I always said that if praised a corporation you should kill me, which is why I'm currently typing this from the afterlife. Jesus says hi.

And yet here I am, feeling adoration for the steam... Machine... Or as all have dubbed it: the gabecube.

Dropped unceremoniously like an afterthought with little announcement or fanfare, the steam machine popped into our screens and hearts like a surprise, good news for once. A shining beacon of what PC gaming could be like for normies.... But I could only think of one thing.... Linux.

As I wrote is my previous article, Microsoft is likely killing Xbox on purpose, Microsoft's main profitable business is Windows - while Linux reigns in the much nerdier domain of sysadmins, Windows is synonymous with the world of computing itself to most businesses and countries who happily pay whatever price to have it installed on their machines, use teams, and be coerced into using copilot. Windows phone failed, surface is a failure, Windows 8 is a failure, the zune was a failure, and with OpenAI requesting a bailout essentially this week, after increasing calls from financial institutions that this is a gigantic bubble - Microsoft may in fact be cooked.

A weak feeble demented King is most vulnerable to assassins lurking in the shadows, like a young noble upstart who has worked his way up the court. The king may be suspicious but is too taken with his concubines and drunk on power to catch him in the night, and his subjects too angry to object to anyone taking him out.

Ok Belle what now? What's this about linux

Okay I'll admit it I fucking hate FOSS culture, the UX sucks and the people are often worst. Free open source software they say, it'll just cost hundreds of hours of your life to tinker with and maintain.

I'm good typically I would just say I'll take the pirated windows baby with the cracked programs. Or if I like the program enough, a small subscription. But God do I fucking hate windows, He's like a husband that I've been growing to resent for years as he cheats on me and has started getting violent when he drinks. I've been planning his poisoning and what I'll do with the insurance money. What was once a hesitant marriage is like a bitter incoming divorce, no children by the mountain goats is the theme of our relationship. I hope you die, I hope we both die.

When I cry about this to friends, about how abusive Bill Gates' son is to me I get rolled eyes about how I should leave to Linux. As many abused Windows spouses have before hearing they can't take their beloved children with them to the other side. No no clip studio, you can't connect to the store

"but mother! The assets!"

"the assets are your father's. He's keeping them in the divorce."

"but mother how will you draw"

Someone in the distance:

"we have clip studio in the house"

Clip studio in the house:

screaming, vomiting, pissing, shitting

Pc supremacy but neoliberal

In order for any product to reach and break a Monopoly it has to appeal to normies. Normies, despite the best efforts of neckbeards, do not like Linux. They do not like tinkering. They want the magic box to do the thing. And that's where steam comes in, by trojan horsing Linux into the very usable and user friendly steam deck, they've made Linux approachable, viable even. Not just to normies but to developers who they are supplying with support to start the hard work of making Windows programs compatible with Linux. Of course, this is just the beginning. As you might have heard steam is now in the business of selling computers with steam OS installed presumably so you can get a Linux device in your home - stating outright it's a computer, very similar to the original strategy of the Xbox, which was created quite literally to bring personal computing into the home. Except the steam machine takes it a step further, by making every part of it upgradable, releasing the CAD files, and making parts widely available.

Now why would Gabe do this? The Skyrim method baby

In the Jakarta method by Vincent Belvins - a historical text examining the role of Washington in shaping the third world through funding of anti-communist movements, Belvins explains how The US government supported anti-Communist capitalist militias in brutal killings against anti-capitalist forces throughout Indonesia. The campaign was so successful while keeping the United States foreign policy out of international News, that the methodology used was called the Jakarta method and repeated throughout Latin America and Asia for decades to come.

There is one bland RPG and I think it's pretty unpopular for me to say this, that is only kept afloat in popularity by the strength of its community - The elder scrolls: Skyrim.

Skyrim is at least now a remarkably boring RPG at least to me. If Skyrim came out now, it would get a 6/10. A lot of older TES fans even somewhat agree that the writing of Skyrim is worst than It's predecessor Oblivion. At the time it was monumental but quite frankly it's not that impressive story wise, perhaps I would have enjoyed it better had I not played RPGs that built upon the foundation it laid and improved it in my opinion like the Witcher 3 and dragon age Inquisition. I'm sorry okay, I just think playing elf Malcolm X as the pope is really funny and geralt is really fucking hot.

What really keeps Skyrim alive and an eternal money maker to Bethesda is the fact that Skyrim has an exceptionally vibrant modding community, by making their modding tools so open and well documented they didn't even have to fix their broken ass game and still haven't. "Bethesda jank" even becoming a loving joke within the community.

It basically doesn't even matter what Bethesda does because the community will come and make the game for them. They'll fix the bugs, they'll add new characters, they'll write new stories and implement them, all under the banner and title of Skyrim.

And now this model exists through many gaming titles: Gary's mod, Roblox, the Sims 4. Where a zealous consumer base becomes part worker on behalf of an evil company, a system is maintained through the support and approval of a company, some people may even make careers where they might've made companies just making mods.

That's a little dark isn't it? Making silly mods isn't like genocide, and no it isn't- but maybe we should think about how we're not all free actors divested from market and social forces and our passions can and will be harvested for exploitation by evil corporations to profit off of us. But hey, you probably came here from social media, so we're both hypocrites.

So what does this mean for the Gabecube? Steam machine? Video game action contraption?

In the long run, It may prove to be a great thing. If more people are encouraged to tinker with their devices and introduced to the world of Linux and open source software and it poses an existential threat to Microsoft, forcing them to either adapt their practices to be more consumer friendly or, die to a user friendly Linux spectre in the distance.(steamOS please please please somehow make the clip studio store work and my soul is yours, president Newell, please liberate me from the Gates regime)

If the valve corporation can convince its own consumers to build around their own platform, one that has already had enough investment to be appealing to more scared or resistant users, then they essentially have a free volunteer army to wage war against the Microsoft imperium. With enough momentum they may even be able to whip up critical support from the FOSS Bros, and being a privately owned company, not held to the whims of a quarterly stockholder cycle instead just one machiavellian King:

they might just win.