Valve Rolls Out A Rare Update To SteamOS Brewmaster

[johnc]

At this point if a software engineer's resume crossed my desk and it had "Valve" in the work history I would just drop that thing into the recycle bin.

[eydee]

Wondering what their mid/long term plans are. Feels like None.

They're still waiting to see if Microsoft manages to take over the universe with its glorious UWP platform. Fortunately the waiting is long.

[Flaburgan]

At least they are still delivering security updates. When you sée how phone manufacturer leave holes un every devices without caring... So thanks for that.

[Luke_Wolf]

Honestly Michael ? What is with your tone? You've turned into a giant sourpuss whenever you are writing an article involving Valve and Linux at this point, whether it's the statistics which you demand to be true, or now this.

I mean yes, Valve fucked up big time. In spite of what a number of you are saying in this thread Valve absolutely has and had the resources where if they had so chosen they could have quite easily hired a 50-100 man team with the singular purpose of making Linux an awesome platform for gaming, and then set up to launch Steam Machines and properly carried through and executed that. If Sony can do it with FreeBSD making deep sweeping changes, Valve could have done it with Linux with substantially less effort due to wanting to keep the standard Linux stack fairly intact. And that's what almost any company other than Valve would have done in Valve's position.

The Problem? Valve's management style mimics hobby programming. Which basically means that people work on what they want to work on, and the hard stuff never gets done/fixed. By consequence the Steam Machine effort has been half-hearted and half-assed, and ever so simple but critical things like making sure that display units are out there for people to try and use in game stores (especially Gamestop since they partnered with them) were not done at all.

Now yes, Valve has certainly helped push things in the right direction, I won't deny that, Steam for Linux is a huge deal, and the work on various infrastructure stuff is great... but if they want to succeed in their stated goals with SteamOS and Steam Machines they need to actually put in a real effort to achieve that, which they absolutely have not done up to this point.

[scottishduck]

Once AMD DC hits mainline, valve is either going to give it another shot with some huge update or simply announce they’re winding down on Linux efforts. So all eyes on 4.15...

[ruthan]

I think than Valve overrated whole desktop Linux community, they though that community just need to push and everything would be nice..

So yes there is hard way just hire those 50-100 developers internally or externally and paid them to fix Linux desktop, Valve have money for that but they dont like Linux enough to sacrifice them.. Gaben is in TOP 100 Forbes people, but for him is more important support kitchen utensils Kickstarters..

[josk]

Agreed. Steam on Linux I feel has changed everything. Sure, there are only a handful of games released with Linux support to ones created overall, but that is far better than what used to be. Going back before 2010, all I had to play on Linux semi current at the time was Prey and Quake 4. Then a few small indies like Osmos. Now, with Steam, we get games like Dirt Rally, Shadows of Mordor, Company of Heroes 2, Mad Max, PayDay 2 and F1 2017 brought to Linux. My library is now so large, I have trouble choosing what to play next, as I likely won't get to them all. Before, I could buy every game in Linux, and had to replay them as there just wan't anything new coming out.

Totally agree. I have build SteamOS machine that I use every week for playing games. All controllers (ps3/xbox360/steam contollers works just out of the box). I think they have done quite a lot for linux gaming and I hope they will continue with this work with library and SteamOS updates.

[nomadewolf]

Honestly Michael ? What is with your tone? You've turned into a giant sourpuss whenever you are writing an article involving Valve and Linux at this point, whether it's the statistics which you demand to be true, or now this.

I mean yes, Valve fucked up big time. In spite of what a number of you are saying in this thread Valve absolutely has and had the resources where if they had so chosen they could have quite easily hired a 50-100 man team with the singular purpose of making Linux an awesome platform for gaming, and then set up to launch Steam Machines and properly carried through and executed that. If Sony can do it with FreeBSD making deep sweeping changes, Valve could have done it with Linux with substantially less effort due to wanting to keep the standard Linux stack fairly intact. And that's what almost any company other than Valve would have done in Valve's position.

The Problem? Valve's management style mimics hobby programming. Which basically means that people work on what they want to work on, and the hard stuff never gets done/fixed. By consequence the Steam Machine effort has been half-hearted and half-assed, and ever so simple but critical things like making sure that display units are out there for people to try and use in game stores (especially Gamestop since they partnered with them) were not done at all.

Now yes, Valve has certainly helped push things in the right direction, I won't deny that, Steam for Linux is a huge deal, and the work on various infrastructure stuff is great... but if they want to succeed in their stated goals with SteamOS and Steam Machines they need to actually put in a real effort to achieve that, which they absolutely have not done up to this point.

Agreed!
Valve has done a lot for Linux, and we have to be thankful for that.
But they can also do much more and we have to 'demand' that.
My hope is that they are hoarding all the stuff to have Linux gaming on top form with a big release.

[Dehir]

Wondering what they were smoking before to think they should have any other plan. A clear sign of just how big Newell's ego is to think they can change the Linux desktop landscape in a few years in a way none of the other big, way, way more experienced companies could in the past 25 years. The fact that a huge number of people actually believed their promises is also a great sign of just how out of touch a lot of Linux zealots are.

This has nothing to do with Gabe's ego. The ego comes from microsoft side who is basicly forcing everyone to be dependent for their products. Company that had CEO- jumping around like a monkey and spitting out syleva while screaming that i hate that Norwegian Linus Torvalds... What can you expect.

Too sad AAA developers and gamers have accepted to sell part of their soul for microsoft.


And think about sittuattion without Gave and valve taking brave route to push linux further? We would be still next tot nothing AAA titles or few foss games and forced to run with wine most of the stuff

[sarmad]

At this point if a software engineer's resume crossed my desk and it had "Valve" in the work history I would just drop that thing into the recycle bin.

Would be helpful if you mention where you work so that we know where not to apply; not that I have ever worked at Valve anyway.