Is Valve's Steam Client Bad & Damaging For Linux?

[DanLamb]

Steam is optional. If you don't like proprietary software, than don't use it. Case closed. Go play console tic-tac-toe instead and stay in your mom's basement.

Just to be clear, Michael Larabel completely butchered the objections to Steam. I'm a huge fan of for-pay games, proprietary software, and DRM in addition to open source. I hope you read my other post.

Wow, just wow. Finally, a commercial company is porting his games to Linux and some people start bashing their effort? Don't want closed-source? Then don't use it. And if you want to bash, bash all the other companies that are not even considering porting their games to Linux.

That's not fair. I'm ecstatic about all the big proprietary companies bringing AAA games to Linux this year and will pay full price for many of them. I just don't think that Valve has this righteous position as the universal rent collector on all games that are completely developed and funded outside of Valve. Even my favorite game developer, Rockstar Games, doesn't deserve this rent seeking privilege.

This is exactly why the Linux has never taken off on the desktop. People bitch about politics too much instead of actually progressing the operating system for the majority of users. Ever since Valve started working on Linux with STEAM, both NVIDIA and AMD have been finding (and fixing) countless issues that plagued the OS for years! This is a good thing, no?

Linux has never taken off in the past because:

- work/school productivity users were predominantly tied to Win/Mac.
- basic functionality was a mess in the past.
- Game development has been so heavily tied to either consoles or Windows.
- Desktop and game dev sdks have been a mess.

Linux has turned a corner on the first two. Android/iOS have completely blown the third item out of the water. The fourth one is making progress as well. Valve has had some contribution, but it's been minor and these things would have happened without them.

[DanLamb]

if you want Software Freedom, as a principle, to suceed, you need to be inclusive, non-dogmatic, and pragmatic. Pragmatism beats ideological purity

I agree with what you are saying as it applies generally, and as Michael Larabel misframed the argument against Steam, it sounds ridiculously idealistic.

Linux needs better game APIs, it needs closed source AAA games, it needs better visibility, it needs an auto-patching service that works across all games like the regular Synaptic-type repos have. Linux doesn't need Steam. Steam isn't practical. The best thing that Steam can contribute is hype and credibility, but these can be gained through other means.

[DDF420]

Yes, you could use offline mode. The question is, how many people actually do that? And IIRC offline mode also disables game updates.

That may have been their reply, but their EULA says otherwise. It states that they are under no obligation to do anything if they go bankrupt. They may or may not create such a patch. If they meant what they publicly said, they would have put it in the EULA as well, but obviously they didn't.

This is the same issue with all digital distribution services isn't it?You either agree or don't use the service. Its not reason enough for me to worry.

If valves linux steam box is successful, we may actually start seeing more physical disk based games in all those shops selling xbox/pc/wii/ps3 games

How cool would that be i could finally find game disks sold, compatible with steam console and GNU/linux DE, along side pc/xbox/ps3 titles. That would really be the year of linux gaming

[Licaon]

Linux needs better game APIs, it needs closed source AAA games, it needs better visibility, it needs an auto-patching service that works across all games like the regular Synaptic-type repos have. Linux doesn't need Steam. Steam isn't practical. The best thing that Steam can contribute is hype and credibility, but these can be gained through other means.

And since these did not come in the last 15 years will come in the future from somewhere else because?

Stuff like this will make it work: http://alienware.com/ubuntu/

[ворот93]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

The story with a headline ending with question mark is usually tendentious and over-sold. Which is the case for this moronix article as well.

[GreatEmerald]

This is the same issue with all digital distribution services isn't it?You either agree or don't use the service. Its not reason enough for me to worry.

Not if they don't include DRM by themselves. In that case you download the installer and you're good to play the game forever, no matter if the distributors go out of business or not.

[log0]

That would almost work, other than the fact that the source of the game engine is a large part of the effort, and as such a large part of the development cost - and that is especially if you roll your own and develop literally everything in-house, which few studios do. If you don't, you rely on middleware, and I think you'd have a hard time convincing Epic to release full source for UE3 or UE4, or Crytek for their CryEngine, given that that's where their business lies. And that's only the major piece of middleware used, not counting lighting, physics, AI and navigation and potentially visibility middleware.
Open sourcing for example Id tech 3 or something similar is easier for the companies, since these are pieces of technology that are fully outdated and of no practical use to them anymore. It'll take a long time for that model to change, especially considering that nobody even knows what it could potentially change to - it's not like you can recoup your development cost or maybe turn a profit from support contracts on a game.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

Yeah, right the most of your $30+M figure goes into game engine coding. I call it bullshit.

Btw there are thousands of professional game devs. But how many of them are actually using/contributing to open source game engines? What if there was a game engine equivalent to linux? Something that could easily compete with UE and CryEngine middleware. A modular and advanced game engine as a result of professional game devs collaboration. Yes, I know I must be kidding to even think about it...

[ворот93]

What if there was a game engine equivalent to linux? Something that could easily compete with UE and CryEngine middleware.

Has Linux been able to compete on desktop *before* Windows 8? Just sayin...

[log0]

Has Linux been able to compete on desktop *before* Windows 8? Just sayin...

Sorry, I should have been more exact. With linux I've meant linux kernel.

[ворот93]

Sorry, I should have been more exact. With linux I've meant linux kernel.

And even so, has Linux *kernel* been able to attract third-party developers? For years has it been a couple of middle-size giants plus "community" but no mainstream.