And let’s not overlook that hundreds of thousands of players have already got easy accessibility to SteamOS by means of Steam Deck {hardware}. These getting old Steam Decks may not be highly effective sufficient to run a recreation like Half-Life 3 at most graphics settings, however Valve video games have a historical past of scaling down well on low-end systems.
Valve’s leaked “Powered by SteamOS” initiative additionally appears poised to let third-party {hardware} makers bounce in with extra highly effective (and extra Half-Life 3-succesful) desktops, laptops, and handhelds with SteamOS pre-installed. And that is earlier than we even think about the potential influence of a extra highly effective “Steam Deck 2,” which Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais said in 2023 might doubtlessly are available in “the following couple of years.”
Time for a daring transfer
Tying a serious recreation like Half-Life 3 to a very new and largely untested working system would certainly result in some deafening pushback from players proud of the Home windows-based established order. An unique launch may be dangerous if SteamOS finally ends up exhibiting some technical issues because it tries to develop previous its Steam Deck roots (Linux doesn’t exactly have the best track record on the subject of issues like recreation driver compatibility throughout totally different {hardware}).
Regardless of all that, we’re fairly assured that the overwhelming majority of gamers considering Half-Life 3 would bounce by means of a number of OS-related hoops to get entry to the sport. And plenty of of these gamers would seemingly persist with Valve’s gaming-optimized OS going ahead reasonably than spending cash on one other Home windows license.
Even a timed exclusivity window for Half-Life 3 on SteamOS might push a whole lot of early adopters to see what all of the fuss is about with out excluding those that refuse to modify away from Home windows. Failing even that, possibly a non-exclusive Half-Life 3 might be included as a pre-installed freebie with future variations of SteamOS, as an incentive for the curious to check out a brand new working system.
With the approaching large launch of SteamOS, Valve has a uncommon alternative to upend the PC gaming OS dominance that Microsoft more or less stumbled into decades ago. A recreation like Half-Life 3 might be simply the carrot wanted to get PC gaming as an entire over its longstanding Home windows dependence.