I find this announcement kind of bitter-sweet. It's awesome, amazing and inspiring that a company like Valve has put this much effort in to supporting Linux, no matter what their underlying motives are. At the same time, it's really sad that this is the biggest thing to happen to mainstream Linux gaming since Loki and id/Epic since the early '00s.
As somebody who was briefly caught up in the "convert-all-the-things-to-Linux" evangelism of the early 00's to the "fsck it, I don't care who uses it. I like it." attitude, I sincerely hope this makes an impact. Forget the FLOSS ideals and morals; if this means more 'power users' realize there's a viable Windows alternative for gaming (and more), everybody wins.
I know a lot of 'purists' will inevitably complain about the influx of 'noobs', but, fsck it. No matter what beliefs/philosophies you follow, it's always a good thing to be able to show people that there are other options.
As a long-time follower & sometimes contributer to the free/open Unix scene, this makes me proud.
I don't even play video games anymore, but I played a hell of a lot of CS back in the day. Many years have passed, and I jumped on the Linux bandwagon about 3 years ago, and am now supposedly a productive member of society. But dammit, all I can think about now is plowing over AK-47 slinging bastards running through the top tunnel on de_dust with my pump shotty, or mowing people down with the UMP or headshots with the scout. I don't know, I loved the obscure weapons.
I would increase my consumption of video games from a non-zero amount if I could play CS on Linux.
Make it happen Valve. You got me, I'm now nostalgic.
Hah! CS was the shit until 1.6, when they completely crapped the physics and finally fixed the bug that'd allow you to switch instantly between your Desert Eagle and your AWP...
It's about time a major player got behind Linux, I'm glad it's Valve as they are arguably one of my favourite game developers not just because they make great games, but because of their overall attitude and work culture. Hopefully this gives Linux a little needed spotlight boost and perhaps gains Ubuntu a few new users.
This isn't really a major player getting behind Linux. The move has nothing to with Linux the desktop and everything to do with a future Linux-powered console/SteamBox. Desktop Linux could quintuple it's number of game purchasing users and it would still be inconsequential. The ancillary benefits for Linux, such as non-shitty gpu drivers, will be great but let's not make this out to be something it isn't.
"It's about time a major player got behind Linux [...]"
What about id Software?
They have a long-standing history of support for the platform, including John Carmack's philosophy and advocation of OSS that has driven his contribution of id Software game engine source code to the community, up to and including id Tech 4.
He even cares so deeply about the topic that he worked to keep id Tech 5 free from the shackles of proprietary code, because he wants to eventually release it as open source. He said (italic emphasis is mine):
"'Do we want to integrate some other vendor's solution, some proprietary code into this?' And the answer's usually no, because eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we're not going to integrate stuff that's going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release. We can argue the exact pros and cons from a pure business standpoint on it, and I can at least make some, perhaps somewhat, contrived cases that I think it's good for the business, but as a personal conviction it's still pretty important to me and I'm standing by that." [1]
I think the reality is that id Software has attempted to build the market-space, but the base just hasn't been there. For example, John had this to say recently at QuakeCon 2012:
"Other interesting sort of PC-ish platforms, we have... the Mac still remains a viable platform for us. The Mac has never required any charity from id, all of those ports have carried their own weight there; they've been viable business platforms.
[...]
Linux is an issue that's taken a lot more currency with Valve announcing Steam for Linux, and that does change, factor, you know, changes things a bit, but we've made two forays into the Linux commercial market, most recently with Quake Live client, and, you know, that platform just hasn't carried its weight compared to the Mac on there. It's great that people are enthusiastic about it, but there's just not nearly as many people that are interested in paying for a game on the platform, and that just seems to be the reality. Valve will probably pull a bunch more people there. I know absolutely nothing about any Valve plans for console, Steam-box stuff on there; I can speculate without violating anything.
[...]
So, it's enticing, the thought there that you might have a well-supported, completely open platform that you could deliver content through the Steam ecosystem there. It's a tough sell on there, but Valve gets huge kudos for having the vision for what they did with Steam, sticking through all of it. It's funny talking about Doom 3, where we can remember back in the days when they're like, 'Well, should you ship Doom 3 on Steam, go out there, make a splash?' ... I'm like, 'You're kidding, right?' That made no sense at all at that time, but you know Valve stuck with it and they're in a really enviable position from all of that now.
It still seems, probably crazy to me that they would be doing anything like that, you know, but, it's something that's not technically impossible, but would be really difficult from a market, sort of ecosystems standpoint." [2]
So the majority of the server market, and embedded market don't count as major players. (Also technicly android, but I think we are talking about GNU/linux)
At first thought this seems like a major blow for CodeWeavers and the commercial WINE consultation crowd; Steam and Valve games are among their staples, selling a large number of CrossOver licenses. However, on further consideration, if Valve wanted to make Steam/Linux a more seamless experience, one could see them becoming a major patron of CodeWeavers et al and/or becoming major WINE contributors themselves, in an attempt to ensure that most Steam games work perfectly on WINE.
This makes even more sense if one supposes that Valve ultimately intends to release a "Steambox" console. In such a condition, the question emerges: at what point does Microsoft feel WINE is damaging its profits sufficiently to revoke the free pass its enjoyed for a long while and bring out the legal banhammer? I think a Steambox that relied heavily on WINE would be excellent provocation.
Just because games will be distributed via Steam, does not mean that developers will stop depending on CodeWeavers and other WINE bundling techniques to actually create their ports.
I'll bet CodeWeavers couldn't be happier right now.
What could MS complain about. Interfaces are explicitly protected by precedent. And reverse engineering software is explicitly protected in the DMCA for the purposes of interlopability.
Especially given how many games on GOG are old dos games that just run in DoxBOX and would be trivial to make bundled linux packages for...
I've had great success installing dos-based GOG games through WineBottler (http://wiki.winehq.org/WineBottler), diving into the package, moving the relevant files out, and stuffing them in Boxer (http://boxerapp.com/) and they run pretty awesome on my mac.
I just got the latest Humble Bundle (6) and I've been able to install all of the games through the Ubuntu Software Center (sweet!) with native Linux versions.
Seems that game developers have an incentive to do this since, according to my latest glance at the Humble Bundle website, Linux purchasers give much more than average ($10.13, as compared to $5.48 for Windows and $7.27 for Mac).
I have Steam for windows installed through wine, and haven't had many issues getting my titles which I purchased from the humble bundle running. Since many of them have linux native versions already, I don't suspect we will have any issues.
Such a small set of testers especially considering how many of them will go to friends/industry probably means they are expecting to get buried under a shit storm of bugs.
With such a wide range of kernel versions, OS differences and various flavours of drivers from open, proprietary and closed sources, yep it's going to take some work.
While it's great they're putting support behind Linux I'm not getting my hopes up. Just look at the poor selection of Mac games available on Steam. There are plenty of great indy titles but very few big budget games. Linux support will be even worse.
My vote is for almost-certainly yes. At the very least, it's a conscious marketing move.
Even after all this time (it's been longer now since HL2:E2 than the gap between HL1 and HL2 itself), the hype is so strong that if they released HL3 for Linux so much as a few hours earlier than the Windows version, it would cause a significant spike in Ubuntu downloads.
Can't wait! Here's hoping Steam Linux - in combination with the Microsoft's terrible decisions on Windows 8 - can be the catalyst for a mass exodus of gamers from Windows to Ubuntu/Linux and end an era of Windows PC gaming dominance that has long been overdue.
Hopefully they add basic RPM bundling as well; as much as I like Ubuntu I think if you are distributing binaries we should be able to expect support for the latest Fedora as well.
Personally, I'm hoping they don't. Or rather, that if they do, they find a way to do it while expending zero time and energy on it...
Fragmentation in the Linux world is one of the major things that is stopping developers from jumping on board. Valve should focus on supporting one distro and supporting it well.
Meh, the year of Linux for me was around 2007, when I started using Ubuntu. Stop worrying about whether other people are using Linux and just start using it (and contributing to the community). That's how you build up the userbase.
I knew Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was going to make a difference. I've been using it in my desktop and I love it, everything works out of the box (sound, video, etc), and you can find anything you want in the software center. Now I only use Windows for games.
[+] [-] octotoad|13 years ago|reply
As somebody who was briefly caught up in the "convert-all-the-things-to-Linux" evangelism of the early 00's to the "fsck it, I don't care who uses it. I like it." attitude, I sincerely hope this makes an impact. Forget the FLOSS ideals and morals; if this means more 'power users' realize there's a viable Windows alternative for gaming (and more), everybody wins.
I know a lot of 'purists' will inevitably complain about the influx of 'noobs', but, fsck it. No matter what beliefs/philosophies you follow, it's always a good thing to be able to show people that there are other options.
As a long-time follower & sometimes contributer to the free/open Unix scene, this makes me proud.
[+] [-] white_devil|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zissou|13 years ago|reply
I would increase my consumption of video games from a non-zero amount if I could play CS on Linux.
Make it happen Valve. You got me, I'm now nostalgic.
[+] [-] dguaraglia|13 years ago|reply
Oh... how I miss those nights wasted playing CS!
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&...
YMMV of course.
[+] [-] fsniper|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicholassmith|13 years ago|reply
Good times.
[+] [-] DigitalSea|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arjuna|13 years ago|reply
What about id Software?
They have a long-standing history of support for the platform, including John Carmack's philosophy and advocation of OSS that has driven his contribution of id Software game engine source code to the community, up to and including id Tech 4.
He even cares so deeply about the topic that he worked to keep id Tech 5 free from the shackles of proprietary code, because he wants to eventually release it as open source. He said (italic emphasis is mine):
"'Do we want to integrate some other vendor's solution, some proprietary code into this?' And the answer's usually no, because eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we're not going to integrate stuff that's going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release. We can argue the exact pros and cons from a pure business standpoint on it, and I can at least make some, perhaps somewhat, contrived cases that I think it's good for the business, but as a personal conviction it's still pretty important to me and I'm standing by that." [1]
I think the reality is that id Software has attempted to build the market-space, but the base just hasn't been there. For example, John had this to say recently at QuakeCon 2012:
"Other interesting sort of PC-ish platforms, we have... the Mac still remains a viable platform for us. The Mac has never required any charity from id, all of those ports have carried their own weight there; they've been viable business platforms.
[...]
Linux is an issue that's taken a lot more currency with Valve announcing Steam for Linux, and that does change, factor, you know, changes things a bit, but we've made two forays into the Linux commercial market, most recently with Quake Live client, and, you know, that platform just hasn't carried its weight compared to the Mac on there. It's great that people are enthusiastic about it, but there's just not nearly as many people that are interested in paying for a game on the platform, and that just seems to be the reality. Valve will probably pull a bunch more people there. I know absolutely nothing about any Valve plans for console, Steam-box stuff on there; I can speculate without violating anything.
[...]
So, it's enticing, the thought there that you might have a well-supported, completely open platform that you could deliver content through the Steam ecosystem there. It's a tough sell on there, but Valve gets huge kudos for having the vision for what they did with Steam, sticking through all of it. It's funny talking about Doom 3, where we can remember back in the days when they're like, 'Well, should you ship Doom 3 on Steam, go out there, make a splash?' ... I'm like, 'You're kidding, right?' That made no sense at all at that time, but you know Valve stuck with it and they're in a really enviable position from all of that now.
It still seems, probably crazy to me that they would be doing anything like that, you know, but, it's something that's not technically impossible, but would be really difficult from a market, sort of ecosystems standpoint." [2]
[1] http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/9374
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk#t=44m28s
[+] [-] gizmo686|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiecaper|13 years ago|reply
This makes even more sense if one supposes that Valve ultimately intends to release a "Steambox" console. In such a condition, the question emerges: at what point does Microsoft feel WINE is damaging its profits sufficiently to revoke the free pass its enjoyed for a long while and bring out the legal banhammer? I think a Steambox that relied heavily on WINE would be excellent provocation.
[+] [-] sandyarmstrong|13 years ago|reply
I'll bet CodeWeavers couldn't be happier right now.
[+] [-] gizmo686|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|13 years ago|reply
Let's hope GOG will follow with shipping native Linux games. With their DRM free stance - they'll be very well received by Linux users.
If you are interested, you can vote to show them that there is a demand for it:
http://www.gog.com/en/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_ga...
[+] [-] sliverstorm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamie_ca|13 years ago|reply
I've had great success installing dos-based GOG games through WineBottler (http://wiki.winehq.org/WineBottler), diving into the package, moving the relevant files out, and stuffing them in Boxer (http://boxerapp.com/) and they run pretty awesome on my mac.
[+] [-] qznc|13 years ago|reply
Source: http://en.thewitcher.com/community/entry/296 about a Special Event on the 18th of October
Though, that will probably be OS X.
[+] [-] ParadisoShlee|13 years ago|reply
We don't have games because we don't support games. We don't have hardware support becuase we don't have anything that requires hardware support.
[+] [-] rogerbinns|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azernik|13 years ago|reply
Seems that game developers have an incentive to do this since, according to my latest glance at the Humble Bundle website, Linux purchasers give much more than average ($10.13, as compared to $5.48 for Windows and $7.27 for Mac).
[+] [-] veeti|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devnill|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trotsky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennysaurus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] driverdan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syaz1|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mappu|13 years ago|reply
Even after all this time (it's been longer now since HL2:E2 than the gap between HL1 and HL2 itself), the hype is so strong that if they released HL3 for Linux so much as a few hours earlier than the Windows version, it would cause a significant spike in Ubuntu downloads.
[+] [-] user-id|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvsnp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiggy2011|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukeholder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrschwabe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jebblue|13 years ago|reply
Now I need to bookmark that blog. :-)
[+] [-] joshschreuder|13 years ago|reply
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/feed/?cat=7
[+] [-] rms|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcitme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esbwhat|13 years ago|reply
it's portal
[+] [-] batgaijin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zainny|13 years ago|reply
Fragmentation in the Linux world is one of the major things that is stopping developers from jumping on board. Valve should focus on supporting one distro and supporting it well.
[+] [-] grkovalev|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kript|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w1ntermute|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biomechanica|13 years ago|reply
Now, Linux as a desktop... Maybe. We'll see.
[+] [-] mylittlepony|13 years ago|reply