Valve Software Launches Linux Blog, Confirms Work On Steam Client for Linux

New submitter oakgrove writes "Valve Software confirmed today in a new blog devoted specifically to Steam on Linux (called Steam'd Penguins) that for more than a year, a Steam client has been in the works for Ubuntu Linux 12.04. 'We've made good progress this year and now have the Steam client running on Ubuntu with all major features available. We're still giving attention and effort to minor features but it's a good experience at the moment. In the near future, we will be setting up an internal beta focusing on the auto-update experience and compatibility testing.' The blog post also says that a working port of Left 4 Dead 2 is currently playable, and that their goal is to bring performance in line with the Windows version."

Great news!

[skipkent]

Either we are a very vocal bunch, or they see a real trend here. Either way this is great for us.

Two sides to this coin

[Riceballsan]

On one hand I do like the fact that this has potential to bring games out to the linux market that haven't been there, and to eliminate the viewpoint that there are no gamers on linux. On the other side of the coin, I'm not sure how useful this will actually be for current linux fans. Almost all valve games have gold or platnum wineHQ ratings, as do a huge portion of games on steam. Running steam on wine I can play left4dead, half life, portal 1+2, magika etc... As well as quite a few non-valve games, Skyrim etc... Now assuming valve fully devotes to the project and makes native linux versions of all of their games, it is unlikely that half of the games that can be played via wine, will be ported, making the official linux client, less useful than valves port. As a result many linux users will still be identified as windows users (since wine will identify as windows XP), the numbers for linux will still show as low, and linux support will stay very weak.

It's about time, too

[skaag]

Valve have a golden opportunity here, in several ways:

1. Ubuntu is a first stepping stone. Once they have the Linux experience, they can target all kinds of Linux based platforms & set top boxes, as they become popular. It's just like UbuntuTV in a sense - It takes a stable operating system and tailors it to a niche market, adds the back-office sauce into the soup, and you suddenly have a serious iTunes/Netflix contender (technologically anyway).

2. I believe game producers are going to see this as a blessing: Valve becoming the major conduit through which serious games flow into the Linux world, paving the road for those producers into user's desktops, while providing billing, game discovery, content distribution, and community tools. Nobody else is doing this at the moment with Linux, except for Canonical who have created their own "App Store" application (which by the way is pretty good!). So imaging Canonical's "App store" on steroids, for games! Once enough games are built for Linux, why would anyone use Microsoft Windows for gaming?

3. When you are first to capture a market, you become the dominant player. The longer you're the dominant player, the more difficult it becomes to unseat you from your throne.

Thank you Valve

[Mountaineer1024]

I have 44 bought games on my steam list, all on a box that only runs windows so that I can play games. Thank you for giving me dream that one day I can get rid of all the windows installs in my house.

My prediction

[Eponymous Coward]

I believe that Valve is thinking about what it would take to get into the console business and Linux could be the key. I think this is the proof of concept stage- get the Steam client and a couple of games running on Linux. Evaluate how much work it takes and evaluate the game performance on Linux.

If they can come up with a way to port games cleanly and inexpensively, then suddenly Steam in the living room is a no-brainer. Commodity hardware in a nice case with bluetooth accessories. Rev the hardware every two years instead of every 7 or 8 years and make sure that new games are playable on older consoles by automatically reducing game settings.

Note to Valve Folks

[WankersRevenge]

If there are any Valve folks reading this -- just a couple of notes, questions, etc ...

1) Please fix the site so that mac games will only recommend mac games. The same goes for the upcoming linux section. It kind of sucks to click on a recommended game only to find it's window's only.

2) When are you guys going to answer Facebook Connect? Seriously, it'd be killer to integrate our mobile game apps into steam to either replace game center or to add to it.

3) steam console ... Ouya sounds great but steam would be divine :) How about a steam branded android device?

And hey, if you guys need to html++, give me a call ;) Or, maybe a discount :)

Keep up the great work!
 

Re:Note to Valve Folks

[westyvw]

Go ahead and go over to the valve linux blog and email them from there. They really seem interested in getting input.
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/ [valvesoftware.com]

The mail address is in the text and on the sidebar on the right.

I need something explained

[humanrev]

I'm not trying to troll here, so don't take this the wrong way.

From my experience, a lot of Linux users hate Microsoft because of their dominance in operating systems. It has resulted in a lot of software only being available for Windows and not Linux, hardware manufacturers only putting out drivers (decent or otherwise) for Windows and not Linux, and so on. People hate Microsoft due to their effective monopoly in the software industry (now getting less effective, but still)

Once Steam is released for Linux, it's going to be the focal point for virtually all games on Linux just like Steam is on Windows. Sure there are exceptions (GOG, Origin, developers selling directly and so on), but by and large Valve will have an effective monopoly as the primary source of games for most PC gamers.

Since Steam also uses account-based DRM, your games are linked to a single point of failure. A clerical error, a PayPal/credit card dispute, anything that may or may not be your fault occurs, and you may find yourself locked out of your account either temporarily or permanently. If this happens, you can't play your games.

Linux users traditionally are geeks, and hence know the dangers of relying on a single vendor, a single point of failure. They'd know not to put all your eggs in one basket because otherwise, you don't have control. I'm no Richard Stallman but I'm honestly scared about the fact that everyone appears to be happy giving control out of their hands and to a third-party... EVEN LINUX USERS!

Are people so desperate for games that they don't care about the fact that revocation of your purchases is technically possible due to Steam's DRM? I need someone to post something insightful because I'm going out of my fucking mind with worry that the traditionally anti-DRM crowd here is giving me mixed signals when it comes to Valve. At this point I'm almost ready to give up gaming and do something else if everyone's basically agreed that DRM cannot be stopped.

Re:Two sides to this coin

[makomk]

As a result many linux users will still be identified as windows users (since wine will identify as windows XP)

The last Steam hardware survey I did detected the fact that I was running it under Wine, so they already know that users are doing that.