I don't have any personal experience running Switch games on the Steam Deck, but I do have experience trying to use the Switch Pro controllers. I think they may work fine for some people now, but I have never been able to have them have a stable wireless connection. But when the connection was established, the accelerometers worked fine. (I gave up and just bought some XBox controllers.)

I'm sure the emulators accept the Steam Deck's own accelerometer inputs for when you're in a non-detached mode, and tilting the screen to aim.

The super-mega-motion control games might not work, but part of what I mean by "works better" is that the Steam Deck can generally emulate with more power than the Switch itself, e.g., you can get a Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom setup with a better framerate than the switch itself, so, depends on what you want more. I don't have a lot of motion control games.

While not a Switch, I use Wiimotes with motion accelerometer + gyro (MotionPlus) with my Steam Deck & Dolphin just fine.

"Local multiplayer on Steam" has no referent, because Steam does not do local multiplayer at all. It's all up to the game. I've played plenty of games that way, Steam and the Steam Deck add no particular problem with it.

While I wouldn't pin this on Steam qua Steam as a program, it is a fair complaint about the ecosystem. I have some games that are as flexible as the Switch about being docked. I have some games that can be docked but can't handle any resolution changes. I have some games you just plain can't switch. I have some games that you can switch from using the physical Steam Deck controls to an Xbox controller seamlessly, complete with the in-game hint graphics changing to match the controller in use. I have some games that have to be restarted to pick up a new controller. At least a few months ago I had one particular combination of games that if I played them in sequence would somehow permanently render XBox controllers non-functional until I rebooted the Steam Deck, though that is certainly an exception.

The Switch does handle the Switch-ing in the Switch name better than the Steam Deck, and it is a structural advantage that Valve will have a hard time addressing in a practical way. That said, my family does use the Steam Deck as a de facto Switch 1.5, as a thing that is used fairly evenly between "docked" and "in hand", and it is functional enough to work, even if it is undeniably not as slick.

I was going to check that and I realized i can’t find diablo 3 on steam. I know I could install it myself through some other online store. Still, I wish there were cartridges that “just worked”; consoles (including today’s Nintendo) got that part right IMO.

I still don't love it. DRM is DRM and I've watched enough heroes fall from grace to know it's onto a matter of when they yank your chain, not if. I will avoid to the best of my ability any attempts to retract back products I purchased myself.

That's why I wanted to stick to consoles and a physical medium. But even those have devolved into what's basically a digital download, now with the disk (or cartridge now, with Switch 2) being the DRM. The Onion couldn't write a more ironic headline.

Now I'm wondering if all that "virtual sharing" stuff for switch 2 cartridges means difficulties with the used market.

>In my opinion he deserves 30%.

Even Gabe doesn't agree, given the cut he gives to AAA publishers. I'm not exactly onboard with the idea that the richest people get the best tax breaks, even in video game world.

A progressive platform cut would be much friendlier to smaller devs and put the biggest burdens on the ones likely using the most amount of bandwidth. That's how the game engines have started to leverage their tooling. And they put a lot more work in than a hosting platform

Neither of those DRMs have ever prevented me, the owner, from using my content. Ubisoft once locked me out of some Star Wars game while I was trying to install it because it kept crashing during the install and consumed all of the "licenses". I returned the game.

It's not about the 30%, it's about giving you the ball for $3.30 then taking the ball away sometime later saying you can no longer play with it and no, there won't be any refunds.

It's perfectly fine to love Apple and Steam. They are both great companies and offer great products. The issue I have is in trying to extrapolate that love into labeling them pro-"software freedom", which is idiotic. Both these companies ship opaque binaries of their storefront and products. Their apps/games have restrictive DRM. You cannot install/register games without an account and internet access. They artifically limit resale/sharing/lending of digital goods. They are actively user hostile (such as not offering refunds until forced to by courts). Even the Steam Deck is full of proprietary blobs which would be illegal to revese engineer and reshare. Nothing about the experience is FOSS.

Again none of this is inherently bad if your argument is "I like the convenience and don't care about the restrictions". But don't delude yourself into thinking this is "freedom".