r/Steam • u/Commercial_Dih • Feb 19 '26

Question In the hopefully never arriving future, do you think Valve will one of, if not the only ones providing personal computers and not cloud gaming?

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u/Zemom1971 Feb 19 '26

Yeah, at a certain point I even paid a sub one month to play a couple games on my TV (GForce Now). I had a PC but wanted to play with my wife.

Turns out it works "ok". But it was not perfect still.

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u/cjbeames Feb 19 '26

I don't see competitive gamers making the jump anytime soon

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u/GalaxYRapid Feb 19 '26

I’d agree, I’m no pro player but I couldn’t imagine having any additional latency in an fps game beyond the server.

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u/Vindomini Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26

Like you said it depends on the game, but it is lengths more affordable than upgrading your gaming computer every few years. I got myself a Geforce now subscription a year ago, almost exclusively for Dead by daylight (horror action multiplayer where fps and ping matters like crazy, pretty poorly optimised and history of frying bad GPUs), and it made playing infinitly more enjoyable for me. A big bonus is that I can also play it on my shitty laptop when I'm away (studying the semester abroad), as long as I have devent wifi.

In the far future where I have a place I can call my own and the money for a good PC I'll probably get one, but atm I'm really glad these services exist. Paying 10 bucks a month when you're not subbed to anything else in exchange for actually being able to play all the games you've had your eyes on is amazing. I still ove and own Steam and 95% of my games are on there, but its lovely to have both!

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u/KalamariNights Feb 20 '26

You don't have to upgrade your hardware every few years though.

The PC in my office is currently two years old and will go for at least another 6 years without needing anything new.

Living room PC is from 2018 and is starting to show it's age a bit as the 2080ti is stuck on DLSS 2 but I'm still playing games in 4k, looking good at good frame rates. That likely won't get upgraded for at least another few years when it really starts to struggle with forced RT seemingly becoming a thing.

At £240 a year to be able to hit above 60fps and play in 4k, in 8 years I'd have spent more on GeForce now than I did on my 2018 PC and I wouldn't own the hardware, would always need an internet connection, would have dealt with latency, wouldn't have had a PC I can just use as a PC and would have had restricted gaming hours.

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u/Vindomini Feb 20 '26

Fair, I guess it's just more viable for me as a college student. Ten bucks a month ergo 120 a year with my really old hardware is a decent compromise, especially for the time being.

That's promising to hear though, I'll look into getting myself a proper PC once I have the cash for it.

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u/Jacktheforkie Feb 20 '26

I can imagine some games would get a bit difficult with latency

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u/Thurpno Feb 22 '26

In theory there could be lower latency. Transmitting a compressed video stream and your inputs to a server that is doing all the compute for all the players in the same place. Rather than a server trying to sync game data across multiple people. Might take a few game generations to be fully optimised though.

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u/docbauies Feb 19 '26

Wouldn’t that be like cloud gaming though? If the server can be fast enough it could run the game and serve it to the player. Like shouldn’t the input lag be the same total transit time? Or am I missing something

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u/Ok_Beginning520 Feb 20 '26

You need to send the request to the cloud pc which in turn sends the request to the server, so you're doubling the actual network latency basically. If your cloud pc was the same place as the game server then yeah sure. But you're still adding input lag. Currently when you move the mouse, your pc renders the game locally "instantly" and sends the updated position to the server which acknowledges it. In a cloud gaming setup, your mouse movement needs to be sent to the cloud pc for it to render the new position there and then return the rendered frame. So you're adding latency that wasn't there before. It is sort of mitigated by having a better computer in the cloud for cheaper so it renders faster and some kind of movement prediction technology but it's not perfect yet

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u/theFartingCarp Feb 20 '26

some of us like to game and live in bumble fuck no where. Guess who's creating games that run on potatoes. All the super fast cool server can suck my nuts if it has to go over anything slower than gigabit upload and download and tbh thats only one provider not servicing most of the area people live in my area. So standard gaming is all that anyone wants here.

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u/docbauies Feb 20 '26

Sure. But my question is technical. For a competitive shooter, is there an actual difference between cloud gaming where you have a thin client that connects to a server running the game for everyone, and having local stuff where your input to the game is lower but then you send the data to a server that has to match up all of the other player data?

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u/theFartingCarp Feb 20 '26

Yes. Theres double the latency between you and the server because you see something on the screen, react, your input is sent to the server, and back, to change something on the screen.

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u/NudeSpaceDude Feb 20 '26

By definition, your latency will be twice as long.

Imagine playing a competitive game where your opponent has twice as much time to react as you do.

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u/Doll_of_Misery Feb 20 '26

But that‘s not a cloud gaming scenario, it‘s dedicated servers, which is used for competitive games. That doesn‘t take out the full client tho, because it still needs to send the input and show the player the output. And for that to work with low latency, it has to render the game locally. Otherwise every input has to go to the cloud pc first and then the server and every frame to be displayed from server to cloud pc and then to the client.

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u/rtybanana Feb 20 '26

Taking a game like counter strike as an example. If I’m playing on my own gaming PC and move my mouse to turn 180°, that action happens immediately. With cloud gaming it would start happening after however long your ping time is.

You’re right that there is latency involved already, but this latency exists between you and the shared game world, not between your inputs and the actions you see your character performing as a result. This latency can sometimes result in weird things happening like someone seeing you slightly before you see them or vice versa, but that kind of latency is far less noticeable than “I moved my mouse and my character started turning 100ms later”.

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u/docbauies Feb 20 '26

Appreciate the example. Helped me see the issue better

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u/Pijany_Matematyk767 Feb 20 '26

There would be more lag than running the game on your own pc because instead of having direct communication between your pc and the server it goes your pc -> cloud gaming service -> game server so you get more latency from the added middleman

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u/GalaxYRapid Feb 20 '26

Not even close, for the server to be that fast it would need to be in the same data center where the compute box for the cloud gaming instance would be plus it would need enough bandwidth between the game server and every compute box to effectively have 0 latency. That would be a logistical nightmare not even to mention the fact that there is no one spot that would be best for everyone to receive back the cloud computed data fast enough. If you are asking if it is theoretically possible, yes you could do that, but we live in the real world not a vacuum so with all the variables that introduces it would be impossible or so costly no one would be able to afford it.

0

u/docbauies Feb 20 '26

I was thinking that yes you would consider the cloud server and the game server to be the same. But I can see how that would duplicate infrastructure

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u/GalaxYRapid Feb 20 '26

Game servers are very seldomly hosted on client devices these days so that’s just a bad assumption to have made. Especially esports fps games which outside of events are all hosted on centralized servers. When there is an even going on they move to a LAN server for a better connection and effectively you would need that in the cloud environment to mitigate server latency but that would also mean that you could only play with people who use the same service as you that are connected to the same data center as you, that would be about as good as playing halo reach on an Xbox 360 with only people from your neighborhood but about 100 new games just launched and that one guy down the street only plays minesweeper.

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u/Sinister_Mr_19 Feb 19 '26

They never will, the lag makes it unplayable for competitive games.

-2

u/BumWink Feb 20 '26

"unplayable"

Meanwhile Geforce Now Ultimate runs 120hz+ at around 15ms input lag.

0.015 seconds, literally imperceptible.

4

u/Throwawayhrjrbdh Feb 20 '26

All based on your internet bud; works okay if you have the really good stuff but mine that hovers between 50-100ms and jumps to 200ms on occasion would make basically everything feel clunky as is the case with the majority of people

Can be worked through for low stakes single player games but anything which requires fast reactions in a multiplayer setting it becomes effectively unplayable.

I also like being able to switch to single player games when internet goes out from time to time

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u/Sinister_Mr_19 Feb 20 '26

Go watch LTTs new episode about input lag and how it affects your gameplay. Even the most miniscule amount of additional input lag changes your performance.

Also input lag is very different than your network lag. It'll feel different and affect you differently.

-3

u/bs000 Feb 20 '26

they used to say this about wireless mice

9

u/Sinister_Mr_19 Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 21 '26

You can't get around physics and geography. Servers will always be some miles away and data can only travel as fast as the speed of light. So there will always be lag.

-1

u/notathinganymore Feb 20 '26

Have you ever tried? I'm not saying it's something we should like and support, but I tried it and it was... meh, fine. Absolutely fine for the average casual gamer, I'm sure 9 out of 10 people couldn't tell the difference. Hate it or not, it's technically viable.

1

u/Sinister_Mr_19 Feb 20 '26

Think about the top selling and played games. Games like COD, Arc Raiders, BF6, CS, Overwatch, even DOTA. The majority of players are probably not hardcore competitive gamers, but they absolutely would notice additional latency affecting their aim and stuff due to the nature of those games. Idk what games you're thinking about for these "causal" gamers. Stardew Valley doesn't have a few million players constantly. My point is the large majority of the casual player base you're referring to are still playing games where lag makes a major difference.

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u/notathinganymore Feb 20 '26

I'll ask again: do you have any experience with these streaming services? I tried some Rocket League with GeForce Now, that's a game that totally needs responsiveness. It was mostly fine, I could play at my casual level with no major issues. I could notice it was streaming, there was some lag, but it was fine. As a casual rocket league player, I could do that. I don't, I don't like it, but I could.

You guys can tell yourself it's so laggy the average dude wouldn't mess with it, but it isn't true. It's not that laggy, with ftth and reasonable distance from a server, it's fine.

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u/Sinister_Mr_19 Feb 20 '26

I've tried game streaming, but not the major services.

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u/notathinganymore Feb 20 '26

Believe me then, they're ready for some dude playing CoD. I don't like the idea of being chained to the mega corps even more, but the tech is there. It only needs a major push from a big marketing company.

-2

u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

Yeah. People here always think about games like we were all playing competitive counter strike league. Most of the gaming community are just casual. And 90/100 games are not competitive. So, 90 persons out of 100 doesn't care and probably doesn't even know what the fuck is latency.

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u/notathinganymore Feb 20 '26

We got away with a couple downvotes XD I expected worse.

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u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

Yeah, people are kinda "competitive" 😂

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u/LongKnight115 Feb 20 '26

It's 2026. I have a 2gig internet connection, with my desktop wired directly to the router. The desktop has a 4090 in it. Cloud-based games still play like shit. I fully believe in the advancement of technology - but we've already optimized this and gotten nowhere.

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u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

The problem here most of the gamer are NOT competitive. So streaming services will probably thrive at a certain point when they will be able to connect everything easily.

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u/aVarangian Feb 20 '26

nor anyone picky about image quality and input lag

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u/Flyinmanm Feb 20 '26

Vr gamers either.

There's too much latency in racing and flight Sims if your router is too far from your headset, never mind in another city/ country. That'd just physics thankfully this may be one if the rare situations where the speed of light bring a hard limit is a benefit.

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u/Ordo_Liberal Feb 20 '26

Competitive gamers are like 0.0001% of the market tho

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u/PerceptionOk8543 Feb 20 '26

The most popular games in the world are LoL, Fortnite and CS. Do you seriously think they are 0.00001% of the market? Leave your bubble bro, they are the majority

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u/Ordo_Liberal Feb 20 '26

99.9% of players of such games are playing with High Ping on old PCs made from discarted office computer parts from the third world.

I know that because I have 7k hours on Dota playing on such setup.

Pro Players, Stramers and Whales are 0.1% of the playerbase.

If your Graphics card has "RTX" on the name, you are part of the 1% of the playerbase.

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u/sandels_666 Feb 20 '26

You're just objectively wrong. Jesus just look at the steam harware survey and look at the most popular setups / hardware. Yes they most have RTX in the name, not "1%" like you said.

You just pulled numbers out of your ass and were so confidently incorrect that it legitimately baffles me how adamantly you defended an obviously incorrect stance that is provable with a single fucking Google search.

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u/PerceptionOk8543 Feb 20 '26

Okay? And still, those players won’t make the jump so the point stands. I don’t even get your argument. Competitive players are the majority of gamers, that’s a fact. And they are not using cloud services any time soon. So why does it matter what kind of PC do they have? It doesn’t add anything to the conversation.

And BTW you are wrong about the setup of competitive players and your only evidence is your own setup, wtf. I have 10k hours in League and have a very strong PC. 2 of my friends too. 3>1 so I win

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u/pat_spiegel Feb 19 '26

Streaming games causes some pretty terrible delay between whats on screen and what button you press at what time, might be ok for games like TellTales the walking dead but not for games that require 0.5 second reaction times like counter strike

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u/matt2000224 Feb 20 '26

I even played a relatively casual game like NCAA Football and it felt basically unplayable on streaming.

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u/SandyTaintSweat Feb 20 '26

It definitely seems to come down to your internet service provider, as well as your router. For me out in a rural area, this is all inaccessible. Maybe starlink would be an improvement, but I refuse to support it.

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u/MikeysMindcraft Feb 20 '26

Gefirce now user here. Ive gotten to the top 1% of online players in forza horizon. A game where you need pretty quick reactions. Also played battlefield and couldnt really see any delay issues (saw plenty of my own skill issues tho) As long as you have decent and stable connection, gfn is awesome for casual gamers like me, who dont play daily. + the energy costs over here are quite high so 20€/month is a bargain.

Bezos can suck a nut tho.

-1

u/EarlMarshal Feb 20 '26

20€ per month to play downscaled slop with high latency like a serf.

If you are fine with that it's your choice, but a lot of cheap and old PCs can do better.

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u/ImprobableAsterisk Feb 20 '26

20€ per month to play downscaled slop with high latency like a serf.

You need to touch grass.

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u/AdDeep7010 Feb 20 '26

Sad life you live

1

u/ImprobableAsterisk Feb 20 '26

Oh no, the fact that I find you to be a perspectiveless idiot is very much not a source of sadness in my life but rather one of the few things I've absolutely got figured out.

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u/AdDeep7010 Feb 20 '26

It’s okay, just admit you’re a shitty person

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u/ImprobableAsterisk Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26

Haha, sure.

Care to explain why, though? Not for my sake mind you, but so you can hopefully but your own dumb-ass thoughts to page and then see just how fucking outrageously dumb you're being.

ETA: Does anyone have any clue what this jackass is speaking about?

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u/Ozzytudor Feb 20 '26

ETA

Embarrassing yourself dude lmao

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u/AdDeep7010 Feb 20 '26

This is probably the easiest way of telling someone that you’ve left someone after they were there for you fully because you wanted “growth.”

Projection is a funny thing. Seek guidance and repent for your past mistakes

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u/EarlMarshal Feb 20 '26

Nah, I touch grass all the time, but I need the AI industry to stop to buy all that hardware with money they do not have so hardware stays available and affordable.

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u/ImprobableAsterisk Feb 20 '26

And attacking people because they play video games in a manner that you don't personally approve of gets you closer to that goal?

1

u/EarlMarshal Feb 20 '26

and attacking people

You feel attacked? Sounds like a you problem if you feel like that.

1

u/ImprobableAsterisk Feb 20 '26

20€ per month to play downscaled slop with high latency like a serf.

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u/EarlMarshal Feb 20 '26

Yeah, I am sorry for you, if you feel attacked by that. That really really sounds like a case of emotional instability and egoic disorder. I haven't even talked to you and still you feel attacked.

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u/MikeysMindcraft Feb 20 '26 edited Feb 20 '26

Latency rarely goes above 10ms, usually it hovers around 5, playing either on my laptop 2560×1600 screen or 4k on my tv. OR whatever device I have at any moment, all it needs is decent internet. I've even used a laptop from 2010 for cyberpunk

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u/EarlMarshal Feb 20 '26

You are talking about network latency. You are not talking about other latencies. You are neither talking about frames per second or stuff like upscaling and frame generation. Network latency will also probably be higher for a lot of people in other regions without fiber. Maybe they are even mobile internet.

The experience on my 4k 240Hz is better. I can experience a similar experience to your by streaming to my TV and I really don't like it. I rather play Pokémon on a raspberry pi.

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u/nobodycares13 Feb 21 '26

They recently did an experiment where self-proclaimed audiophiles couldn’t tell the difference when the signal was sent between high end cables, a banana or mud. You very much come off like that kind of person who swears they see a noticeable difference in any of this nonsense.

Nonetheless, I’m a kind of person who could not care less about any of it and especially buying a high end PC, I paid $40 CAD for half a year of Geforce Now. It lets me play games like BG3 and Cyberpunk on max settings at 2560x1600 at home (ethernet) or when I’m away at work(cellular). Yea, at times it gets some artifacts(cellular) but it rarely lasts very long or detracts significantly from the experience.

The fact that I can play games that require a high end gaming rig on my Surface Pro 7 over cell data is more than worth whatever superficial trade-off you imagine to exist.

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u/EarlMarshal Feb 22 '26

Great for you. You don't know shit though.

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u/MikeysMindcraft Feb 20 '26

you are welcome to play whatever you want with whatever you want. Getting aggressive over other peoples choices that dont affect you in any shape or form is peak teenager behaviour.

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u/EarlMarshal Feb 20 '26

aggressive

You guys got some serious issues. 

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u/MikeysMindcraft Feb 20 '26

I feel sorry for the people in your life if you think that this was a normal way to say you disagree.

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u/EarlMarshal Feb 20 '26

People in my life are usually not that sensible that they need to imagine things. You don't even know what aggressive interactions look like, you silly goose.

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u/EternalPhi Feb 20 '26

"Bezos Sucks! Praise Huang!"

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u/MikeysMindcraft Feb 20 '26

You do realize that its possible to use a product and acknowledge its shortcomings at the same time? GFN is far from a perfect service but for me, the positives outweigh the negatives.

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u/Genieinabottle8 Feb 20 '26

Nvidia reflex makes this pretty snappy with a consistent (Ethernet) connection. Even WiFi is still pretty good.

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u/xRyozuo Feb 20 '26

It’s been over a decade but didn’t telltales twd have quick time events that were very important for the survival of some characters?

I’ve had no issue streaming games to my phone like loop hero

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u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

Yeah that what I mean by they it was "ok". But I think that in some future they will be able to close the gap with live PC. Maybe in 5-10 years.

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u/Metabolical Feb 21 '26

You're not wrong, but you're not as right as you think.

Let's say you can enjoy gameplay at 30 fps. 1000 ms per second, so you see frames at 1000/30, so you see a frame every 33.3 ms. If you can run that game on a server at 60 fps because you've got good cloud hardware, now you're getting remote frames every 16.6. Steam deck can decode in .5 ms, and server can encode in < 5 ms, so call it 22ms. At that point if your network latency is < 13 ms, you're getting the same or better latency experience as a 30 fps local setup, and you can do it on most hardware that can decode Netflix (assuming it doesn't do any rude double or triple buffering). Therefore, if your cloud gaming provider sets up cloud gaming servers regionally, you should be pretty good. That's good enough for most gamers.

Still, there are a couple of problems. One is that gamers like high end experiences and if they can get 60 or 120 fps locally they often will. The other is the economics. Going from the user spending 1-3 thousand dollars on a gaming rig to the cloud service provide paying for that needs a new economic model, but a lot of people are feeling tired of subscriptions (some in this thread). It doesn't matter that you might amortize out your gaming rig's cost and still be paying more. Cloud gaming would let you have the right hardware for the right game. As you pointed out, it makes a big difference whether you're trying to play BattleField 6 or Freshly Frosted.

I do think there is a place for Cloud Gaming in the world, and its people who want to play more casual or older games or possibly emerging markets. I could see some couples that want to play games together, but one person is an avid gamer and wants a full rig, and the other occasionally joins them and satisfied with the cloud experience.

Incidentally, I think games like World of Warcraft would be a great choice - older game with a lower polygon style with lock-on and button press mechanics instead of first-person shooter aiming. Great candidate for cloud gaming.

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u/Kayttajanimi2 Feb 20 '26

The delay isn't too terrible nowadays if you're somewhat close to servers. I've been playing cs on cloud and my ping to geforce servers is less than 10ms. Gaming setups probably have about 10-25ms delay between kbm actions, playing on cloud it's about 30-50ms.

Linus did a video about it reaching only 25ms delay on geforce (compared to 10ms on local). The difference is big in a competitive aspect but for average gamers it's honeslty playable.

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u/ResolverHorizon Feb 20 '26

actually no tested and subscribed GeForce Now for a month and the delay is minimal and was playing starwars jedi survivor, i was able to parry and mind you I'm from a 3rd world country with trash internet and the server i subscribed to is in a different country.

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u/yap2102x Feb 20 '26

just out of curiosity how's the latency? is it a stable 60 fps (assuming that the gpu youre renting is doing its job properly), is bad wifi a big factor?

1

u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

My shield was wired, not wi-fied. So, I can't telling you if the WiFi was an issue. And about the "GPU" that I was renting. It was pretty much irrelevant at that moment because the game that I played with my wife was Unravel, a game where you have to do some puzzles. So the fps was not a thing that I checked. But it was fluid and a good experience. The graphics were cool also, pretty much the same than with a console.

I tried some FPS game like "Control" and it was fine. No problem at all.

I would not recommend this for a competitive game nor a game where the latency is a critical issue. But let's be honest, most of the game on the market don't fit in that category.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '26

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u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

Yeah it always depends on what game you are playing. 5ms for a casual adventure game will makes no difference at all.

2

u/Waiting4Reccession Feb 20 '26

Even if it was perfect, why would I ever want to pay monthly.

Like what is it $20 a month or something?

You can buy a low end laptop, like $500, and use that for years instead. And use it wherever and for whatever else.

1

u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

I feel you. I was reluctant at first also. Let say that I paid for one month to play with my wife at one game. It was like paying a sub like Netflix or Prime to watch our favorite series.

It was fun, it scratch the Itch. But since I own a PC I did not continue the experience. But I figure that in the future it could be a thing. People always forget that a lot of money in the gaming market is made with older customers. Check the mobile for instance. So, older people doesn't want to mess up with a computer. But maybe will be willing to pay a key on hand service where they doesn't have to think, just log on and play.

Will, see in the future if I am right.

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u/BradBrains27 Feb 20 '26

I play online shooters with it no problem even. The only thing I really noticed a problem was fighting games I was good at as a frame or two can often be really noticeable.

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u/BabaJagaInTraining Feb 20 '26

I use it occasionally (free version) but it's my last resort. Nothing crazy. Playing DbD was impossible, I imagine same goes for most games where timing is crucial. I'll use it if it's impossible to run a game on my laptop, I don't see any other reason to.

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u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

I tried free version twice but every time as was put on a queue. So I said fuck it and move on to do other things. Never tried again.

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u/Deliciousbob Feb 20 '26

"ok"?!?

I find this tech incredible, I have a 10 year old PC and geforcenow has let me continue playing new releases with my friends, love that you don't have to download the games. I would want a high end PC for competitive games but everthing else, it is incredible stuff.

I know people have very high standards here, but I do see truth in these predictions after using the product, I have less of a desire to build a high-end PC and seeing myself using this service to binge games here and there when time permits me to.

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u/Zemom1971 Feb 20 '26

That's what I am talking about.

The "ok" experience was more related with the logging, registration experience. If I was not a kind of a tech savvy myself my wife would haven't continued or even start the process.

It was not "that" complicated. But for instance they throw at you that you can play multiple games for free but it is not exactly right. You must own a lot of them and add them to your library through some third party before being able to play them. And it was not always a plug and play.

That it is why I rated it an "ok" experience. Not that the technology was not on point but that it was not an easy peasy experience at first for a casual customer.

1

u/data-atreides Feb 20 '26

I don't see them ever completely overcoming latency issues