With the widespread support for Steam/Valve on this forum because of their contributions to making Linux gaming easier, I’m now confused as to why people here are using Linux in the first place.
I personally do so out of support for FOSS software, the customizability, and actual ownership of software, which I thought were most people’s primary reasons for using any Linux distro. Steam seems antithetical to all of these. The software in the first place became popular as a form of DRM, and it gets publishers to use it for the allowance of DRM on the platform. The Steam client has the absolute minimum customizability. Your account can be banned at any point and you can lose access to many of the games you have downloaded.
Whenever I game on Linux I just use folders to sort my game library and purchase any games I want to play on itch.io or GoG. On my Linux PC I stay away from clients like Steam because I want a PC that works offline, and will work if all of my accounts were banned. It’s more of a backup PC.
Since Steam has every characteristic of Windows, 0 customizability, DRM, plenty of games that are spyware, I see no reason to really not use Windows instead for the much easier time I can have playing games.
Yes, I prefer many of the features of Linux distros, but using a client like Steam defeats the purpose of them. Ridiculous storage requirements due to unoptimized dependencies, having to have a background client running for some games and wasting resources on doing so.
So, why use Linux and support Steam, or use Linux and use Steam?
Because I do other things with my computer and use Linux because I like how I have it set up not because of ideological purism. I do not like how Windows and Mac work. I dread booting into Windows to play games.
The reality is that the vast vast majority of games are not FOSS. You have no idea what makes most games tick. So if you are that concerned about FOSS purity I question why you play games on any platform. Windows or otherwise.
Have used linux almost exclusivly since 1999. Simply because it is the better system.
I use steam, since games just work without fiddeling, or a very easy refund.
I use Linux because all the games I want to play run just fine through proton, wine, or native builds. I used to have a dedicated windows partition, but maintaining windows got tedious. After testing that my games worked, I fully defenestrated and never went back.
Sure, steam is proprietary and has flaws, but I’d rather run a proprietary and flawed userland application than a proprietary and flawed OS.
It’s easy to use. I’m a software developer. *nix is really well supported by software developers, and most programming languages support Linux first. So it’s easy to develop for.
I think a better title for your post would be, “Why do you use Steam?”
