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

[nomadewolf]

Is dumb moronix bad & damaging for Linux? Yes! Only on moronix we can find such childish articles which are really damaging to Linux and Valve. If someone doesn't want steam nobody forces him to install it. It's such simple, but moronix have to scream about some thread like a little baby.

Phoronix is merely showing a different and valid perspective. It showed Steam's perspective first, and is right by showing the other side. In this case, something was done that once upon a time was know as Jounalism.

The article seems pretty much unbiased, it points the pros and cons. That's how it's suposed to be...
Personaly i think Steam brings more good than bad, and comes at an excellent time. The cons presented on this article i think are appliable to every platform (in this case only Windows and Linux) and are not even Linux specific.

Valid concerns were pointed out, and the only thing (i think) Phoronix could've done better was actually to present the perspective that these problems aren't Linux specific.


Just my 2 bucks.

[jayrulez]

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[GreatEmerald]

I second this. Driver support on Windows sucks monkey fuck for the hardware I have as shocking as this may sound.

Yeap. I bought an external Ethernet card for my tablet PC. Even though it was already several years after the release of Windows 7, it had no Windows 7 drivers. The ones for Vista did install... but corrupted incoming data, so every download would fail. The XP drivers worked slightly better, but I had to wait for 3 minutes or so before the connection went up. Linux? Plug and play, zero issues.
That said, apparently the manufacturer finally released Windows 7 drivers that fixed the corruption issue just a few months ago. Didn't fix the 3 minute wait, though.

On Windows 7 you can't even get basic Ethernet working out of the box on a regular Intel motherboard with Intel Gigabit onboard chipset. Better pray to god that you did not throw that fucking motherboard CD away.

Yeap, that's super annoying. Normally whenever I need to install Windows for someone, the procedure is like this: 1) Install Windows 2) Boot into a Linux LiveCD 3) Download drivers 4) Mount the hard drive 5) Copy drivers 6) Boot back into Windows 7) Install drivers

Meanwhile, when AMD dropped support for the more modern 3000/4000 series, there was no grief from anyone here, because "they have to move forward".

*Exhem*. Though the thing that softened the transition a lot is that r600g is already a pretty dang decent driver.

[IanS]

Here is a worthwhile read: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009...-distribution/

Bit aged at this point but still fairly relevant. According to one of the 2d Boy devs (makers of World of Goo) Valve has one of the simplest and most developer-friendly distribution agreements they ever signed and they actually take the smallest cut of any digital distributions they have worked with (which anecdotally means they likely take less than 30% from each sale).

A Tripwire Interactive dev (makers of the Red Orchestra franchise, Killing Floor, etc) says that if it wasn't for Steam their company wouldn't exist. They pointed out how a traditional publisher they were in talks with wanted to give them 15% royalties, take all their IP rights, and tack on a $1.5 million administrative fee on to their recoupment cost, meaning the game would have to sell over $1.5 million worth before they would start to get 15% of what comes in after that. But when they went with Steam for distribution, they recouped their costs within the first week of sales and everything was profit from then on.

Steam took major risks in developing a digital distribution model; they were pretty much the first to do it. They paved the way for the likes of Google, Apple, EA, Ubisoft and now even Microsoft to see the value in this business model and their prices (cut of sales) are probably what is setting the standard that Apple and Google are competing against.

On top of their first-rate distribution service they also offer a ton of helpful resources to developers/publishers who work with them.

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/index.php

They also have amazing PR that should not be underestimated. The buzz and exposure they can offer for developers/publishers of all sizes is hard to beat and probably impossible to match for most indie companies.

Valve work closely with companies like nVidia and are largely responsible for many of the recent driver advancements we are reaping the benefits from whether you support them or not.

Steam is good for Linux, it is good for developers, and it is good for customers.

[Edit: clarified cut of sales when talking about Valves prices.]

[DanLamb]

According to one of the 2d Boy devs (makers of World of Goo) Valve has one of the simplest and most developer-friendly distribution agreements they ever signed and they actually take the smallest cut of any digital distributions they have worked with (which anecdotally means they likely take less than 30% from each sale).

Ok, some devs love them and others are strongly opposed to Steam (Minecraft and Gearbox)

Steam took major risks in developing a digital distribution model; they were pretty much the first to do it. They paved the way for the likes of Google, Apple, EA, Ubisoft and now even Microsoft to see the value in this business model and their prices (cut of sales) are probably what is setting the standard that Apple and Google are competing against.

Wow.... Valve was the first to sell software via download? This is ridiculous, I've bought tons of games via download long before Steam.

Valve work closely with companies like nVidia and are largely responsible for many of the recent driver advancements we are reaping the benefits from whether you support them or not.

Come on... What's next? Valve invented the Internet?

Steam is good for Linux, it is good for developers, and it is good for customers.

I respectfully completely disagree on every point. It's bad for all three parties for the reasons that I mentioned. If individual developers and customers choose to use it, that's fine, I just don't want to see it pressured on everyone like it is on Windows.

[IanS]

Mojang are not opposed to Steam. They just had their own distribution in place and lucked out on the viral hype, so there was less to gain for them personally. The douche from Gearbox has been shown to be talking out his ass in the article I linked to.

What company was using a similar business model to Steam for game sales and digital distribution before 2003-04? Any? I'm not talking about an individual company trying out selling a game through their website, but an actual marketplace that focused on digital sales and providing game library management software; what we think of as digital distribution today.

You can deny it all you want, but devs at Valve work closely with hardware vendors to make sure their games/engines run smoothly with drivers on the platforms they support. They have the money and clout that smaller companies don't have and it makes a difference when they have something to say about driver performance. You can even see it in that video posted the other day on here where devs from Valve and nVidia talked about the work they did together to port Source to Linux.

I'll not so respectfully tell you that you are a dumbass and the only one who is trying to pressure others into anything here. I am glad you aren't using Steam and would never dream of pushing you into using it. The way things are now I don't have to run into you in multiplayer games or see your incessant whining on the Steam forums.

[Kivada]

Dear Michael Larabel, please use this sentence as much as possible in your coming articles. I am sure it will encourage the few open source games and engines out there to become much more awesome. Really great work you are doing here.

Btw what is the deal with SDL2? You've been reporting some time last summer, that it would be close to release. They must be running on valve time too I guess...

I'm not going to fault him for telling the truth for once. Most OSS games are crappy clones of UT3. Sure they where based on the UT3 engine, but the UT3 engine can be used to make allot more then jut a blowfully uninspired arena FPS game with terrible graphics and even worse gameplay. Nobody ever thought to get some help from the Blender guys? The Blender projects looked great, much more detailed graphics then any game could do at the time.

The Nexuiz guys that ran off with the code and made a proprietary game out of it where actually more or less on the right track, just because it's OSS doesn't mean you can't make make it paid software, doing so would allow you to fund further development for the game, they just went about it in the wrong way.

[Samu23el]

That is why I suspect an inside deal with the board and Microsoft.

[DanLamb]

Mojang are not opposed to Steam. They just had their own distribution in place and lucked out on the viral hype, so there was less to gain for them personally.

Not what he said here:

As much as I love Steam, I do somewhat worry about the PC as a gaming platform becoming owned by a single entity that takes 30% of all PC games sold. I?m hoping for a future where more games can self-publish and use social media and friends to market their games. Perhaps there?s something we could do to help out there? I don?t know. If nothing else, we might work as an inspiration for people to self-publish.

[IanS]

Expressing both love and ambivalence towards a platform hardly counts as "strongly opposed."