Valve Officially Launches Steam For Linux 313
sl4shd0rk writes "Valve has finally released Steam for Linux. Although some of the 57 games listed on the Linux Steam site are previously released from the Humble Bundles, there are others which should provide adequate entertainment for anyone bored with the HB games. Among the games listed, many at deep discounts of 50%-75% off, are HalfLife, CounterStrke Source and Serious Sam 3. Hopefully Valve will keep the ports coming as rumor has it that Left 4 Dead had been ported at least for developers."
Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
You might want to wait on that. At this time, there's only ~100 titles available for Linux, and many of them have aleady been out for a year or so.
Maybe one day Linux will be a platform hardcore gamers will use, but Steam for Linux is just a baby step in that direction. Remember, they've had Steam for OS X for a while now, and there's still only a tiny trickle of games for that platform.
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but remember that the OSX version was a contracted 3rd party port while the Linux version is a much better done in-house port that they are basing their future steambox hardware strategy on. Not exactly apples to apples.
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Funny)
no, its apples to penguins.
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Funny)
Apples to penguins results in an unhappy penguin. Fish to penguins on the other hand leads to fat and happy penguins.
Wait, I think I'm misunderstanding.
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Funny)
No, I think you might be onto something. OpenBSD [wikipedia.org]
How do you know fish don't like being eaten? (Score:2)
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, what? I've never heard that the OS X version of Steam was a 3rd party port. In fact, I'm almost certain it wasn't since I was in the Mac Beta and on the email list with the developers (who all have valvesoftware.com email addresses)
Citation, please?
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Until, as someone said up thread, there is a set top box that runs linux.
Oh wait, the nmap scan I did against my TV shows it is running a Linux kernel !
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AC below is right, you're trolling.
Valve's involvement wit NVidia to improve Linux drivers is old news.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012, NVIDIA Delivers Massive Performance Boost To Linux Gaming
NVIDIA today announced the latest NVIDIA® GeForce® drivers -- R310 -- double the performance(1) and dramatically reduce game loading times for those gaming on the Linux operating system.
The result of almost a year of development by NVIDIA, Valve and other game developers, the new GeForce R310 drivers are designed to give GeForce customers the best possible Linux-based PC gaming experience -- and showcase the enormous potential of the world's biggest open-source operating system.
Ah sorry. (Score:2)
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You're just demonstrating your ignorance again. SUSE is the Linux backed by Novell which was acquired in bankruptcy by Attachmate: the company that's legendary for sucking the last bit of marrow from the bones of the fallen. They make VT-100 terminal applications with Microsoft Office plugins for goodness sake. And nobody really knows who owns and controls them. Any real FOSS geek is going to look at that provenance and migrate.
Novell was the hero when they were battling the hated SCOG to death but in
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Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
You might want to wait on that. At this time, there's only ~100 titles available for Linux, and many of them have aleady been out for a year or so.
Maybe one day Linux will be a platform hardcore gamers will use, but Steam for Linux is just a baby step in that direction. Remember, they've had Steam for OS X for a while now, and there's still only a tiny trickle of games for that platform.
What's the problem? The availability of games for Linux just exploded into new numbers, and more are coming all the time. You don't have to wait for every game under the sun to be ported, and that's not the point anyway. Make the switch and enjoy. 2013 is the Year of Linux Gaming.
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2013 is the Year of Linux Gaming.
Never heard that line before ... not hating on Linux, but seriously, don't hold your breath.
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Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:4, Funny)
Solitaire?
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I don't think he meant "hot" as in "will burn your knees, even if your laptop in on a desk".
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Never heard that line before ... not hating on Linux, but seriously, don't hold your breath.
A little bit of celebration would not be that out of place, though.
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Very much so. People may think it's only a small step, but it's always that first step that's the hardest. This goes a very long way to getting past the "I only stay on Windows because of the games."
Hello Tux! (Score:4, Insightful)
The TF2 gamers that log on with a Linux box before March 1 get an exclusive item; Don't underestimate the power of tchotchkes!
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Marketing is the problem.
The availability of games for Linux just exploded but the majority of these games have been available on Windows for years. Some have even been available on Linux for ages already and are simply just migrating to Steam for the sake of doing so. If all these previously available Linux games failed to see a large amount of success on Linux without Steam, it's unlikely that they will sudden explosion in Linux installations with Steam. Linux users tend to be rather savvy and aware indi
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:4, Informative)
Developers use "game engines [wikipedia.org]" and add their own features, maps, rules and art to make their games quite often. A very popular one is "Source," which is made by Valve - who is putting together this Linux game sales platform. By porting their own games to Linux they are proving the Source engine's flexibility and capability and beating down an easy path for their Source Engine licensees to capture a new market early in its upswing. Quite often a game developer would not have that much extra work to do to put their game in Linux because 99% of the development isn't in the programming but in the collateral: the art, story, characters, rules, balance tuning and such that transform the game engine into the specific game. These non-programmatic portions of the game that constitute 99% of the game's development effort are by design of the game engine platform independent. Budding game developers really need that because the option to put their game on a console, iPhone or Android tablet has to stay open so that if they find the winning "fun" formula they can rake in the big bucks by selling it in every market without laying out the funds to build it again from scratch for each new platform. This is also developing good data for what hardware a Steambox console needs to have to be successful, as client hardware metrics are measured and reported in actual game play along with things like time of play, duration of engagement with the game and so on.
There are many engines that started on desktop Linux for ease and speed of development and migrated elsewhere for mass-marketability. The Doom engine is a classic example. Before there was Doom iD as a budding company had a Linux only game called "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris" that was a popular Linux network game to prove the engine. This is why while you're playing Doom3 if you type SPISPOPD you can pass through walls. It's also the origin of the name of the band "Smashing Pumpkins". In SPISPOPD most of the monsters were pumpkins.
The trail of breadcrumbs: Game engine developers include game editors in their games to encourage fan spinoffs and identify promising young developers of the art for recruiting and also improve the value of the game engine with fan spinoff maps, arts, and other such things as well as to prove their game engine as a platform easily built upon - all the while adding value for the people who bought the game without spending extra money on development. Darwinian development rocks!
"windows 7 is not that bad." (Score:2)
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
At this time, there's only ~100 titles available for Linux
And a couple of weeks ago there were only 40. If they keep going at this rate things are looking promising!
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory: xkcd: Extrapolating [xkcd.com]
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Informative)
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I think some old games were already ported and as they are vetted as working with Linux Steam they are being announced.
Linux Steam is the best chance Linux gaming is ever going to have, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a huge batch of games.
Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
I think some old games were already ported and as they are vetted as working with Linux Steam they are being announced.
Linux Steam is the best chance Linux gaming is ever going to have, but I wouldn't hold my breath for a huge batch of games.
Vale is not the only game developer. They may be the first major one embracing Linux (read: ensuring their future against MS's craziness), but they are not the only one, nor are they necessarily our "best chance" consumers and game developers have -- The "best chance" is available to everyone already, and cross platform gaming is a force that can not easily be held back any longer. The writing is on the wall for Windows-only PC gaming now, as it was for console exclusive games in the past, and Arcade cabinet exclusive games before that.
As a developer you'd be a damned fool (or need a very expensive reason) to not select or build an engine that's got the (o) Cross Platform bullet point. It costs next to nothing to gain Mac and Linux in addition to Windows if you simply start with a cross platform tool chain. Porting old games can be a pain, but for any new games it's a no-brainer: "Use #1 that's windows only, or pick #2 that's x-platform and will bring in more revenue". Since this has become a selling point engines will compete over: It won't be long before every new major game engine is cross platform -- Valve is just a bit ahead of the curve here (unless you consider Ogre3D and other free x-plat engines).
It's not only that old game engines (and thus the games they support) are being ported to cross platform toolchains, but also new engines are adopting this development model (hell, even application dev is going this way). Microsoft knows this is coming, that's why they want to do some re-engineering of their development model: Their App Store programs are in C# which is a VM language -- I bet they make some changes to the language / API so that new code for their platform is artificially harder to make compatible with Mono, while older C# programs (being byte-code already) can be easily supported going forward; Might even have something to do with XNA getting the can. You see, right now I can easily use OpenGL with C/C++ to make games that run on Mac/Win/Linux ("git pull && make" and I'm done "porting" changes between platforms) -- Microsoft hates that.
If you're doing engine development (like I am), you write an abstraction layer for the native platform interfaces anyway, especially if the game will be on PC + consoles (or even just more than one console). That initial cost to support all the major PC platforms (creating an SDL/freeglut replacement) took me one week of evenings, and now every game I make will be cross platform with no additionally dev cost -- Had I not needed a better multi-threaded event system than these provided it would have taken only a few hours to support all the major PC platforms. Existing engines like Cube(2) and Ogre3D make cross platform development dead simple (if you're using polygonal graphics). Everything is done in shaders nowdays anyway, so even the DirectX vs OpenGL "battle" is a moot point -- whatever shader platform is cross platform -- Why throw away free additional money for the same efforts? With the advent of engine scripting and meta programming languages that compile down into Java / C# / C++, C / ObjC, etc, the cross platform future of games is even stronger. For lighter weight mobile games I can already compile a single source tree into platform specific code for Android, iOS, Win, Mac, Linux, Xbox, PS3, Wii, and DS.
Anyone who doubts the future of gaming on Linux will be bright need look no further than the console market. Publishers like money, it cost more to make separate games for each platform, and
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need more caffiene.
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I'm a tiny fraction! I'm a tiny fraction! I'm a... what? [runs away]
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Re:Goodbye Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Skyrim (all DLC plus mods) works in wine currently. PlayOnLinux will even do all the work in setting up the wine environment for it to run in.
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Yep, I've successfully run Skyrim and New Vegas, but NV is a bit slow and Skyrim is fine at first but quickly turns into a slideshow, as compared to my Win 7 partition where it's flawless :/
The engine used in both games isn't the greatest, and it tends to bog down on any system once you start to add in mods.
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True story: I once had to deal with Dioblo II in WINE repeatedly corrupting my MBR. No, really. I could hardly believe it myself until I saw other reports of the exact same thing on the WINE bug tracker.
Bullshit.
ORLY: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4672 [winehq.org]
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Wine and bugs (Score:5, Informative)
At one point, I was responsible for a good sized Windows application. Something along the lines of Photoshop. Tested it under Wine, and Wine choked in a few obvious ways. As we thought it'd be nice if it worked under linux, if indirectly, I reported the issues to them. They blithely informed me that if we wanted the bugs fixed, we'd have to pay. Needless to say, we shelved the whole idea.
Is that still the service model?
Re:Wine and bugs (Score:5, Informative)
"They" who?
The WINE project?
No. That's never been the model, actually, since there's no business model. It's an open source project. That said, like any free software project, it's easier to motivate people to fix the bugs that you care about if you show up with patches or donations -- but neither is necessary.
Now if you're referring to Codeweavers, then yes, actually, that is part of their business model.
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or, since your model was pay-for as well, you could've offered a real linux build of your project instead of a half-assed win32 kludge and expecting linux users to pay full freight for it.
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At one point, I was responsible for a good sized Windows application. Something along the lines of Photoshop. Tested it under Wine, and Wine choked in a few obvious ways. As we thought it'd be nice if it worked under linux, if indirectly, I reported the issues to them. They blithely informed me that if we wanted the bugs fixed, we'd have to pay. Needless to say, we shelved the whole idea.
Is that still the service model?
You're the fools for not starting off your application development with a cross platform development toolchain. I mean, that's why C was invented, and you tossers managed to cock up a perfectly good cross platform situation by not writing a simple platform abstraction layer (or using an existing one)? Seem to me that folks like that ought to pay for their bad decisions. You don't sound like sort of folks I'd buy software from anyway.
Protip: This is the defferred cost of choosing a Windows-only develop
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It is a largely voluntary project. If you want your commercial application to work on Linux (presumably so you can sell it to new markets), that's your responsibility. You can either code it yourself, using the freely available body of WINE code as a base, or you can pay some specialist developers to do it for you. What WINE provides for you is free (in both senses) foundation and method for porting to Linux, as opposed to needing to start from scratch.
What WINE does not promise, as a project, is to do your
Re:Wine and bugs (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want WINE support for your application you either have to pay for it or you code it up yourself and submit the patches. You comment just makes your company sound cheap.
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If gamers invested even a tiny fraction of the cumulative time they waste whining about modern video games, Linux would already be where everyone wishes it was.
Yeah, because gamers in general know anything about software development.
You're an asshole. No, really, you're probably the world's largest asshole, in fact. Why? Because if you posted on Slashdot less, clearly, you would have developed a cure for cancer by now.
DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE CONTINUE TO DIE EACH DAY BECAUSE YOU NEED TO POST HERE?!
Monstrous. Simply monstrous.
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Linux has no need to cater to the wishes of gamers.
A larger userbase results in more "serious" applications ported, better application support, and better driver support, to name but a few. If Linux had more games, there would be a larger userbase.
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It was horrible knowing you.
Seconded. I'm sick of Microsoft extremely condescending attitude towards their customers, Microsoft's certainty that whatever crap they cook up, we'll have to like it. With regards to that UI masturbation called Windows 8, we'll "get used to it".
I don't know that Steam on Linux will change much, but it is a good, hefty step in the right direction.
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I'm sick of the (general) Linux community's extremely condescending attitude towards anyone who thinks Linux has flaws and dares to raise them as something that should be addressed, or that perhaps some things work better in Windows and that using Windows because it works better for particular use cases is perfectly reasonable. But no, everyone has to get emotional for some reason.
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Dunno about gnome3, but Unity sucks horribly. It has exactly one good feature: You can get rid of it.
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Good luck playing any modern games on linux
I love linux and I have my 2 slackware boxes and been running slackware since the 2.0.29 kernel.
but I always kept a windows box as my gaming pc, you just won't get any modern games on it, If I want to play modern games, Far Cry 3, Assassins Creed, Mass Effect, Dragon Age franchises such as those, and many countless others I'll stick to windows gaming.
I'm not going to install linux on my i7, 16gig ram, dual evga ftw 670 sli, 120g ssd / wd black 2tb data drive gaming
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I think you mean:
"So long, and thanks for all the fish."
--Tux
No 64-bit? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No 64-bit? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No 64-bit? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:No 64-bit? (Score:5, Funny)
Which distro might that be?
Gentoo.
Awesome! (Score:2)
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There is 'alien' for turning RPMs into DEBs, somebody should really hack together 'predator' for turning DEBs into RPMs...
(as for shell, it isn't pretty; but the debian package format is (mostly) friendly enough that you can crack a deb open manually if you really want to.)
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Informative)
Alien can go from any of 'em to any of 'em....
Quoth the man page:
alien [--to-deb] [--to-rpm] [--to-tgz] [--to-slp] [options] file [...]
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Informative)
Brace yourselves (Score:3, Funny)
Blah blah blah, DRM.
Blah blah blah, "in mother russia".
Blah blah blah, "I, for one, welcome our penguin shaped overlords".
Blah blah blah, "gun control".
Blah blah blah "godwin's law".
You're welcome. (on a side note: wooooo!)
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I know you're joking but the fact you mention complaining about DRM as part of the joke is disheartening. Yes it's overdone and beating a dead horse at this point, but it's still a serious point to raise and it's important that it never gets forgotten. The fact that games attached with DRM (Steam or otherwise) mean games now ha
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SteamOS (Score:2)
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Unless Valve started clouding game files.
That's an interesting concept BTW. Might work already with the smaller games and a fast internet connection. When starting a game, it would pull the EXE and some basic assets, and when you progress in the game it would download the next level, and so on.
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You should try some that don't. It's very rewarding.
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Sorry, my missread.
The Valentines Bundle 2.0 (Score:5, Informative)
Just for information really with Serious Sam 3: BFE is available cheaper :) here
http://www.indieroyale.com/ [indieroyale.com]
Downloading serious sam now (Score:5, Informative)
Will this run from a Ubuntu on a USB stick (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok I wasn't sure I decided if how I felt about steam on Linux...more I suspect that the too negative header to this discussion, when down the side I spotted "Try Linux - Grab Ubuntu Desktop; Ubuntu is our favorite version of Linux. Interested in giving it a whirl? You can install and run Ubuntu from a Live CD or USB stick, or install it to run alongside Windows."
Is that "holy shit I can carry all my steam games around on my USB stick" take it around to my friends...or even work, play a few rounds of team fortress, without any changes to the machine...because if that is true, that is bigger news to me than Steam on Linux, this is Quake Arena/Doom again, only with a raft of cheap choices. I can finally play people I know. [and share an experience with], and socialise with, rather than anonymous strangers on-line [I would rather play off-line than that].
Re:Will this run from a Ubuntu on a USB stick (Score:4, Informative)
Of course it can run on a USB stick. Step by step:
1) Install Ubuntu or some other distro on the stick (use http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ if you're on Windows). Remember to allow it to change the data on the stick so you can install games on it later! If you don't know what you're doing you might want the 32-bit version of Ubuntu, otherwise you'll have to install the lib32 stuff.
2) Boot into your stick
3) Install graphic drivers, etc (you'll probably want the closed-source packages). If using Ubuntu it'll automatically ask you if you want the proprietary stuff
4) Install Steam
5) Login, install games
6) Have fun with your new portable GNU/Linux OS
7) Buy a USB stick with more memory
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This is what I get after installing in Debian x64 (Score:2)
(in testing):
--- /home/thedarkener/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.15' not found (required by /home/thedarkener/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6) /home/thedarkener/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/i686/cmov/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.15' not found (required by /home/thedarkener/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linu
thedarkener@c64:~$ steam
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As mentioned by someone else, this is because Debian doesn't have libc6 ver 2.15. You have to download the ubuntu libc6 libraries, and extract them to your ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/ directory.
There are debian testing install scripts for Steam which will automatically do this for you. Go forth and search for them.
Also, don't install the ia32-libs package. Enable multiarch support in Debian: dpkg --add-architecture i386
You can now install individual i386 library packages, instead of having one la
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Linux != Ubuntu (Score:2)
Re:Linux != Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I can see they've only released for Ubuntu.
Not true. Valve only _supports_ ubuntu. Other distros are welcome to add steam to their package managers. For instance, Gentoo has steam in their repo. It's a thin wrapper package. When you install it, it makes sure all dependencies are met and then downloads steam from valve's server and installs it. All this is automagic as far as the user is concerned.
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I'm running it under Debian Sid with libc6 from experimental. Works as great as it can *insert rant about developers programming their own widget sets and not adhering to ICCC standards*.
I've got about 40 games for Linux installed (A lot of them from humble bundle, actually), and I've got about 40 more n Steam which are not yet available for Linux, but for which a Linux port already exists (things like Legend of Grimrock, Doom 3, all the Quakes, SiN, plus another whole slew from humble bundle).
I expect a lo
Make use of all of those Humble Bundle Steam Keys! (Score:2)
Not that the Steam Keys make a huge difference to me. I've been using my Ubuntu Software Center keys anyways, so uhmmm software inception?
I've finally got a reason (Score:2)
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You mean Unity and Ubuntu One weren't reasons enough?!?!
I for one welcome (Score:2)
our WIndows smashing overloards Steam should play this when Steam Linux loads http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uEnPB9Mz18 [youtube.com]
Valventine (Score:2)
she loves Mr Penguin.
Re:Kerosene (Jet fuel) warning (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Kerosene (Jet fuel) warning (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wow, thought you were joking for a second but I see it is indeed true.
http://www.diffchecker.com/h14Uhs74 [diffchecker.com]
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122119-Valves-Newell-Issues-Firings-Statement [escapistmagazine.com]
Looks like Valve is focusing on the Steam Box + Linux.
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Steam is an online game distribution network run by Valve Software. It's a little bit like iTunes in the sense that you can buy stuff through it and it handles DRM for your downloads, but it's significantly more integrated with the games you're playing to the extent that physical copies of many games these days still require a steam account. It involves DRM and "always on" functionality, but doesn't pretend to be selling you a physical product. That is to say it doesn't allow you to resell your games and if
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A couple of parts of that aren't quite right.
Steam doesn't actually require an "always on" net connection. The offline mode "just works" these days (I know this having been dependant on it for a couple of weeks when I moved house last year). Offline mode got a bad rep in Steam's early years, because back then it would usually either just plain "not work", or work for a day or two and then demand to see a connection. It's not like that any more.
There are a small number of games sold over Steam that contain "
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Speaking as someone who has a crappy net connection, Steam's offline mode very often doesn't 'just work'.
It often refuses to let me play a game, or says 'there are no account credentials on this computer' if the network's acting up. Or Steam will load theoretically in Offline Mode, but when I try to play a game it mysteriously reports the game isn't ready to play.
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Is it like iTunes for FPS games?
Pretty much, yes. Specifically games that people who are hard core into FPS consider to be "vintage" or "classic" - even though said games are many years younger than Wolfenstein, Doom, or even Quake. People who are big fans of it see it as a great gift to be able to buy Half-Life for $8 even though they bought it for $40 the first time, then bought the first special edition of it the year after for another $40, and the uber-mega-titanium-coated-diamond-edition of it the third year for another $60.
Fo
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You removed tar and g(un)zip from your system?
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Unfortunately, Serious Sam 3 requires Steam. I dislike that, strongly, but I wanted to play SS3 enough that I bought it anyway.
And bitch about it needing Steam, natch.