Valve Has Hired Another Open-Source Linux GPU Driver Developer

[AlexFonewn]

Also what stops steam from being a windows store app?

A 30% cut for MS on every purchase maybe? So games in Steam have a 30% cut for Valve, and 30% over the total price for MS.

So MS having their own shop is saving the 30% cut of Steam and thus being more profitable or/and more competitive.

[xorbe]

Funny, I was wondering the same thing. I'm certainly very grateful for Valve's dedication to Linux and I hope they keep it up, but so far *whispering* I don't think their investment is really paying off...

It's also a lever to stop MS from attempting the move. If suddenly half the Win10 gamer base moves over to SteamOS that's not good for MS. Without Steam's preparedness, MS would be a lot more empowered to make the move.

[schmidtbag]

how did you measure that?

Steam hardware surveys. Before you (or others) get all huffy about how inaccurate it is, best case scenario, the Linux marketshare on Linux might be 3%, which is still very low.
All that being said, you have to account for the fact that:
* Linux is a very small demographic of gamers
* A great majority of Linux gamers are not using AMD hardware
* The majority of AMD Linux gamers already have sufficient driver support to play almost every native title on Steam
* What AMD Linux lacks most in is VR, which doesn't really matter since there aren't really any Linux titles. If you argue "well there won't be any titles until proper driver support comes along" to my knowledge, Nvidia and amdgpu-pro are Linux VR compatible. In the past when AMD driver support was lacking, publishers still released Linux versions and just stated they were Nvidia-only. So in other words, the lack of AMD's open-source driver support is not a reason for VR titles to not be ported. AMD FOSS+Linux+Steam+VR is a very niche market.
* I'm not aware of any AMD Linux users who want to use Steam on Linux but don't/can't due to driver issues. I'm sure there are r600 users who would qualify for this, of which I highly doubt Valve will cater to.

So I stand by my point - I only see this as a financial loss to Valve. But again, I'm certainly not opposed to their decision. As others have stated, Valve has oodles of cash anyway. I'm personally very happy about this new hire and I'm excited to see what they accomplish.

[moilami]

outside of your imagination valve already released two episodes of hl3

Fake news.

[cybertraveler]

outside of your imagination valve already released two episodes of hl3

Come on man. Yes, there is a case to be made that the episodes should be referred to as HL3. That's not how they were named though. Valve named them as HL2 episodes.

You must know that when people talk about HL3 they are talking about a non-existent game that they hope Valve will create and release in the future. There is no wide-spread confusion over this.

[pal666]

I can only Imagine that Valve has been holding back Half-life 3

outside of your imagination valve already released two episodes of hl3

[pal666]

I meant in the sense that it isn't a profitable effort for Valve.

how did you measure that?

[pal666]

Also what stops steam from being a windows store app?

microsoft. their store, their rules

[eydee]

Judging from Phoronix articles about the extremely poor SteamVR experience, it's probably all about SteamVR. They've been obsessed with VR for quite some time.

[Ardje]

i dont see that ever happening if microsoft wants to stay in bussiness.
Also what stops steam from being a windows store app?

Microsoft will never allow a store app on the store app. And steam is exactly that.
So Valve will not be able to sell third party apps (games) through steam. They all have to be sold from the windows store.
And with windows 10S, the windows user first have to upgrade his license to be able to install third party software like Steam, or any other appstore.
As Microsoft predicted, 85% of the people won't upgrade (==paying) their windows just to be able to buy from others.