They could have easily crammed the Steam Deck full of stuff to make it hard to use for piracy - locking down everything, making it usable only to play games you legitimately own, force you to go through who knows what hoops in order to play games on it. That’s what Nintendo or Apple or most other companies do....
It’s not impossible or even hard to lock down Linux. Just look at Chrome OS, it’s Gentoo based, but with the bootloader locked and root access removed, it is pretty much immutable.
Nintendo was super competent with the Switch, their kernel is actually ridiculously secure. I’m pretty sure if Nvidia hadn’t messed up, we would still be scratching our heads with the Switch.
There’s a lot they could have done, locking down Linux isn’t that hard. Just look at Chrome OS, it’s based on Gentoo, yet it’s locked down completely. All they had.to do is lock the BIOS, enable secure boot and disable root access, and then it’s pretty much a locked system.
I feel like the Steam Deck is the best proof of Gabe Newell's quote that "piracy is a service issue."
They could have easily crammed the Steam Deck full of stuff to make it hard to use for piracy - locking down everything, making it usable only to play games you legitimately own, force you to go through who knows what hoops in order to play games on it. That’s what Nintendo or Apple or most other companies do....