Apply To Be Part Of The Valve Linux Beta

[Sidicas]

A quick look at kickstarter also shows the days of big Game publishers dictating which platform gets developed for is coming to an end as well. Now I know not all Game studios are going to break away but some prominent names have already made the intention clear to support Linux in their future release, and that is damned well exciting

Meh.. The big Game publishers will just buy out the smaller game publishers the instant those smaller game publishers get big enough. Electric Arts devours every middle sized game company and leaves a giant poo behind.

R.I.P. Origin Systems
R.I.P. Bullfrog
R.I.P. Maxis
R.I.P. Westwood Studios
R.I.P. Virgin Interactive
R.I.P. Dreamworks Interactive
R.I.P. Ubisoft
R.I.P. Bioware
R.I.P. Pandemic
R.I.P. Popcap Games

If you think the companies that develop games for Linux are safe from EA, you're wrong.

In fact, E.A. tried to devour Valve and Steam along with it last year. For whatever reason, that fell through and EA had to create Origin to compete against Steam. Thankfully Origin failed this year, but only because their customer service was terrible and the Windows gamers lashed out against it. For a while there, games were getting pulled off of Steam because EA was forcing the gaming companies to sign exclusive deals with their Origin service so that gamers were forced to buy games through EA rather than allowing the games to be sold on *ANY* other channels.

We haven't heard the last of EA.. They will be back with vengeance next year and they have very deep pockets, even deeper than Valve's. Valve might not be the perfect game distributor, but they're sure as hell, a lot better than EA. I wouldn't put it past EA to buy up *ALL* the indie linux game studios that are out there right now and shut them all down or at least force them to make Windows-only games.. Or maybe combine them all together to make a game studio that makes soccer games, just for the fun of it... They're such little fish so they make easy targets. EA has done stuff like that before with *MUCH* larger gaming companies that they acquired.

[kwagga]

I'm pretty sure it's a troll account. The first post from that account was how the person hated Qt (and the account name was part of the post). So don't mind that, and add that account into your ignore list if it bothers you.



I'm pretty sure that others like me are not planning to install it anyway. And we have our reasons. Since I don't accept their subscriber agreement, I can't install the thing to begin with. Of course, that is not to say that Steam as a driving force is bad - on the contrary, it can very much benefit GNU/Linux. So if you can live with its restrictions, good for you! Enjoy gaming on GNU/Linux.

As for Wine DLLs, aren't they all by the Wine project itself, and not from Microsoft? That's the whole point of DLL overrides.

Hi GreatEmerald,

Cheers for the headsup on the possible troller.

Apart from Steam coming to Linux, what also gets me excited is the native client development scene being made possible by projects such as Mono Game.
A quick look at kickstarter also shows the days of big Game publishers dictating which platform gets developed for is coming to an end as well. Now I know not all Game studios are going to break away but some prominent names have already made the intention clear to support Linux in their future release, and that is damned well exciting

The recent Torchlight for Linux build was met with great success thanks to the ability of Mono Game to have the developers re-comile most of their code for Linux.

Once again we see how Technology becomes the great equalizer

Kind Regards,
Arno

[GreatEmerald]

Necro - You are one angry person or improve your vocabulary to better express yourself, seriously you are like the Xbox kiddie squads..

I'm pretty sure it's a troll account. The first post from that account was how the person hated Qt (and the account name was part of the post). So don't mind that, and add that account into your ignore list if it bothers you.

And if you're the kind of person who believes Steam is evil, then I invite you to not install it. In fact, why don't you wipe your ~/.wine directory while you're at it. There are fucking .dll files in there, man! That's Micro$oft corruption in your $HOME directory!

I'm pretty sure that others like me are not planning to install it anyway. And we have our reasons. Since I don't accept their subscriber agreement, I can't install the thing to begin with. Of course, that is not to say that Steam as a driving force is bad - on the contrary, it can very much benefit GNU/Linux. So if you can live with its restrictions, good for you! Enjoy gaming on GNU/Linux.

As for Wine DLLs, aren't they all by the Wine project itself, and not from Microsoft? That's the whole point of DLL overrides.

[DDF420]

Stop complaining

Really bad survey.

I can understand that they want only ubuntu users for now (looking at the driver choices), but they specifically tell that they want the test to be performed on different hardware. How am I supposed to know which one of the 4 machines I have (and can easily dual boot to Ubuntu just for Steam testing) are least common?! What has my day-to-day choice of DE to Steam gaming? Isn't the whole point of testing to do it on at least few DEs or raw window managers? Same with drivers, if I'm going to be testing, I'd test both the OSS and closed source drivers for the GPU...

Why Ubuntu? There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we?re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities. This doesn?t mean that Ubuntu will be the only distribution we support. Based on the success of our efforts around Ubuntu, we will look at supporting other distributions in the future.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/

[DDF420]

Really bad survey.

I can understand that they want only ubuntu users for now (looking at the driver choices), but they specifically tell that they want the test to be performed on different hardware. How am I supposed to know which one of the 4 machines I have (and can easily dual boot to Ubuntu just for Steam testing) are least common?! What has my day-to-day choice of DE to Steam gaming? Isn't the whole point of testing to do it on at least few DEs or raw window managers? Same with drivers, if I'm going to be testing, I'd test both the OSS and closed source drivers for the GPU...

Why Ubuntu? There are a couple of reasons for that. First, we?re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities. This doesn?t mean that Ubuntu will be the only distribution we support. Based on the success of our efforts around Ubuntu, we will look at supporting other distributions in the future.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/

So i really wish all those using another distro would stop complaining they are not yet included.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

I smell Q butthurt in this thread.

[Larian]

Warning Rant: Skip if you do not want to read.

So tell us how you really feel.

For my part, I already play Valve's games under Linux, and I'm happy to do so. The native clients just mean I'll get better performance. And for me, that's enough. I've got no problem with running the binary NVIDIA driver on my desktop, because for me, that's the one that works best (the open source version didn't cut the mustard when I tried it last, and I understand Intel's driver to be inferior). I don't believe I should be made into a pariah for building a computer that works the way I want it to, and I'm not a fan of going nuclear on people who make different choices in hardware and software than I do. To my mind, espousing the virtues of FOSS while soiling yourself in rage over what people ought to be running is as hypocritical as a bishop in a whorehouse.

Valve is offering something for Linux that I am willing to pay for. Why can't people handle that? Is it because it's not officially supported on your marginally out-of-mainline distro with a user base of six or so? Do you have a hard-on for Ubuntu because a couple of Debian folks lost their minds and occasionally accuse Canonical of being communists (or some other equally senseless thing)? For fuck's sake, just get over yourself, people. Install the Steam client by hand if you really want to ... you can unpack .deb files, you know. And failing that, I would be greatly surprised if there are not ways to get the job done in most distro repositories. And if you're the kind of person who believes Steam is evil, then I invite you to not install it. In fact, why don't you wipe your ~/.wine directory while you're at it. There are fucking .dll files in there, man! That's Micro$oft corruption in your $HOME directory!

I don't think this is very likely, but is it possible that I'm the only one who sees Steam on Linux as a force for standardizing game development resources, at least in theory? I'd label that as a Good Thing. But I also understand that not everybody would agree with me. Sometimes zealotry prevents you from seeing the forest for the flames.

[kwagga]

Warning Rant: Skip if you do not want to read.

OK,

I had to just join the forum to tell whe Eletists and WHINERS to sack up!

You DO NOT HAVE TO RUN STEAM, OR SIGN UP FOR THE SURVEY, hey IT IS COMPLETELY OPTIONAL.

Secondly the great All Father Linus created and continues to develop Linux as a OS for the people, YES that means The average user and advanced "I am UBER godlke super HAXOR peeps"

Those of you, and you know who you are, are doing more harm to the reputation of the Linux community by whining like kids instead of contributing or providing coherent logical constructive criticism.

Necro - You are one angry person or improve your vocabulary to better express yourself, seriously you are like the Xbox kiddie squads..

Valve coming to Linux means it has reached a level of maturity to warrant commercial game support, take the compliment from the industry giant and go, or by the way some of you are moaning, pack up and go live on MARS where you will have total freedom from everything, Oxygen optional.

Go ahead DENY other people because of you narrowed frame of mind and eletist views.

And just to STFU some of you, I have been a Linux/Windows dual booter since way back when my Bro introduced me to Red Hat in 2001, since then it was Gentoo and Deb/Ubuntu.

The Linux world has made great strides and advancements and I am proud to be part of the community, but not on days like this with the stupid comments being posted. Stop wasting time and go back to your Population = 1 worlds where you can be king.

The rest of the populace will continue to happily use their favourite OS and Distro with their Games/Proprietry Blobs (OR NOT - HEY FREEDOM OF CHOICE!) an not skip a beat whether you are here or not..

TO Valve: If you are reading this, welcome to the Linux world and I and many others appreciate the effort being made to better support our platfrom of choice.

And yes I have damned well completed the Survey, give them time they will improve as they learn more about Linux.

KW

End Rant.

[GreatEmerald]

With all this talk about how to fill a survey and how inconvenient it is, I am quite happy that I'm Steam-free

[Licaon]

What is the link fro the group ?!? i forgot to click it before closed window and have no clue what it is

http://steamcommunity.com/games/221410 ,you need to search for Linux in the Steam app to be able to join it