Valve's Steam & Games Coming To Linux 224
An anonymous reader writes "Valve's Steam and Source Engine-based games are coming to Linux. Michael from well known site Phoronix.com has been invited to Valve's office and was able to spend a day with the developers and Gabe Newell himself. He is confirming the rumors about Linux ports from Valve, and has been able to play the games and work the developers himself. Attached in the article are pictures from Valve's offices with games running on Linux."
Ever get that Deja Dupe feeling? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ever get that Deja Dupe feeling?
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
I would assume left it in?
I haven't been following this whole thing, but I assume it's going to be closed source. Much as I'd prefer it open (like everything) and am sure it will be a nightmare to get running (and keep running) in my distro of choice (gentoo) I'm cool with just the functionality for now.
Re:Juts what the open source community wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unquestionably, Steam has DRM, but it is some of the least intrusive DRM out there.
I can play games offline. I can download copies of my games as many times as I want on other devices. I don't get limited activations. Steam doesn't break anything else on my box. And Steam routinely has really cheap prices.
I don't like DRM. I feel it punishes paying customers without stopping pirates. But frankly, I think Steam is worth the trade-off. The DRM doesn't get in the way, and the benefits are pretty good.
Re:Juts what the open source community wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
Title a bit misleading (Score:1, Insightful)
Valve is porting Steam and Source to linux right now. Not half-life, not Portal, not TF2, not Counter Strike. Source is just an engine. Steam is a distribution medium.
Steam is new, porting a popular game engine is not. Unreal did it, id did it, others did it. Just because the engine is ported doesn't mean the games automatically follow. Don't get me wrong - I would run Gentoo and compile the Valve games myself if that's what it took to do some good gaming on linux, but I'm not going to get all hot-and-bothered just yet over a game engine. We've been here before with several other companies over the years only to see the support for Linux yanked.
Linux client != windows games to linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because Steam will now run officially on linux doesn't mean all the titles existing for windows will magically be available for linux. It only means that developers who had already ported to linux may market it as such. Same thing happened with desura for linux. And you can see how limited the Mac selection on steam is as compared to windows (I'd expect linux to be even less).
The only positive side to this is that, hopefully, companies will have a bit more of an incentive from NOW on to port to linux.
On the other hand, companies that already WERE porting to linux anyway, and in a nice non-DRM manner, will probably opt to do it via steam now instead.
Re:Finally! (Score:0, Insightful)
wow, if you think gentoo is a hard to maintain distro, don't try anything else pls.
Re:Juts what the open source community wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right? Why doesn't the most successful online game distribution platform and developer of all time just open source their entire livelihood?
look for the goodies on steam workshop.
Re:Steam Box OS is Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
I completely agree with this. One of the big problems with Valve attempting something like the SteamBox is Steam and games being tied to the Windows and OS X platforms. Apple definitely wouldn't allow a third party to use their OS and it's questionable whether Microsoft would let someone build a console on Windows technology that would compete with the Xbox. Not to mention that even if Microsoft did, consoles generally have a negative or very thin profit margin and paying for an OEM OS licenses on top of the cost of the hardware is the last thing you'd want to do in that circumstance.
From Valve's perspective, building a game console on Linux would be highly preferable to Windows because it would leave them in full control of the software stack without any license fees. Not to mention that a set baseline of hardware would allow them to do mitigate the biggest problem facing gaming on Linux (after game availability) which is the poor and inconsistent state of 3d graphics drivers by providing guarantees for what will work to developers.
If they are truly interested in building their own game console, porting Steam (and Source) to Linux would be a good first step.
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason I ask this is the one criticism I have for Steam is on their big sales it is often difficult to see at a glance which games use ONLY Steam DRM
Huh? It's not, really. In the game details (where the publisher, etc are displayed) for the game and even sometimes in the system requirements, it will say "Uses 3rd Party DRM" and often which form of DRM it is. Games that require you to be online (Ubisoft crap) will have an online disclaimer under the description which states this fact as well.
Some games omit this information but any time I've seen this happen it always seems to have been an oversight rather than having no intention to mention it.
Re:Finally! (Score:2, Insightful)
Currently, if you own game X on Windows you automatically have its Mac OS counterpart show up in your games library when it's available. I would imagine Linux games will be the same.