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:Ever get that Deja Dupe feeling? (Score:5, Funny)
They must have made a change to the matrix.
Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, one the same day: http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/04/25/1241241/phoronix-confirms-gnulinux-steam-and-source-engine-clients [slashdot.org]
Re:Dupe (Score:5, Funny)
No, that article discussed the port to GNU/Linux. *This* article is about the port to Linux.
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init=/bin/valve
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Re:Dupe (Score:5, Funny)
In the /. editors' defense it was several hours ago and the new boss is that dude from Memento.
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Ah, but nobody on this thread has complained about the lack of HL2:Ep3 yet.
Yay! (Score:2)
It's been a while (Score:2)
Ah, dupes, I've missed you.
It has come! (Score:5, Funny)
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Unfortunately, even if every Steam user switched entirely to Linux it would still only have a few percentage points of market share. Linux users waaaay overestimate how much of an impact ths will have. Especially when the Windows version will have 1000+ more games to choose from.
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You repeatedly seem to make the mistake of worrying about already-released games. The impact is going to come mainly from new titles. Who gives a shit if they port Missy Janes Magical Mystery Adventure or whatever?
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No, I don't. Get back to me when EA, Activision, Ubisoft etc. provide any official plans to release their big budget titles on Linux. I won't hold my breath, though. Plus it's funny since all the Valve games being wanked over are all 'already-released games'. Most of them over 4 to 5 years old.
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All of which are still incredibly popular.
There's cynical, and then there's just stupid.
This *is* big news because of the old games, and because it kicks the door open to a huge number of new games. Steam is an enormous force in the games world... however you want to cut it.
I think this is less to do with Linux being a big market , and more to do with expanding Steam in a way that EA won't with Origin and keep Steam's many fairly vociferous and loyal support.
Whatever... I'm not complaining... nor am I under
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You know, if there becomes a demand for it, someone will start selling linux-compatible DRM (and then we are all fucked).
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Unfortunately, even if every Steam user switched entirely to Linux it would still only have a few percentage points of market share. Linux users waaaay overestimate how much of an impact ths will have.
And? Linux can be legally had for free and the source is open to anybody that wants to hack it and rerelease changes. It pretty much exists outside of the scope of marketshare that Windows and OSX (and BeOS and DrDOS) exist in. If those OS's don't sell to more than a certain critical mass of consumers, they fail. Linux could not be used by a single person for years and then somebody could just pick it up and continue. Maybe if you spent less time bashing (your username wtf?) it you would have a more ra
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As much as I love the new direction Windows has been going in(excluding Metro), Opensource is the future. RedHat business model for everyone!
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They are afraid of MS Store, locked on ARM devices and very probable to be forced later on x86 on another future Windows releases. And what if Apple make that move in the future with OS X, lock it to only use the App store. We don't know if that will happen, but it it happens Valve is dead in the water, at least Steam. This is a planed movement to use the current power they have with hardcore gamers and see if they can move them to Linux if things become bad for Valve in the future
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So one has too wonder. Will Valve come out with a console/set top box?
That may seem crazy talk but why not. A simple Linux based box that hooks up to steam for games could be a real hit with people.
I don't care (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yup.
I would love everything to be open, but I'm realistic... and given a choice between nothing and something between nothing and what I want.. I'll go for the latter.
I'm sure there'll be a church of RMS guy telling us we are enabling evil by settling with the devil or some over-dramatic thing like that.. but that stuff is just background noise now...
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I do care about most of the software I use being open source. But I don't care about games being open source either.
If they just keep their DRM under control, I'm cool with that. Too bad DRM's tendency isn't to stay under control. I'll wait and see.
I think this is great! (Score:4, Informative)
Steam with Whitelisted Wine? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if this Steam Linux client will act like PlayOnLinux and download Whitelisted Wine Clients that Steam won't flag as "cheating." I say this because I have a family member that keeps one Windows 7 machine just because he plays Left 4 Dead 2, and Steam once banned a whole sloth of Wine Users because their DLL files did not match the database Steam had.
Supposedly, Steam keeps a whitelist of known Wine DLLs to prevent this.
Native Steam (Score:2)
This is about porting Steam AND the Source engine as Native Linux applications.
L4D2 is running already (that's their test target) and probably the rest of Valve developped/Source powered game will follow.
So no Wine DLL in this. Real native Linux apps.
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.
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I think the point you're making is covered pretty comprehensively in this article:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_linux_dampfnudeln&num=1 [phoronix.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
But Windows games coming to Linux anyway (Score:2)
according to the phoronix report (Michael spent a day speaking with Gabe at Valve)
Left 4 Dead 2 is currently running on Linux (that's what they use to test).
Other Valve developped/Source powered games will follow.
And Gabe would like Valve to stimulate 3rd parties publishing on steam to port their games to Linux too.
So even if porting source doesn't imply ports of games, Valve (and mroe precisely Gabe) *DO* want Linux ports of games.
will ATI and nvidia make good drivers? and put the (Score:2)
will ATI and nvidia make good drivers? and put the same level of work in to them as they do with the windows drivers?
Linux Drivers: Getting better (Score:3)
ATI
- quality of the proprietary drivers has increased lately. though they tend to only support the last few generation of GPUs only. (Early Radeon HD will be dropped soon).
- open source drivers: they are officially supported by ATI. That's their recommandation for anything not supported in Catalyst anymore (Currently everything up to Radeon X). They are stable although not as goof performance wise for latest hardware as the Catalysts.
- If you want hardware that will supported for long ATI is the thing to go
Steam Box OS is Linux? (Score:3)
Would make sense if the rumors of a Steam Box are true.
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:Steam Box OS is Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
What if the SteamBox's official OS is going to be Ubuntu and Steam is to be heavily integrated into Unity?
Makes up for Adobe! (Score:2)
This certainly more than makes up for Adobe pulling Flash support from Linux.
(Fingers crossed that this sees the light of day...)
Windows 8: really awful (Score:2)
Reading the motivations, it seems we should also be thankful to microsoft for this -- part of the motivation for their devs to work on it is that linux is slowly getting better on the desktop*, but the other part is that windows is rapidly getting worse :P
* or slowly getting worse, if you use ubuntu and don't know how to install an alternative window manager; but Metro is still ahead of Unity in that respect
Slashdotted (Score:2)
Coral cache here. [nyud.net]
How about... (Score:2)
Compatibility layer? (Score:2)
Wasn't there a rather simple (not Wine-like, but "x86 on x86_64"-like) compatibility layer for BSD OSes ?
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Just in time... (Score:4, Informative)
What good timing. There just happen to be a bunch of Kickstarter projects that will need a way to distribute their promised Linux clients.
Steam is so hot it burns (Score:3)
I can understand why Steam is such a successful platform, but I bought two games on it and got burned badly enough by them that I got rid of it.
The first pretty much killed it for me. It was a $60 AAA game that took several days to download over my DSL line, which by itself was fine. However, after waiting all that time to get it installed and playing it for exactly 1 evening, it came out with a patch that took about 48 hours to download. As soon as the patch was available, Steam locked me out of the game without warning and started downloading it. Soon after I finished downloading that patch, there was a new one that locked me out again. Steam wouldn't let me choose whether (or even when) to download a patch. I could force the download to stop, but that just kept me locked out of the game indefinitely until I restarted and completed it. In the first month I was only able to play the game two or three evenings because it pushed me up to my ISP's bandwidth cap. I explained my problem to Steam tech support, and asked for either a way to disable the lockouts or a refund so I could buy a copy of the game that I could actually play. They told me to piss off, and I told them I was done buying things on Steam.
The second was a game I'd bought first, but that I ended up playing for a while after. At some point, Steam ended up locking me out of the game with a cryptic error message. I don't recall the exact message (it's been a while), but when searching Steam forums for it, they recommended a number of things (including deleting the game and re-downloading it, re-installing Steam, etc.), but nothing worked. I would've contacted tech support, but fortunately that game had only cost $10. At that point I decided that $10 was a cheap price to pay to be able to uninstall Steam and walk away from it forever.
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How long ago was that? In Steam's properties window for a game, there's an Updates tab with the choices "always keep this game up to date" and "do not automatically update this game". That option has been there for a long time.
GNOME3 fallback mode (Score:2)
Notice how the guy in the screenshots is using GNOME3 in fallback mode, on Ubuntu, with the default settings, which looks terribly bad.
I wouldn't trust a Linux developer that doesn't even have a decent Linux workstation setup to be able to code for Linux well.
Old Linux software is hard to run (Score:2)
My old Linux games take quite a bit of jamming of old libraries and LD_PRELOADs to still run. (Neverwinter Nights, Heretic II, Myth II, ..)
But I have old Win95/98 stuff that starts up in wine just fine.
Given the rate at which Linux changes, and how legacy compatibility is not considered a priority, I think I would rather buy copies of games for Windows and run them in wine. What would be ideal for me is some sort of "wine-certified" program so I can know that the developer went to the effort to test and QA
kernel module. (Score:2)
the article does mention they want someone with kernel module experience. looking at what the steam client does drm wise and how linux is, it makes sense because the only way it can do such things is have hooks in the kernel.
self process obfuscation to prevent cheating programs in general.
network interface monitoring to prevent the packet modifying cheats.
a hook into the opengl rendering stack to allow checking for aim-bots and the like.
system process monitoring and inspection, can't do this as a normal use
So? (Score:2)
steam functions under wine now, and really what good is it to me? Great, maybe eventually source engine games will get ported, which makes up 2 games in my library of like 20 games
Re:oooOOOooh (Score:5, Funny)
And if that doesn't work here's [slashdot.org] another source.
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You got your Twitter in my Slashdot!
No, you got your Slashdot in my Twitter!
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: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.
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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.
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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.
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I want to know how they are gonna divide the games, will the Linux guys only be able to buy from a special Linux section? 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, and there are plenty of games on steam that use TAGES, SecuROM, even GFWL ON TOP of Steam. of course since all of these require kernel hooks Linux simply won't allow none of these games will be available.
The steam platform itself and Valve's source engine games will be available on Linux (I assume that means linux native ports), and no source engine games have DRM other than Steam, that I'm aware of. I imagine this will be like their ports for Mac in that only some titles run on mac, and I don't know how mac users can tell which titles they can play other than to read the system requirements. The nice thing is you just buy the game and it knows which version to download AND you then own it on whatever pla
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I didn't see anything about this compatibility layer in the article, but I guess it would be similar to the OSX version, if the OSX version is slower than the windows version on the same hardware then likely it would be on Linux as well. As far as I could tell from the article though, they don't use wine, so if they do use some sort of compatibility layer I would assume (without knowing much about graphics programming) they probably have a wrapper to map direct3d calls to opengl in the source. In that case
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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, and there are plenty of games on steam that use TAGES, SecuROM, even GFWL ON TOP of Steam.
It'd be nicer to have better indications on Steam itself about DRM status of games (in sales and out of), but there's this community maintained list if that's at all helpful: http://steamdrm.flibitijibibo.com/ [flibitijibibo.com]
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Re:Finally! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well, it seems that Steam disagrees.
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My thoughts exactly.
Re:Just wondering from the summary... (Score:5, Funny)
Never with a dry hand, that's for sure.
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... but with computers.
You should patent that.
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Stay classy, samzenpus.
Isn't it sad when the editors obviously don't even read their own site?
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Isn't it sad when the editors obviously don't even read?
FTFY
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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)
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Steam is all the opposite of that. They get insane rebates you'll never see in stores.
But not as good as buying a used copy.
They let you play offline, redownload countless times,
Almost as good as having the CD! Well, except for the bandwidth usage.
they have automated patching of games which is worth gold, gone are the days of waiting on gamespy servers and going through hoops becasue the publishers will make you go to shady ad infested download sites with their "wait half an hour or pay for a gold memebership" crap.
What?
They even have plus values such as notification of new video cards drivers and it can even patch it for you (opt-in)
A plus or a minus; I like to control what gets installed.
Really, beyond being an online store, steam mainly just gives you back a few of the things taken away from you by the DRM-freaks that invaded the games industry. Which is nice, less regressive than most DRM, but i
Re:Juts what the open source community wants... (Score:5, Informative)
I can play games offline.
Except when you can't. I've had a handful of times when steam wants to connect even when I tell it to play offline. And it refuses to do anything else. It has pissed me right the hell off each time. That's DRM getting between me and what I paid for.
Steam is a pretty good distribution system. And Valve has a lot of sales which make it enticing. But as far as DRM goes, it's still too much.
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Re:Juts what the open source community wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I haven't RTFA, but I'm pretty sure that Valve doesn't have plans to require that everyone using Linux also has Steam installed. So you can just stick with your open-source non-commercial DRM-free game platform. You have one of those, right?
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Possibly, for certain values of "open-source" and "non-commercial". The client is open-source, at least, but I doubt a purist would consider the platform open-source and non-commercial.
Is it DRM? I didn't notice. (Score:5, Interesting)
I just installed Steam under wine, and it worked. I bought HL2, and it worked. Then a terrible thing happened, and I accidentally the whole .wine directory.
Guess what happened when I reinstalled Steam again? The first time I fired it up, it popped up a little message saying that it couldn't see the installs of all the games I'd bought, and would I like it to go and download them again? Well yes, of course I would, so I clicked "OK", had a cup of tea, and boom, HL2 just plain worked, again.
This isn't like anything else I've seen of DRM. This is just plain handy.
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This isn't like anything else I've seen of DRM. This is just plain handy.
It's rare, but Steam has had its share of problems. There's been the occasional authentication server outage (translating you not being able to play any games). Or, if your ISP is having issues, you can't launch games. There is an offline option, but you must already be online to enable a game for offline play.
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No, you don't have to be online. If you have to be online, why does it work when I'm not connected to the Internet?
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There is an offline option, but you must already be online to enable a game for offline play.
That's incorrect. If you're disconnected from the internet, there is now a "Play Offline" button in the error dialogue when Steam says it can't connect to its services, which switches to the 30 day offline mode. If you can't see that button, completely close out steam and reopen it. You'll see it on the next connection error you see.
It was finicky for the longest time but I've never had a single problem seeing the button since.
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This isn't like anything else I've seen of DRM. This is just plain handy.
Really? Are you sure you're a linux user? apt-get install game
Steam is a glorified, locked down package manager. It's a system of locks that allows you to donate money to developers, except that you must first pay a cut to Valve. I guess that's not all bad - it's no worse than paypal I'm sure.
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Steam is a glorified, locked down package manager.
Steam has 40+ million "active" accounts. How embarrassing would it be if the glorified, locked-down package manager had more unique/desktop users than any other package manager?
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People are coming around.. taking linux more seriously and the hard core RMS type fanatics less seriously.
Even within the community, more permissive licenses are becoming popular.. and I've personally seen a mellowing in attitudes.
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Re:Title a bit misleading (Score:5, Informative)
TFA shows Valve dev workstations running L4D2 under Linux.
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Wow, did the mods seriously not even read the article either before modding this +5? This is completely wrong. This is how Valve enters a market. They bring over steam and their source games, so there's something in the list for the platform.
Game ported too (Score:2)
Read to original Phoronix article.
They *are* porting games too. Left 4 Dead 2 is their current target, because it's a stable code base they can play with.
And what phoronix's Micheal reported from Gabe, more Steam-based are very likely to follow.
So HL2, Portal, TF2 and the like will probably show at some point in time in the future.
And, still according to phoronix's author, Valve is rather willing to encourage 3rd parties to port games to Linux.
(And besides, there are already Linux games on Steam. Basically
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Yes, Source uses scripting. [valvesoftware.com] I think you're confused between Source and most Valve games, which tend to use scripting very lightly, and usually not during gameplay. They prefer to use the game object I/O system for performance reasons.
Having said that, the AC you're referring to is 100% correct that the lion's share of porting Source games (which doesn't include Half-Life, of course) is porting Source, in particular, the stuff to do with infrastructure, packaging, and low-level I/O. The hard parts have alrea
Re:DRM (Score:5, Funny)