It doesn't give any specifics about what changed on the HDMI Forum side, but this article [0] from June indicates that Valve worked closely with AMD to get it pushed through prior to the release of the Steam Machine (which supports HDMI 2.1 VRR).
reply[0] https://www.digitalfoundry.net/news/2026/06/valves-hdmi-2-1-...
As far as I can recall: some internal implementation documentation leaked which made the legal position tougher for them somehow to protect it as proprietary (it made sense when I heard it explained, but now I feel like I'm missing an important detail to that), and then Valve had some talks with the HDMI Forum to convince them to let it go, presumably so they could have such support integrated into Linux for their hardware (Deck, Machine, Frame, etc).
replySo now the HDMI Forum just doesn't really care anymore I guess.
IIRC, a non-AMD contributor was working on adding HDMI 2.1 support to Linux's AMD driver, and then AMD managed to get the HDMI Forum to see that their position was moot and was making things very awkward for AMD.
replyOh this makes sense! Obviously, it can't be illegal for a non-forum-member to add HDMI support; it's just an HDMI forum policy after all, not law. That's certainly the link I was missing for this to make sense.
replypresumably someone at Valve said "either you do this or we will pay an open source contributor 100k a year to reimplement every spec you make for the rest of time"
replyWhite collar crime is legal now so IP violation is a pretend concept.
replyUpdate - Happily eating the downvotes on this one.
what even is the alleged crime? If there was any protected IP they would be able to use the courts to sue. But that isn't happening, which suggests they know they don't have grounds. Am I missing something? Patents seem to be very much still grounds for lawsuits (even relatively baseless patents)
replyHappily upvoting you for agreeing on principal with me. I shall likely join the flogging as a result.
replyI’m sure it will hurt my 11k internet point account.
Only if an AI does it, so make sure the vibe code the driver
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