A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell

[mikeplus64]

Simple question: if Valve employees are so eager and willing to share their supposed Linux plans with every chap who's able to peruse an e-mail client, and let them blare this information into the world, why then is there nothing official or at least semi-official? There's a big Linux thread at the Steam Users' Forums, where people are asking all the same questions. Nobody from Valve provides answers there. No renowned gaming website has picked up on this. And it's their frakkin' job to report "rumors".

If you want Steam on Linux, it's easier to take a dump on your computer than to wait for the prophecies of conspiracy theorists to become true.

At the moment, most Valve employees are on vacation, as far as I know.

[TripChoco]

You have to keep in mind that the only thing the valve employees confirmed is that they're working on porting l4d to linux. No word was lost about releasing it. Yes, they're not making it a secret but they're not exactly promising anything either. All the "confirmations" have been (I assume intentionally) vague as to what the actual plan is

It makes no sense for the company to take an official stance if it might not happen after all

[meklu]

It makes no sense for the company to take an official stance if it might not happen after all

This. Nobody wants to make the next UT3.

[Kano]

If valve wants to sell a "box" to play their games linux might be an interesting option. Could be like a Linux gaming console then - without win fee. This would not be limited to x86, but currently the gfx solutions are a bit faster on x86 - currently even ati/amd is a bit faster with fglrx, so maybe they want good performance with that.

[entropy]

If valve wants to sell a "box" to play their games linux might be an interesting option. Could be like a Linux gaming console then - without win fee. This would not be limited to x86, but currently the gfx solutions are a bit faster on x86 - currently even ati/amd is a bit faster with fglrx, so maybe they want good performance with that.

The only, big, issue I see with a Linux-based console is the Steam (back) catalogue.
Valve may port their Source games to Linux but what about the rest?
Yet, only a tiny fraction of the games available on steam do have a Linux client released (not to Steam, ofc).
Next to none of them are AAA titles, mostly coming from those recent Indie Bundles.

Now, wouldn't a Steam console make most sense when Valve is able to use the entire Steam (back) catalogue?
Sadly, I fail to see how that is possible with a Linux-based system.

[TheComrade]

By the way, if Ryan Gordon says in the thread about his Flourish talk...

I think my interactions with Valve have been overstated.

... then I wonder how many other things have been "overstated" regarding Valve.

[TripChoco]

Maybe that's why they're porting steam to linux to begin with? Wait it out, let people release their linux ports to steam so they may have a decent backlog by the time the steambox is ready

[mememe]

Maybe that's why they're porting steam to linux to begin with? Wait it out, let people release their linux ports to steam so they may have a decent backlog by the time the steambox is ready

Yeah, because that's going to happen when Steam is ported to Linux. Just look at the Mac, it has a Steam client but few games (at least in comparison with Windows) and there are 10 times as many Mac users with an even higher number of potential buyers. They can create the Steambox, give a few interested developers a couple of months to port their games to it and entirely disregard Linux on the PC anyway.

[TripChoco]

If you look at wikimedia's stats, the amount of linux and mac users seems to be relatively on par. The "1%" commonly quoted is from a paid stat counting company having customers such as microsoft.com.

In any case, my point is that quite a couple of the steam games, e.g. world of goo already have linux ports. If they add a linux client, those that ported their games to linux (which especially amongst indie developers is getting more and more common) will already be available for their steambox.

Yeah, mac doesn't have a ton of games, but it has quite a couple. It just seems like a good idea to have ported and ready games available in addition to the ones they will inevitably get if they do make a console.

[storma]

Dunno, I can't say I've ever heard someone say "If only Mac had this feature, I'ld switch over". Even with steam coming to Mac, did anybody change OS? This is a different situation with Linux, there are people waiting to make the switch.