Is Valve's Steam Client Bad & Damaging For Linux?

[Kivada]

And so the nuts that think that OSS devs are infallible deities come out again. Just because someone isn't a coder or a 3D modeler or graphics artist doesn't mean they can't critique your work, even if you have done it for free.

Oh right, so there are like ten fps/arena shooters? And that is what you call majority? Stop trolling dude!

Did it ever come to your mind, that this games are there because their creators and contributors enjoy playing them? And that they might see fancy artwork and story as secondary?

You don't like them? Don't fscking play them. But shitting on foss games in general just because they don't serve your taste is just sad. At the very least show some respect to the work of others, that they are sharing with you for free btw.

Because there aren't a dozen clones of VDrift, Flight Gear or any of the OSS games that are trying to do something different. Like so many distros and forks, they are a massive waste of resources that, if they where consolidated into a single project could actually produce something good instead of a dozen things that are below mediocre.

If you clearly know what would be more interesting, why aren't you:
a) making it, or
b) writing it out explicitly and then showing your doc around

I have posted things they could do to vastly improve their games dozens of times, all I ever hear from the devs is that this or that can't be done for lack of resources, so when you inquire how they could get more resources they seem to be 100% dumbfounded. Many of us are more then willing to pay good money for a Linux game that is fun to play, too bad that there are exceedingly few that meet that criteria where they could actually get away with charging.

[ninez]

Do you want people to acknowledge or support your claims? Substantiate them rather than just presenting conjecture and speculation.

____________
Based on your posts, I believe you are being paid by Valve's competitors prevent support for their platform. This is just speculation. True? No one but you knows. Your posts could be treated the same way.

Note: I do not really believe that you are being paid to do this.

+1

exactly, utterly pointless to be setting up such speculation - as if it has any consequence or truth without anything to back it up.

it's really silly and i don't get how Dan doesn't seem to get this.

[ninez]

I have speculated on the terms of the hidden contracts. I have also very clearly labeled this as speculation and criticized the very fact that we have to speculate and we can't just see the terms.

This seems utterly pointless. You're essentially just making up sh*t, then you are critical of your own fabricated claims, labelling them as _possibly_ being Valve's position...

when in reality, it is nothing more than non-sense. (since it has no basis in reality).

Why would you say "If you think certain employees working for Apple and/or Google haven't had to sign NDAs in some cases, you are also probably quite wrong.."? I just wrote this:

You aren't reading anything that I am writing.

I can read just fine. You don't get to redefine where NDAs are, or are not acceptable in business. I've had to sign an NDA before from a company whom i was not employed by, this isn't all that uncommon. By your reasoning, NDAs in this case are unacceptable since i am not on receiving a salary from that company ~ but that is a bunch of BS, straight up. - It was a complete necessity, in order to be able to work with that company, since myslef and others had access / knowledge about things that had to be safe-guarded/protected.

I've read a bunch of your posts, and i get the impression that you don't have a whole lot of experience with NDAs, or working in this type of situation.

You seem to be under the false impression of entitlement to know the inner working of Valve and their products, which you are not. Their employees (at various levels) are entitled (more likely a requirement / prerequisite) in order to do the job in order to be able to work @ Valve. - You're not an employee, nor a 3rd party that is working directly with them, get over it. :\

If Steam was competing purely on product merit, I would agree. Steam is not winning on technical prowess, but on political clout. Steam has a massive advantage with a very passionate, and extremely vocal minority fan base generating this overwhelming push towards Steam. This crowd generally doesn't even know the secret terms of the Steam contracts and this push isn't merit based.

that group is not entitled to know the inner working of XYZ's companies products whom they use, necessarily. If you feel that Steam is not winning on technical prowess, fine - then since you have such heavy criticism, why don't you do better - since clearly you think you can / know how to... or is this just a case of being "an arm-chair cynic"?? (seems to me to be very likely, you are the latter).

Part of any successful company is going to involve, so called "political clout", regardless. Successful companies don't run solely on 'technical merit' - business does not work that way.

I fell like I've written this point many many times in many different ways and people such as you are just not reading or even acknowledging this point.

that's probably because your point isn't quite "as heavy" as you think it is.... You seem idealistic and naive without any actual exposure, inside of a company where NDAs are typically used. Yet, you've defined where/how/why/when NDAs should be used, where/how/why/when they shouldn't be - but their are gapping holes in your logic vs. "reality" in business.

I just don't think you have a valid argument here. I acknowledge what you are saying ~ i just think your complaint is invalid.

[jayrulez]

I have speculated on the terms of the hidden contracts. I have also very clearly labeled this as speculation and criticized the very fact that we have to speculate and we can't just see the terms.

Why would you say "If you think certain employees working for Apple and/or Google haven't had to sign NDAs in some cases, you are also probably quite wrong.."? I just wrote this:



You aren't reading anything that I am writing.



If Steam was competing purely on product merit, I would agree. Steam is not winning on technical prowess, but on political clout. Steam has a massive advantage with a very passionate, and extremely vocal minority fan base generating this overwhelming push towards Steam. This crowd generally doesn't even know the secret terms of the Steam contracts and this push isn't merit based.

I fell like I've written this point many many times in many different ways and people such as you are just not reading or even acknowledging this point.

Do you want people to acknowledge or support your claims? Substantiate them rather than just presenting conjecture and speculation.

____________
Based on your posts, I believe you are being paid by Valve's competitors prevent support for their platform. This is just speculation. True? No one but you knows. Your posts could be treated the same way.

Note: I do not really believe that you are being paid to do this.

[DanLamb]

You ignored what i said - you don't actually know what the NDA covers, nor why Valve has them - your opinions are nothing but speculation, and imho don't have any basis in reality. If you think certain employees working for Apple and/or Google haven't had to sign NDAs in some cases, you are also probably quite wrong...

I have speculated on the terms of the hidden contracts. I have also very clearly labeled this as speculation and criticized the very fact that we have to speculate and we can't just see the terms.

Why would you say "If you think certain employees working for Apple and/or Google haven't had to sign NDAs in some cases, you are also probably quite wrong.."? I just wrote this:

Salaried employees must generally sign an NDA, which makes total sense

You aren't reading anything that I am writing.

Why not? I think this is just a case of the free-market working correctly. People value Valve's service, they pay for it, it dominates ~ good for them.

If Steam was competing purely on product merit, I would agree. Steam is not winning on technical prowess, but on political clout. Steam has a massive advantage with a very passionate, and extremely vocal minority fan base generating this overwhelming push towards Steam. This crowd generally doesn't even know the secret terms of the Steam contracts and this push isn't merit based.

I fell like I've written this point many many times in many different ways and people such as you are just not reading or even acknowledging this point.

[ninez]

Salaried employees must generally sign an NDA, which makes total sense. Apps store marketplaces like Apple and Google make you agree to terms, but the terms themselves are completely public and open to public scrutiny. If you want to make and sell software for Mac/Windows/Linux, you don't have to sign anything, you can just do it.

You ignored what i said - you don't actually know what the NDA covers, nor why Valve has them - your opinions are nothing but speculation, and imho don't have any basis in reality. If you think certain employees working for Apple and/or Google haven't had to sign NDAs in some cases, you are also probably quite wrong...

I don't think NDA's are normal for a broad marketplace conduit like Steam aims to be.

You may not think so, but my feeling is - this is probably often the scenario, across many different markets.

It makes sense to welcome more apps/games to Linux even we personally don't like them. Most other apps, don't have this platform wide critical mass effect. Steam however does. I suspect Steam take a very large cut of revenue from Windows gaming today and I don't believe that is reasonable.

Why not? I think this is just a case of the free-market working correctly. People value Valve's service, they pay for it, it dominates ~ good for them. and regardless, i don't see this bad for desktop linux, at all. - since it brings more people into the fold... underlying stuff - such as drivers, libs, etc - see improvement, etc. To me it's a big win, even if i am not likely to make use of Steam.

[curaga]

OSS FPS game should have many more players then they ever had, simply because they are 100% free and work on every OS out there. But they don't because the games are completely uninteresting.

If you clearly know what would be more interesting, why aren't you:
a) making it, or
b) writing it out explicitly and then showing your doc around

[log0]

You'd be wrong there, I really like Metal Blob Solid as it reminds me of the old 2d Duke Nukem games I used to play on my old 286. I'm a NAEV junkie, it's probably the best OSS game created thus far, and it's proof that the OSS community can in fact create a game with a story line and good artwork. I've donated quite a bit to the project over the last 2 years.

I liked S.C.O.U.R.G.E. but it was always crash happy for me, so these days I play Dungeons Of Dredmor and Legend Of Grimrock. I fully believe that an OSS team could have done DoD just as well as Gaslamp did if only someone had some drive to do it. LoG, not so much, level design too elaborate and artwork too well refined.

I've always wanted to try Yo Frankie! but it's never run for me on any setup. Likewise for other interesting sounding 3D games like that submarine warfare game project that seemed to have died years ago, I forget the name.

But as we all know, the vast majority of the work on OSS games goes into the craptacular FPS titles.



It doesn't matter, both games where equally shallow affairs that got just as boring just as fast.

Oh right, so there are like ten fps/arena shooters? And that is what you call majority? Stop trolling dude!

Did it ever come to your mind, that this games are there because their creators and contributors enjoy playing them? And that they might see fancy artwork and story as secondary?

You don't like them? Don't fscking play them. But shitting on foss games in general just because they don't serve your taste is just sad. At the very least show some respect to the work of others, that they are sharing with you for free btw.

[Kivada]

Except that Aliens: Colonial Marines is not an OSS game, it uses a modified Unreal Engine 3 that has nothing to do with Unreal Tournament 3. And there is only one game that runs on Linux that is on UE3 to begin with. And it's not an arena shooter, too.

So what you are saying is that the OSS game dev teams will never be able to advance further then what they have? Prettying up a very old and very beaten to death game type? The only OSS FPS shooter that tries anything even remotely different is Tremulous/Unvanquished. All the rest are quite literally the same damn game with different graphics. And don't give me that shit about "but this one has a rocket launcher" or "but this one is in space" or "but this one uses a different engine" it's the same damn game when you play them and thats what matters more then anything else.

What you and every other OSS game apologist doesn't seem to understand is that the game engines they currently have are capable of making much more interesting games then what they are currently making, they just aren't trying to make anything remotely interesting. Outside of the Stallman idealists, anyone that wants to spend 5 mins mindlessly playing an arena shooter is going to go something people actually play like QuakeLive or Team Fortress 2.

OSS FPS game should have many more players then they ever had, simply because they are 100% free and work on every OS out there. But they don't because the games are completely uninteresting.

[Kivada]

You are obviously not an open source game player. I've got at least a dozen beautifull oss games on my hdd and none of them is an FPS game. And of course they wont have graphics like their $20M and $100M commercial counterparts. This are pretty much hobbyist projects and often even 1-3 man projects driven by pure passion. Shitting on them they way Michael and You do is just sad and doesn't help in any way.

Especially on a website which claims to be:
"Phoronix is the leading technology website for Linux hardware reviews, open-source news, Linux benchmarks, open-source benchmarks..."

You'd be wrong there, I really like Metal Blob Solid as it reminds me of the old 2d Duke Nukem games I used to play on my old 286. I'm a NAEV junkie, it's probably the best OSS game created thus far, and it's proof that the OSS community can in fact create a game with a story line and good artwork. I've donated quite a bit to the project over the last 2 years.

I liked S.C.O.U.R.G.E. but it was always crash happy for me, so these days I play Dungeons Of Dredmor and Legend Of Grimrock. I fully believe that an OSS team could have done DoD just as well as Gaslamp did if only someone had some drive to do it. LoG, not so much, level design too elaborate and artwork too well refined.

I've always wanted to try Yo Frankie! but it's never run for me on any setup. Likewise for other interesting sounding 3D games like that submarine warfare game project that seemed to have died years ago, I forget the name.

But as we all know, the vast majority of the work on OSS games goes into the craptacular FPS titles.

...I think you mean Quake 3.

It doesn't matter, both games where equally shallow affairs that got just as boring just as fast.