this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Judging from your Lemmy username and the article byline, I think you're the author of the article, is that right?

Steam only being 32-bit isn’t improving compatibility, it’s being lazy. You can write code that works on both architectures for the best performance and compatibility across all PCs, like Chrome, Firefox, MS Office, etc.

You absolutely can, but it doesn't come from now where and the 32-bit version exists. If Valve has to maintain 32-bit for compatibility on some older systems, and you're introducing the 64-bit requirement now too its raising the Valve support burden maintaining two separate code bases which is a huge amount of effort and cost.

And for what benefit? The only cited problem of a lack of 64 bit client today cited from the article is that some distros of Linux which have removed the 32-bit support libraries cannot run Steam for Linux. However, Linux being very customizable, the users could likely just add 32-bit support back themselves.

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