Valve Talks Linux Gaming At The Ubuntu Summit

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve Talks Linux Gaming At The Ubuntu Summit

As expected, a Valve engineer spoke at UDS today about their forthcoming Steam client for Linux release...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTIxNzE

[dimko]

Another

Short, but interesting article, thanks!

[doctoren]

I attended the talk and wouldn't say he said anything about disliking Windows 8. He did say that their motivation for supporting Linux was based on Microsoft/Apple making it more difficult for Valve with their own stores.

[AJenbo]

I got to talk to Drew a little afterwared about package managment. Steam it self should delivered in a deb package. It's also posible that games will have dummy packages that call Steam to allow handeling install/remove via your distributions normal tools, but this is still being evaluated. In general they want to leave the install methode up to the game developer and only handle the minimal for download, install and running the right executable. Definatly no dependency handeling.

[Kano]

That's exactly what i thought - the ui does not really matter but the store integration does. Currently it would be a bit stupid to sell games only in the Win app store - MS still needs more users, maybe MS has to give away Win for free to get the required market share. Currently it is not that expensive, but with 15-30$/? offers limited up to january they do not get enough users within a short time. For Apple this looks very different - there i think Valve already lost as the os upgrades are even cheaper - i would like to know how many Intel macs are out there without the store application. Most games will be sold in more than one store soon and Linux is certainly a way to increase market share - this will lead to more Mac apps too. Also as hardware gets usually cheaper each year with the same or more performance a "Steambox" would not be a too far away possibility. Some might say cloud gaming is the future, that might be true if the high bandwidth connections via cable for fibre are the default but this will take some extra time. The PS4 most likely will use offline media for games to have access to low bandwidth internet users - a "Steambox" would require online only but does not require an extra fast connection as there is no streaming. Well only time will tell whos idea was the best.

[crispy]

I live in copenhagen and would really like to participate in the valve beta. Do I just show up at the developer summit? Ive got work and go there early and come home late so its kind of hard to attend really...

[AJenbo]

I live in copenhagen and would really like to participate in the valve beta. Do I just show up at the developer summit? Ive got work and go there early and come home late so its kind of hard to attend really...

You to also be sign up at UDS.

[elanthis]

I attended the talk and wouldn't say he said anything about disliking Windows 8. He did say that their motivation for supporting Linux was based on Microsoft/Apple making it more difficult for Valve with their own stores.

Translation: having a built-in store in a popular OS scares the crap out of a game distribution company that makes almost all of its money taking 30% off the top of the rest of the PC game industry's sales. One wonders what Gabe's opinion of Ubuntu would be if more than 10 people even remembered that Ubuntu had a store, what it's name is, or whether it even had any games or not.

[Kano]

You can not compare the U store with steam. There the community/awards part is fully missing. Many sales happen because you see that your friends play a specific game and you want to compete with em. Without any rating - points, awards it would be much less fun - those features you usually miss when you cp the game...

[Dawkins]

Translation: having a built-in store in a popular OS scares the crap out of a game distribution company that makes almost all of its money taking 30% off the top of the rest of the PC game industry's sales. One wonders what Gabe's opinion of Ubuntu would be if more than 10 people even remembered that Ubuntu had a store, what it's name is, or whether it even had any games or not.

I may be naive, but I always saw it as Valve "hedging their bets" in case Windows/OSX become even more of a closed platform. With both operating systems having a store now, there is nothing stopping either party from halting all installation of software outside the store. This can be further speculated that, why would a corporation allow distribution of free software in their market? There is nothing to gain except bandwidth that isn't producing income.

I see Valve as the benevolent dictator that is trying to do it's best for the small community it has. It wants to be an enabler for content creation. Valve is not driven by fear of losing profit, but a fear losing a community with creativity. Games are an artform that give users experiences.

I support Linux because I believe operating systems should be built on a set of standards as to allow inter-operation. This way no single entity could control content creation. Linux can always be forked at any time. BSD can as well. There is a substantial amount of software that can run on both. Having two large corporations dictating our experience with computers is not good for anyone. This is only my opinion though.