About 20% Of New Titles On Steam Support Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: About 20% Of New Titles On Steam Support Linux

Of the newest game releases on Steam, around 20% of them are supporting Linux from the start, but that will certainly rise...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQ3NzI

[ворот93]

How many of those are AAA titles?

[log0]

I've been wondering whether Valve has considered to support Wine for Windows only games in their catalog. With support I mean to hire developer(s) to work on Wine compatibility and also advertise compatible games in Steam store. SteamOS with Wine could be huge (no need to keep a Windows box any more).

[cjcox]

Long time Steam on Linux user

Ok.. I've been Linux only since 1993. I've had a Steam account for a very long time, using Steam under Wine, where titles like Half-Life and Half-Life 2 have run for many many years.

So.. now we have "native Steam".. however, realize it's native Steam for a VERY particular distribution of Linux that is known for very peculiar behaviors and choices.

With that said, many of us, especially those with existing Steam accounts, and the extreme minority like myself, that have had Linux-Steam only accounts for many years... have figured out how to twist the highly proprietary target "native Steam" client into a functioning program on something other than "that" distribution of Linux.

Here's the problem. If you see a Steam app that works with Linux and you're are NOT running "that" distribution, odds of it actually working are probably less than 50%. And most app makers do not include any free demo... which isn't necessarily a guarantee that things will work, but still...

Recommendation... I think Linux "native Steam" needs a "free" period for apps. That is, your access to an app through Steam should work for a set period from the moment you download it without having to pay for it. Then, if it's a title you want to keep, pay for it.

Right now... "native Steam" on Linux, if you're not using "that" distribution.. it's a huge risk.

[mmstick]

blah blah blah FUD

You do realize you spent a lot of time typing something completely worthless? Steam runs on every distribution. Just because they picked the distribution with the largest community to release Steam on first doesn't mean anything. Also, I know it's fun to jump onto bandwagons and make fun of Ubuntu and Canonical, but it's really silly and needs to stop.

[MrTheSoulz]

Ok.. I've been Linux only since 1993. I've had a Steam account for a very long time, using Steam under Wine, where titles like Half-Life and Half-Life 2 have run for many many years.

So.. now we have "native Steam".. however, realize it's native Steam for a VERY particular distribution of Linux that is known for very peculiar behaviors and choices.

With that said, many of us, especially those with existing Steam accounts, and the extreme minority like myself, that have had Linux-Steam only accounts for many years... have figured out how to twist the highly proprietary target "native Steam" client into a functioning program on something other than "that" distribution of Linux.

Here's the problem. If you see a Steam app that works with Linux and you're are NOT running "that" distribution, odds of it actually working are probably less than 50%. And most app makers do not include any free demo... which isn't necessarily a guarantee that things will work, but still...

Recommendation... I think Linux "native Steam" needs a "free" period for apps. That is, your access to an app through Steam should work for a set period from the moment you download it without having to pay for it. Then, if it's a title you want to keep, pay for it.

Right now... "native Steam" on Linux, if you're not using "that" distribution.. it's a huge risk.

im sorry but that dosent make any sense..
have u ever heard of steamruntime? if u did you dont acutaly know what it does...
steamruntime is shared for all distros and allows games to talk to steam and not the distro itself wich means it will run the same on all distro.
the only thing that could change is if your distro provide u bad drivers, but even then u can just update them manualy.

[madjr]

How many of those are AAA titles?

I think "Top games by current player count" is more important than if a game is so called "AAA" or not:

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/?l=german

Current Peak Today Game

444,011 515,093 Dota 2
65,746 71,856 Terraria
61,358 61,358 Team Fortress 2
36,765 44,219 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
33,840 42,781 Football Manager 2013
32,212 35,018 Counter-Strike
31,354 31,779 Sid Meier's Civilization V
29,252 31,131 Total War: ROME II
27,250 27,322 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
24,846 26,020 Counter-Strike: Source



In conclusion: Better Graphics doesn't really mean more players. I wouldn't consider Football manager AAA, but it has at peak times double the players than Skyrim.

We can get lots of AAA , but if no one plays them after a short while, are they really better?



Anyway don't get me wrong am also looking forward for Metro last light and newer games.

[ChrisXY]

Here's the problem. If you see a Steam app that works with Linux and you're are NOT running "that" distribution, odds of it actually working are probably less than 50%. And most app makers do not include any free demo... which isn't necessarily a guarantee that things will work, but still...

Did you just make this up? Why do you think that?

[schmidtbag]

I've been wondering whether Valve has considered to support Wine for Windows only games in their catalog. With support I mean to hire developer(s) to work on Wine compatibility and also advertise compatible games in Steam store. SteamOS with Wine could be huge (no need to keep a Windows box any more).

I thought that myself but there are a few problems with that:
1. Wine performance is generally crappy, to the point that it will upset customers who bought a game claiming to work on specs that it in fact don't play the game properly. Valve doesn't want to be held accountable for people complaining about games not running properly in an environment the games were not intended to be used in.
2. Wine breaks easily after updates. This will result in people buying a game that works fine one day and fails to start the day after.
3. Using wine will discourage developers from making an actual linux-native client, as it is a really quick and easy (but sloppy) solution.
4. Steam is overall pretty light on dependencies and I'm sure valve wants to keep it that way. Wine will be 1 more thing users have to worry about.
5. In some countries, there's probably some legal restriction for using wine.


However, I have seen some software set up where they're packaged with just enough wine files to make it run on linux, so you only end up using maybe 20MB of additional disk space to make the program linux compatible. The nice thing about this (aside from not needing wine as a dependency) is it uses a "permanent" wine configuration known to make the program run properly. That way, even if you have wine installed, you don't have to worry about an update breaking anything. The major drawback to this solution is it often requires the software to already be installed, meaning, this would be piracy.

[liam]

Ok.. I've been Linux only since 1993. I've had a Steam account for a very long time, using Steam under Wine, where titles like Half-Life and Half-Life 2 have run for many many years.

So.. now we have "native Steam".. however, realize it's native Steam for a VERY particular distribution of Linux that is known for very peculiar behaviors and choices.

With that said, many of us, especially those with existing Steam accounts, and the extreme minority like myself, that have had Linux-Steam only accounts for many years... have figured out how to twist the highly proprietary target "native Steam" client into a functioning program on something other than "that" distribution of Linux.

Here's the problem. If you see a Steam app that works with Linux and you're are NOT running "that" distribution, odds of it actually working are probably less than 50%. And most app makers do not include any free demo... which isn't necessarily a guarantee that things will work, but still...

Recommendation... I think Linux "native Steam" needs a "free" period for apps. That is, your access to an app through Steam should work for a set period from the moment you download it without having to pay for it. Then, if it's a title you want to keep, pay for it.

Right now... "native Steam" on Linux, if you're not using "that" distribution.. it's a huge risk.

Which version of linux is that? I assume you're talking about ubuntu but I haven't been able to find anything on their announcement pages about that. Moreover, I don't see why they'd even use any particular distro aside from some of their toolchain.
The needs of steam os are too particular to require something as scattershot as something like ubuntu.
So, it might very well be worse than you think
OTOH, they might just very well use pure upstream and drive development of the projects that they think need to be improved to meet their needs. In the long run staying with upstream is the smart move and I'd imagine they know that.