It seems unlikely Valve will ever make Windows the primary OS for their devices. And they’d lose a lot of user support if they ever required the TPM for their own software, so hopefully they wouldn’t risk it.
TPM is basically never for your benefit. It’s becoming a requirement because Microsoft is going to one day say “you can only run apps installed from the Windows Store, because everything else is insecure” and lock down the software market. Valve knows this which is why they’re going so hard on the Steam Deck and Linux.
This is the comment I was replying to. I was simply pointing out that for a company “going hard” on SteamDeck and Linux, it’s curious that they would spend any amount of effort at all enabling the TPM to allow people to run Windows. I guess my point is I don’t think they’re “going hard” quite as much as the person I responded to thinks.
Also it was just pointing out that this specifically can affect the SteamDeck since they use an AMD processor with AMD fTPM.
Why does everybody seem to think that userspace attestation is the only use for the TPM? The primary use is for data to be encrypted at rest but decrypted at boot as long as certain flags aren’t tripped. TPM is great for the security of your data if you know how to set it up.
Valve is never going to require TPM attestation to use Steam, that’s just silly. Anti-cheat companies might, but my suggestion there is to just not play games that bundle malware.
It seems unlikely Valve will ever make Windows the primary OS for their devices. And they’d lose a lot of user support if they ever required the TPM for their own software, so hopefully they wouldn’t risk it.
I doubt they would risk it as well, but the point is that it exists on the SteamDeck and can be utilized.
So what’s your point?
This is the comment I was replying to. I was simply pointing out that for a company “going hard” on SteamDeck and Linux, it’s curious that they would spend any amount of effort at all enabling the TPM to allow people to run Windows. I guess my point is I don’t think they’re “going hard” quite as much as the person I responded to thinks.
Also it was just pointing out that this specifically can affect the SteamDeck since they use an AMD processor with AMD fTPM.
Why does everybody seem to think that userspace attestation is the only use for the TPM? The primary use is for data to be encrypted at rest but decrypted at boot as long as certain flags aren’t tripped. TPM is great for the security of your data if you know how to set it up.
Valve is never going to require TPM attestation to use Steam, that’s just silly. Anti-cheat companies might, but my suggestion there is to just not play games that bundle malware.
Whatever is touted as the primary use doesn’t matter as much as what anti-user features it enables.