The fact that it’s an option that even remotely works is my point. They sell hardware. They don’t support software. The community does that. There is something to be gained from having a uniform platform for learning self hosting responsibly.
A Raspberry pi isn’t particularly great at any one thing. It’s greatest strength comes in bundling everything you need in a box at an affordable price. Once you know where your pain points are then you can build/design a system that overcomes those shortcomings.
Having a starter kit would be an easy way to get more people in the space. Would it cost $35 of course not. Level1Techs made their KVM to meet their own requirements and then the community benefits. To me, this project has that kind of energy. Or at least the potential for it.
Over the years I have heard stories where Valve closes an account after the owners passing. This is usually because the poster said they had trouble with something and explained that the original owner passed. Valve then responds by closing the account and ignoring the issue.
With that said I don’t think large groups of people can effectively share a library/account because only one person can play at a time. Small groups like spouses, parents, siblings or a small friend group is doable because it is easier to coordinate who is gonna use the account at any given time. This is especially true if they live together.
With the Deck, I have issues where I boot up a game on my living room PC and my Deck closes it’s game making me lose progress on the Deck. Imagine that multiplied 20x. Getting kicked mid match, losing that boss fight, lose your high score, getting left on cliffhanger mid cutscene. The throw your controller rage stuff.
Most of what these devices do is fairly light compute-wise. There’s no real need to have the most powerful hardware when all it will really do is add to cost. Are there use cases for more powerful hardware, of course but for most people what we have is good enough. That said, I would love an updated Shield or competitor.
And Echoes of Wisdom too.