Theres been some reports of MS looking into buying companies. Not just Valve, but EA, Ubisoft, and 2K. Theres also been rumors of PUBG being purchased as listed above. The Ubisoft and 2K claims are just in the rumor mill, the others listed are from many large sources. VNN is one place I trust to talk about this as he has his hands in many buckets. Theres other stuff floating around that would indicate that MS is making a large move on the gaming market soon but I think those are just rumors too (changes to the UWP, W10 updates that aren’t live but are installed, etc).
I’m a linux user, and been in android hacking for a week, so I haven’t been paying too much attention to this stuff. So anyone else who has info please post it here.
Microsoft’s Windows Store thing that they pushed is a total flop. I’d give adoption a generous 3 to 5 percent based on what I’ve seen. They probably want to buy a platform that works so they can integrate it into their ecosystem.
BTW, that would absolutely kill Valve if they did it.
AT&T. Happened with the phones, it was broken up and we endured 10 years of shit phones before a fix came around. Not saying megacorps are good, but I would say that the govt will step in if it gets too bad.
I don’t really buy that with the government we have now though, especially now that one political party has some serious Erectile Dysfunction and they have most of the seats and power. Most of them seem to be kissing up only to megacorporations.
The regulations they imposed were there for smaller businesses that aren’t nearly as big.
There was a time though where corporations were held accountable on the case of Anti-Trust but that’s becoming more distant of a memory.
I don’t want to get politics locked but I do agree that there are problems in the current government. That said, I think we have to look forward with optimism. If we don’t, there’s really no point having a forward-looking discussion.
Yes, some companies are bad. Some are good too. The coming decade (2020s) is going to be a decade of yuuuuge change. Probably not good change, but who knows. We could get to a point where you’re functionally invisible simply for not having technology on you. That would be cool.
You’ll have to be more specific. I had to stop following politics due to blood pressure lol.
All I know about the future is that it’s going to be a lot different soon though. I like to hope that the change will be good and all honesty, I think things will get better, at least some things. But there are plenty where we are heading the wrong direction as well as the right one and we can hope that they will get addressed by then.
As for politics, can’t blame you on the blood pressure part.
I think we need to accept that change is good. Part of us doesn’t want to change things just because we don’t like change. You have to take the good with the bad, fix what you can and not get too caught up over what you can’t.
Now that we’re back on track, my major concern with Microsoft buying a distributor is that they might try to reduce the availability of Linux games. I know Microsoft <3 Linux, but does it really? We have new leadership in there and I think the important thing to determine is exactly what’s going on there. Do they still follow EEE or has the spirit really changed? They seem to be making some serious inroads on the “we’ve actually changed” front, but I’m still skeptical. One field Microsoft has always dominated is Gaming and that’s changing fast. They could definitely get out ahead of it if they had control over Steam, but I’m very happy that it’s never going to happen.
I’m skeptical. The big one I keep coming back to is Microsoft “teaming up” with the KVM community to help Windows virtualize Linux better, and in theory to help Linux virtualize Windows better. But you’ll note that Windows still doesn’t ship with VirtIO drivers, and Windows performance in KVM has, in my experience, been on the decline.
Meanwhile Microsoft begins the Linux subsystem project, an effort supposedly geared to help cross-platform development. But from where I’m sitting you’re cutting out only one of the smallest steps involved in cross-platform development: getting your code from a Windows box to a Linux box.
What no one is talking about, though, is how close this puts Windows to being an OS that can host Windows VMs, Linux VMs, and Linux containers. That’s the more interesting path for the Linux subsystem.
No, I can easily see the Microsoft <3 Linux effort just being a smoke screen. I could very well be wrong. But I don’t think so. I think this puts them in the best position to keep their software in front of people.
Not necessarily. A lot of people have been coming on to linux lately. The user uptick since flatpak and snaps became integrated in 17.10 has been pretty substantial thanks to companies like Dell and HP making linux machines more available. They’re still nervous about putting them in the normal stores though, at that just on their sites… Which is retarded.
As for MS trying to play grab ass because of linux gaming? Nnnnno I think its more that EA has “failed” multiple times now, valve is “just a store” according to MS, and PUBG is the biggest game rn. MS is going to block apps like steam if they can make the UWP store be somewhat convincing, but they are failing to be competent at that. If they blocked steam now they would lose all of their users and most of them would go to linux or mac and tell MS to get fucked. So… Buy steam, block external apps, kill linux game development as a side but not as the goal. Its just them trying to make market grab moves and failing. As stated in the VNN video, and quoted my GabeN himself:
“It’ll be a cold day in hell when I sell Valve to another company”
To be fair, I don’t see many people walking in to buy a Linux machine yet.
People see Linux as being ugly (even though actually, it can look really nice, I love my KDE’s stylish looks right now) and old (even though it’s most definitely NOT old, it’s newer than Windows lol). Personally I like Linux more for it’s customization ability and software design.
I actually told my mother to consider Linux on her old laptop she bought for $40 recently since she complains that Windows 7 is running slow.
To be fair, I think a lot more people would if they could see it in the stores. Even if there was only a few Linux machines it would be enough to spread awareness.
FB also offered him like 350 million dollars for something that wasn’t really going to come to market unless it had an ass load of money. It was vapor ware for real release prior to that and only the dev kits were out. Sure they existed, but it was a good 2 years (3?) of Dev Kit 2 before they went “Oh yeah we have to release it, right, uh”
Where valve makes a dick load of money no matter what they de.
I usually go back to the fact Microsoft is a giant corporation and has many different teams and divisions. I honestly believe their Azure Cloud team loves Linux, because if they didn’t they would get killed by AWS and GCP. But the Windows OS & MS Office teams have definitely been against Linux from the start.
If Microsoft did buy Valve, which division would take ownership? Phil Spencer is now an Executive Vice President who reports directly to Satya Nadella. I would assume he would take control of Valve. He could be for or against Linux gaming who knows. But if the Windows OS division took control, we can say bye bye to Steam on Linux for sure.
Bryan Lunduke worked at Microsoft when Ballmer was screaming at Linux. So anything is possible.