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If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [B] to c/gaming@lemmy.zip
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[–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Respectfully, I'm going to have to disagree about stock Windows working fine. There are multiple places where it necessitates having a keyboard and/or mouse connected.

  • Interacting with UAC prompts and other elevated-permission windows that block synthetic input events.
  • When a popup hijacks focus away from the game window.
  • When Steam (or other controller to mouse software) is not open, such as during the logoff screen where you sometimes have to click "Close Anyways".
  • After a BIOS update, when the TPM refuses to unlock and you need to enter the BitLocker recovery key within the pre-boot environment.
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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    You can disable UAC (thinking practical, not necessarily security minded - but for an auto login w/o password, what’s security?)

    Popups: yes. But then you’d need to actively use other software besides steam. Why would you do that, if using only a controller? Also that can happen in Linux, too. If you mean those desktop notifications - those should be silenced automagically when running games.

    For the logoff or shutdown: Set or createHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\AutoEndTasks to 1 to auto kill hanging/not ending processes automagically. Also you can use WaitToKillAppTimeout there to define how long windows should wait before killing the processes (in milliseconds).

    And regarding bitlocker after a bios update: why would you use bitlocker on such a machine (auto login on boot which would allow access to all files anyways)? Anyways, set or create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BitLocker\PreventDeviceEncryption to 1 to prevent bitlocker from running after an upgrade. With Pro, you could also leverage GPOs for that.

    At least for the new Steam Gamepad they announced trackpads to be able to control the mouse with the gamepad, so clicking away a popup or sich shouldn’t be a problem.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    You can disable UAC (thinking practical, not necessarily security minded - but for an auto login w/o password, what’s security?)

    It's not just the UAC prompt. Any window created by an elevated process will block synthetic input events created by lower privilege processes.

    Popups: yes. But then you’d need to actively use other software besides steam. Why would you do that, if using only a controller?

    • Game launchers installed as part of the Steam game.
    • Driver software automatically installed by Windows.
    • Windows itself, sometimes.

    Also that can happen in Linux, too.

    It depends on your DE and configuration. In KDE with Wayland, you can set it up to strictly enforce focus stealing prevention. The way that works is essentially by only allowing another program to steal focus if it's the result of some user interaction.

    For the logoff or shutdown: Set or createHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\AutoEndTasks to 1 to auto kill hanging/not ending processes automagically. Also you can use WaitToKillAppTimeout there to define how long windows should wait before killing the processes (in milliseconds).

    The fact that these are buried in the registry... thanks, though. These will be useful. I concede this point.

    And regarding bitlocker after a bios update: why would you use bitlocker on such a machine (auto login on boot which would allow access to all files anyways)?

    Because it's the default that is forced onto the user.

    Anyways, set or create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BitLocker\PreventDeviceEncryption to 1 to prevent bitlocker from running after an upgrade. With Pro, you could also leverage GPOs for that.

    Call me cynical, but I don't think this will work forever. Microsoft has been boiling the frog with local accounts over Windows 11's entire lifetime, at first allowing them, then hiding them, then making the bypass command only work under specific circumstances, etc.

    All it takes to destroy the UX is force-enabling BitLocker exactly once, and most of the people using the device won't know how to undo it (or worse, be locked out without the recovery key)

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