While I am not aware of any way to run custom software on the Steam Deck while it is on standby, you can drastically reduce the power drain if you shut it down fully instead of leaving it on standby. You can either use the “Power” menu after pressing the steam key, or long-press the power button to get the option to do so.

Also, if I am allowed to do some absolutely shameless self promotion: Bus Simulator 21 is verified, and 18 is playable.

It’s the Windows way. There applications typically also ship all dependencies. Either statically linked, or as a DLL files in their install folder.

It’s not a good solution, but for games that’s imho OK.

I’ll give you my point of view as game developer.

Disclaimer first: I work as a coder, everything I say about publisher interaction is second-hand knowledge.

We have made one Linux game. It was the first one of our two “indie” titles (quotation marks, because both of them ended up being partially funded by a publisher, so they weren’t really indie in the end), where we had promised a Linux build on Kickstarter, long before a publisher got involved.

The main reason why we did not do native Linux in our publisher-funded games is quite simple: Our publishers didn’t pay us for it.

There are actually some publishers who are very keen on getting native Linux versions for their games, but we sadly have not released a game with any of them yet…

The publishers we released games with did not agree to the buget that we think is needed to do a Linux port of sufficient quality. If we would lower the price for doing a Linux port to the point where our publishers would agree to it, we would take on a lot of financial risk ourselves, so this is sadly not an option.

If everything worked as it is advertised by engine developers, making a Linux version would be quite cheap: Just click a few buttons and ship it. This is, sadly, not the case in real-life, as there are always platform specific bugs in game-engines. Our one Linux game was made with Unity, and we had quite a few Linux-only bugs that we forwarded to the Unity devs (we didn’t have engine source code access), and had to wait for them to fix… For the engine we mainly use nowadays, Unreal, we have a rule-of-thumb: “Engine features that are used by Fortnite are usually well maintained.” There is no native Linux version of Fortnite… (We did try Unreal’s Vulkan RHI in Unreal 4.26 for Steam Deck support in one of our games. Let me put it this way: The game in question still uses Direct3D on Steam Deck.)

So, from experience we expect that the chance that we would have to find and fix Linux-specific engine bugs is quite high. Therefore we have to budget for this, what makes offering a native Linux version relatively costly compared to the platform’s market share. Costly enough to make our publishers say “no”.

This, by the way, also answers the question why publishers are willing to pay for the way more expensive console ports. There are also way more console players, and therefore potential customers out there…

(I can only guess, but I would expect publishers to be even more reluctant to pay for native Linux, now that WINE works so well that getting a game running on Linux needs typically zero extra work.)

As a gamedev I never saw this as a big issue. Just run Debian Oldstable on your build server, link whatever you can statically, and you are good.

(However, I am talking on a purely theoretical level here - we only released one Linux game, and that was before I joined the company. I will explain our actual reasons in a separate post.)

It isn’t that easy to go indie though, unless you do gamedev as a hobby and have another source of income.

I am working at what was a small studio (about 10 persons) when I joined, and has meanwhile grown to more than 50 employees.

I am a coder, and therefore don’t have direct insight into our finances, so please take everything below with a grain of salt. It is also intentionally vague because I don’t want to violate any NDAs.

Over the years we have started two indie projects, that both were completed and released, but both in the end had a publisher funding a part of the development. So, while they were indie initially, the released products cannot be called indie any more… The reason why we went for publisher contracts for those two projects were manyfold, but an important part was simply that we needed a way to cover our running costs. We are doing gamedev as a day-job, after all, so it needs to pay for our rent, food, etc… (Other important reason for going with a publisher were marketing, customer support,… All the things that we as developers have no experience in.)

Now that we have grown to medium studio size, we are hoping that we can at some point fund an indie project by making enough profit with other, publisher-funded projects. We have several projects running in parallel anyhow, and if 3 of them would yield enough money to pay a 4th project that would be fully our own, we would definitely go for it.

However, the market situation is tough, and we currently cannot afford to do that. Almost all profit we make goes into developing prototypes that we need in order to have a realistic chance to get the next publisher-funded project…

Two years ago it was a lot easier to get publisher contracts. Back then we were quite optimistic about being able to fund a fully independent project, but then the market changed, getting new publisher-funded projects has become a lot more difficult, and right now doing an indie project is (for us) not financially possible…

So, what we are doing now is that we are taking our game ideas and presenting them to publishers. The prottypes I mentioned? Most of them are for our own ideas. Having something the people at the publisher can play goes a long way in convincing them that a game-idea is fun. That’s not indie, but it is as close as we can get to making the games we want to make. While the last year has been tough, with publishers being very, very, very cautious about new ideas, the situation seems to slowly change, and we might eventually get funding for one of our own ideas. Maybe. If we are lucky.

You can’t build a game studio without funding, and that is where the problem lies…

Publishers have become very risk-averse ever since Embracer went downhill. They basically only invest in <literally the same game as some previously successful title>…

I would rather not waste money on a Windows license I am not going to use.

(Not that I would buy an Ally, I already have a SteamDeck.)

For context:

Globally, the richest 10% are those with incomes above about $35,000 (£27,000) a year, and the richest 1% are people earning more than about $100,000.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam

Who knew electing fascists would lead to fundamental freedoms being removed?

FIFY

War ja auch nicht ernst gemeint. Ich bin bei diversen Chats im Freundeskreis eigentlich immer der einzige, der auf Hochdeutsch antwortet 😉.

A geh, is doch iagendwie liab, oda?

Übahaupt, jetzt wo si Hochdeutsch imma mea duachsetzt, und vü junge Leit übahaupt nimma richtig östareichisch¹ redn leanan, missn ma doch schaun, dass unsa Sproch net oafoch ausstiabt, oda?

Mia hom a a longe Tradition, wonns um Mundoatdichtung geht. Da Dichta von da obaöstareichischn Hymne zum Beispü, da Stelzhamer Franz, hot gonz vü in Mundoat gschribn.

Und weis ma grod eifoit: Es gibt a a eigene Wikipedia in unsam Dialekt: https://bar.wikipedia.org/ Oba do dua i ma söm schwah, dass i des vasteh. De is scho in da äagstn von de oagn Mundoatn gschribm.

(So, jetzt woas i net, wöcha Sproch i im Dropdown do untn auswöhn soid… Wei wirklich Deitsch is des jo net…)

[¹] I am fully aware that the dialect I’m writing in is not called “Austrian”. The two big dialects spoken in Austria are “Alemannic” and “Bavarian”, and the one I’m writing is the Bavarian dialect. I’m only using the word “östareichisch” here, because that’s what I expect most people to use in spoken conversation.

And up to now we have zero indication that the current approach isn’t a dead end. Bill Gates, for instance, thinks that GPT-4 is a development plateau: https://heise.de/-9337989