
You can't just do that for STO. Not on PC. You're locked into the keyboard and mouse config. I'd almost find the prospect annoying if I didn't have all those other verified titles to play. I don't mind saying I told you so since I did. Almost a year ago. I knew this was going to happen in my house. Games that play comfortably in console configurations will end up taking the majority of my free time when my primary gamign rig ends up being--essentially--a console. And the games i play end up with the lions share of my disposable income.
I missed the Halloween event this year. First time in a looooooong time. But I needed to find batwoman 13 times.
I'm not telling you this to be smug. I'm telling you this because I like the game and want it to remain relevant. Relevant to me, at a million other people at the moment means "Verified on Deck".
the TL:DR? Console UI is becoming imperitive for the PC version of this game to remain relevant. Go get verified on Deck STO!
When I first got it, I had reservations. Linux is not something I've played with seriously for close to 6 years and kicking the rust off was a continuing process I was less than enthusiastic to begin. And I won't pretend there haven't been some teething issues gettin games to play. But, by and large, they do. I've enjoyed my new handheld gaming ultrabook that is the Steam Deck.
And here's the thing; I'm going where no noob has gone before in several games. Does Soul Reaver work? Why yes. Yes it does. DCUO? Theres some tinkering at the start and it only wants to load from a removable MicroSD card (for me) but...it plays. I'm not going to go through 4 terebytes of game titles but suffice it to say what I've thrown at my Steam Deck (and taken the time to tinker in a few instances) runs.
This includes the vanilla version of STO on PC. Kudos to Arc for making a game that plays on Linux. This showed forethought oon your part and I want to make certain credit is given when its due.
The Deck has become my go to gaming machine for casual and long play sessions. Its couch cozy comfortable, lets others use the big screen and ensures some privacy with a pair of headphones. And with 1 million units reportadly shipped the Steam Deck is, I believe, cementing itself as a true contender for a bonifide gaming console. Case in point: I was casually playing Red Dead Online in the passenger seat on an extended trip when we stopped at a drive thru to grab some greasy spoon and the cashier nearly squealed as she leaned out of the window and actually into the car to explaim "Is that a Steam Deck!" to which I replied "Why yes. Yes it is."
Verified games are a pleasure to play. The console controls are, well, farmiliar at this point. If you game, you've handled a switch, a playstation or xBox controller. The Deck is all of those just writ large.
So why am I telling Arc they're losing money where the deck is concerned if the game runs?
In three words: ease of use. When i want to play STO, i plug it into the docking station, switch the hdmi display over, grab my blutooth keyboard and mouse and switch over to desktop mode. Load steam, load the game, and now we're in. Farmilliar.
I mentioned other games. If I want to play those, I hit the power button, browse to the game and hit play. No extra peripherals. No funky couch keyboard setup with the neices and nephews asking if I can get off so they can watch Paw Patrol or Cars for the zillianth time. Press button. Tap screen. Enjoy.
You can't just do that for STO. Not on PC. You're locked into the keyboard and mouse config. I'd almost find the prospect annoying if I didn't have all those other verified titles to play. I don't mind saying I told you so since I did. Almost a year ago. I knew this was going to happen in my house. Games that play comfortably in console configurations will end up taking the majority of my free time when my primary gamign rig ends up being--essentially--a console. And the games i play end up with the lions share of my disposable income.
I missed the Halloween event this year. First time in a looooooong time. But I needed to find batwoman 13 times.
I'm not telling you this to be smug. I'm telling you this because I like the game and want it to remain relevant. Relevant to me, at a million other people at the moment means "Verified on Deck".
the TL:DR? Console UI is becoming imperitive for the PC version of this game to remain relevant. Go get verified on Deck STO!
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
It would be great if they do fix them though.
If you have an xbox, I beleive you can stream it to your steam deck.
Instructions here:
https://linuxgamingcentral.com/posts/xbox-remote-play-on-deck/#:~:text=The process requires getting the,your Xbox to your Deck.
You can even stream it to your phone on Xbox.....although you have to be on the same network for games not on the cloud.
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^^ Exactly this. I am so glad I'm not the only one that defines 'losing money' like this. Like I said to my mother about inheritance "Never had money, so can't miss what I never had"
We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity"
Captain Jean Luc Picard
As for one million units, Sony sells about that many PS5s in a month, so, not hugely compelling for Cryptic. There are still some signs Cryptic or at least the STO team cares mildly for the Steam Deck, as shortly after the announcement of the Deck, they re-added Steam autologin. Very little else, though. Any WINE mentions are likely vestigial from when they had a Mac port running off of Cider/WINElib.
* https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/06/steam-deck-shipments-more-than-double-this-week-so-lets-estimate-how-many/
That's a way out of date article when it comes to shipping numbers, as there was a severe bottleneck in the supply chain for the Steam Deck earlier in the year (as with lots of things), and the numbers shipped by the time that article came out in July wasn't even decently through the pre-orders they had at that point yet. They managed to get more supply and kick up production/shipping since then and are now mostly ordering and shipping out without having to wait in a queue, at least where it's been launched for a while in the US, UK, and EU (Asian markets still waiting iirc). It looks like last month they actually hit the 1 million shipped mark: https://gamerant.com/steam-deck-1-million-shipped/
Of course, from reading the old threads and seeing Ten Forwards it looks like they dropped Mac/Linux support mainly because Microsoft was playing their break-older-dx-compatibility games too much to make the effort of making workarounds impractical. That is a bad omen for STO doing a Mac/Linux version in the foreseeable future since even the Supreme Court could not stop MS from pulling that garbage to torpedo other-OSes competition in the desktop games market.
In order to make it practical for a small team like STO has to support both Windows and non-Windows computer systems, either Microsoft would have to voluntarily stop with their anti-competitive nonsense or Cryptic would have to add Vulkan support to the engine, both of which are very unlikely.
STO works on the Steamdeck because Valve has spent a lot of money... and the community has done a lot of work for free. Building the tools to run games on Linux. Cryptic has ZERO involvement. The open source project DXVK that translates DX to Vulcan, and Proton (their wine spin) is what powers the deck.. that is a valve funded project. (they pay the DXVK developer to work on it full time and have a proton team) Many times Valve has tried to get developers in general on board and it really hasn't went anywhere. Valve has made available the ability for developers to add Proton profiles for their games... few have taken them up on it. The updates and tweaks that happen to get games up are 100% community, and Valve work.
They deserver neither a pat on the back... Nor any static for not having any specific deck support. Its not something they actually officially support.
I think its fair to ask for things like controller support to be added. (or re added) But ya they are not responsible for games working or not working and in what state.
As a long time Linux user and gamer... Valve is the only company that deserves any praise. Cryptic can up their support by simply making a better game and adding features to their game as is. Anything they add that works on windows should work just fine under Linux.
Actually, Linux has had Windows app support for years using WINE and its offshoots to emulate the OS API calls, eventually including DirectX. It's emulation of the APIs not running the full OS so a Windows license is not needed.
It's like how DOSbox can play DOS games on many different OS including Windows 10. Or the emulators out there for the consoles, Atari and Commodore computers, etc.
Besides full Bridges, Buff/Debuff iconography/status breakdown and a Salvage tab, I can't think of anything Consoles need (I'm on XB and PC). It would be great to get more conditional triggers, but it means the game gets even lazier.....although it is a good thing if you want to enjoy watching whats going rather than tracking every power.
> Besides full Bridges, Buff/Debuff iconography/status breakdown and a Salvage tab, I can't think of anything Consoles need (I'm on XB and PC). It would be great to get more conditional triggers, but it means the game gets even lazier.....although it is a good thing if you want to enjoy watching whats going rather than tracking every power.
Give us the choice to set our own power levels is one example that would be superb.
Let us rearrange the UI to our liking is another.
Oh aye, and hangar commands too!
What do you mean STO does run on the Steam Deck. I think the op is really asking for controller support. Not for Linux... for the game.
Windows games run on Linux fine these days... in most cases you loss a bit of performance. In some cases (mainly games that use Vulcan natively) you get improved performance.
If your not familiar with gaming on Linux. This is a community run list of Steam games that are up and running or not... or in some cases a good resource for tweaks to improve performance. https://www.protondb.com/
For what its worth games with issues at this point... it almost all comes down to Windows developers doing stupid things like having anti cheat software that has kernel access (something Linux won't allow). Or sometimes using strange bits... as an example STO has issues with Linux and the chat system... I don't know what the issue is but it probably goes back to code Cryptic had in place for old 3rd party text chat export. I don't know for sure though... other then that though STO runs fine under Linux.
https://www.protondb.com/app/9900
True, the thread is really about getting the broken controller support back (which would be great, while I don't use controllers anymore, I know people who do use them on PC and having options is always good), but it also branched into a discussion of Linux/Steam/etc. support because the platform the thread creator uses is linux-based.
Indeed. The OP is asking about his deck experience. As a long time Linux gamer. The deck is great for Linux gaming... on the other hand it makes me feel neck beardy sometimes. A lot of new to Linux users on Decks... sometimes their expectations are off or misplaced. Cryptic has nothing to do with the Deck was the only point I was making. They don't support Linux as an OS. It works because Linux users and Valve have made it work. (games in general)
If you read the deck stuff out of the OP... you can break it down to ya improved controller support. This is all they are really asking for. I don't have a deck... but as I understand it STO runs perfectly well on the deck and if you use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse your golden. Cryptic fixes/improves controller support for the only OS they support... and they also fix the deck control issues.
Good way to put it. STO has Xbox controller support, which the Steam Deck's controller shows up as, but what you can do with a XBox controller is limited. You can move around on the ground pretty easily with just a controller, but you can't do something like invoke the Jet Pack on Risa without extra mapping or using the touchscreen. Once you're flying with the controller works fairly decently. With the Steam Deck's touchscreen, there are sometimes issues with it not clicking what you poked at, and I wasn't able to get past the first prompt to verify graphics settings, as poking just highlighted the OK button, but didn't click it. I ended mapping the right trackpad as mouse and one of the back paddles as left click, as well as R to another paddle to get to walk/fly forward without having to hold the sticks. I haven't really done space on it, as that seems a fair bit of a pain, as I can't imagine doing it without setting up keybinds, which I'd want to do with an external program and SteamOS likes to somewhat isolate programs. I haven't really played much on the Steam Deck beyond Risa, as other issues like On Demand Patching not working (I'm on a slow connection where this is really handy), the screen being small and low res (Setting up all the UI in 800P and then having to redo that when on 1080P) kept me from bothering.