A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell

[alcalde]

Because Valve isn't announcing support for Linux. They are simply making R&D efforts. Iff it pans out, then we'll get a press release.

Valve isn't a pharmaceutical company, it's a software company. There's no uncertain experimentation involved in porting a 3D engine. If they're looking to add more people, then they're doing it, period. I believe it was Yoda who said "Either do or don't do; there is no try." There's no "try" when it comes to Valve porting a graphics engine to a full-featured x86 operating system.

[alcalde]

Hardly. Valve just said they are "a long way from Valve shipping a hardware device". It certainly doesn't mean SteamBox isn't in the works.

It does, actually. As Tom's Hardware put it:

Still, regardless what seems to be going on with Steam Box, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi claims the company is currently focused on prepping and shipping the Steam Big Picture Mode UI. He even admitted that Valve is building boxes to test the new Steam interface only. This new UI will reportedly make the online gaming service easier to use for people who want to play Steam games on a PC that's connected to their TV.

"We're also doing a bunch of different experiments with biometric feedback and stuff like that, which we've talked about a fair amount," he admitted. "All of that is stuff that we're working on, but it's a long way from Valve shipping any sort of hardware."

Yet hardware is not out of the question, as even Valve bossman Gabe Newell recently said that Valve will sell hardware if it becomes a necessity to keep the doors open.

On top of that, Lombardi didn't actually refuse to say that Valve isn't working on a hardware platform. Instead, he agreed that there's definitely nothing coming any time soon, nothing at GDC or E3. Like Newell said, there's a possibility that maybe some day Valve will make hardware, but Lombardi made it clear that (a) Valve partnering with hardware manufacturers and/or (b) Valve building its own hardware will not be happening anytime soon. End of story.

They all seem to be saying they would do it if they needed to do it, and maybe they could do it, but they have no plans to do it right now. It's probably the same with a Linux port of Steam. Valve producing its own hardware, even if it weren't Linux-based, doesn't make any sense at this point in time anyway. In a scary "post-PC" locked-down future where nothing, including games, gets onto PCs other than via the Windows Store, it would be a necessity. I think that's what they're worried about.

[renkin]

I believe it was Yoda who said "Either do or don't do; there is no try." There's no "try"

Or was that Morpheus from The Matrix?

[kraftman]

It strikes me as odd that Michael took a photo of his screen instead of just taking a screenshot.

There are no reasons to not trust Michael. Could you imagine how big impact such lie would have on Phoronix? Michael started talking about Steam long ago and know we have some proofs. If I remember correctly he also said there will be another proofs too.

[Tares]

I do agree with Naib, that it would be great if the steam would come to linux, but the hype here is a little too much.

But if they really release steam and their games natively for linux, they will get my money... a lot of my money

[meklu]

Well, I believe in Michael this time around. I sent Valve an e-mail and got a reply, which seems pretty solid to me.

[Kristian Joensen]

The reply

What did they say?

[curaga]

That was another rumor that got debunked by Valve.

It is pretty obvious that this is their skunkworks goal, eventually. Maybe it's "Steambox Light" that will run your games but not your windows apps. Maybe it's a threat to MS to get cheaper licenses.

In any case, it's a lot of positive PR and a million or some more users.

[meklu]

What did they say?

Here it goes:

Hello!

I couldn't help but notice Phoronix's recent coverage on the Steam for Linux matter and I thought I'd drop you a line.

For a game porter/Linux expert I would suggest Frank Earl, whose resume is at http://www.earlconsult.com/frank_resume.html .

Another thing that I laid my eyes upon was this post: http://steamforlinux.com/?q=node/23
> "2. Good tools to track down OpenGL performance and help debug rendering issues just don?t exist."
I've heard of a couple of tools for this very job:
1. gDEBugger is a commercial solution now owned by AMD and is nowadays a Visual Studio plugin. Old standalone versions are still available though ( http://www.gremedy.com/download.php ) and best of all, free of charge.
2. apitrace is an open source tool available at https://github.com/apitrace/apitrace .
I've heard good things about both of these tools, but since I haven't done any graphics programming, I don't know how these compare to e.g. D3D debugging tools.

I hope reading this message was worth your while and I wish you all the best in getting out a polished product or two as soon as possible, so I can spend some more money on your company's services

Best regards,
Melker Narikka.

Hi Melker.

We're currently fighting some license issues with gDEBugger and minor build issue with apitrace. But hopefully they'll prove useful once we get past those things. And I'm gone next week but will send Frank an e-mail when I get back. Thank you for the reference - useful and very much appreciated!


-Mike

Please don't sue me now, Valve.

[yogi_berra]

There are no reasons to not trust Michael.

There is no reason to trust Michael. He's just a random guy on the internet that happens to have a blog.

Could you imagine how big impact such lie would have on Phoronix?

I imagine it would result in a huge thread on his forum with two distinct groups arguing over whether or not he is lying. Kinda like this huge thread that has two distinct groups of people arguing about whether or not he is lying.

Michael started talking about Steam long ago and know we have some proofs. If I remember correctly he also said there will be another proofs too.

What proof? A picture of an email that could easily be faked with vim and gimp? That's all it takes for you to believe anything? How does your credit survive all of the phishing attempts on the web?

Seriously, without a public beta from Valve it's just a bad joke.