Plus, there's already a lot of games in the Steam catalogue that have native Linux versions available:
- Dozens of independent titles, e.g. everything that was in those Humble Bundles.
- Everything using the DOSBox emulator to run even on Windows, e.g. id's Commander Keen, some Lucasarts Star Wars games, etc.
- Even a bunch of AAA titles: id Software's games (Doom, Quake) and games that have licensed their engine (e.g. Human Head's Prey), games that were ported by Linux Game Publishing (e.g. Egosoft's X series of spaceflight simulators), several games by Epic (e.g. Unreal Tournament) or using an Epic engine (e.g. Rune and Deus Ex, ported by Loki), Neverwinter Nights, Civilization: Call to Power, ...
Add Valve's own games and possibly some of the other games using their Source engine, and you could easily make 100-150 games available on Linux within a year of launch just from what's already there. But even more exciting is the notion of Steam's availability making more game makers consider adding Linux to their list of supported platforms going forward because the distribution problem is solved for them.
"OK, so we're going to do a Linux version. How are we going to get it into the hands of our customers? What, we need to set up a download infrastructure for that? No, that's way too much overhead for a Linux version. What, we're supposed to partner with a small niche digital distribution platform we've never heard about? No, not worth it, either. Wait, we can just upload the Linux version to Steam, where we already upload our Windows and Mac versions? Sure, why not."
As for distributing binary blobs: You're overstating the issue, IMHO. ABIs in Linux userland are fairly stable these days.
With hope, I am now mature enough to overcome temptation. So I wish all of my fellow Lingeeks: happy gaming.
Valve actually has a lot of power to play kingmaker here in a way.
Let's suppose that Valve announce HL3 but also announce that it will be a Linux exclusive title for some period (say 1-3 months), what would happen to the Linux desktop market share then?
I could see it easily double to treble within a week, of course many of these would be dual-booters and I wonder what would happen to the increased market share once the game was subsequently released for Windows?
EDIT: I see other comments state that Valve is not working on any sort of console. Still, it leaves me thinking they may have a longer-term plan than just selling games to Linux users.
Having said that: This is the URL:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve...
I have the unfortunate issue of inspecting URLs I navigate to. This one contains an 'item' called 'valve_linux_dampfnudeln'. What? Searching the page for 'dampf' gives no result. I fear that I won't be able to sleep tonight if no one can tell me what kind of reference this is.
Why am I deeply confused? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dampfnudel
>the land of beer and wonderful Bayerischen Frauen and delicious food
The author appears to have picked Germany as a bit of an overall theme (Beer, Prost, Dampfnudel, Bayern etc). Not sure why.
This is the year of Linux desktops? Pipe fitting seems to be running on the client home pair.
Google translate managed at least to get first sentence right..
Full stop.
That was a rumor based on people misunderstanding Valve's work on wearable computer hardware (which got telephone gamed into "OMG Valve is working on hardware, I bet it's a console").
Here are some possible reasons why Valve might be working on linux:
1) They think win8 is so bad users will leave in droves to OSX and Linux. I doubt this, Windows has made a ton of mistakes before (ME, Vista?) but it's still king of PC. A lot of people were happy with 7. If win9 totally bombs as well, then I'd say the gig is up.
2) The monetization story has changed. The humble indie bundle has shown that linux users will pay for games and play them on their linux boxes. Is this enough for Valve to change their stance since for the longest time they've said it didn't make economic sense?
3) Valve is working on a console and won't (can't) pay to license OSX/Win as the OS and is smart enough not to write one from scratch. This reason makes more sense to me. Getting steam client working on linux desktops is just a secondary benefit of their primary goal: getting the software stack for their console.
Frustrating to read.
There won't be much official word until they're either making a major marketing push, or are basically done with the entire project.
For example, the OSX port of Steam and the Source engine was announced in March 2010, and was released in May of that year.
Oh, dear God, yes, it is.
...in the Desktop mode, all the time. Never touching start screen if possible. Going to install Ubuntu.
