Valve Is Now Giving Away Their Games To Ubuntu Developers

[AJenbo]

Does translating count as developing

[uid313]

Does translating count as developing

You need a debian.org or ubuntu.com email address.

[gQuigs]

You need a debian.org or ubuntu.com email address.

Ubuntu members can get @ubuntu.com addresses....

[mcirsta]

I'm a distro developer too

When it was only Debian devs I could certainly understand that ( Steam is based on Debian ) but not I'm not sure what the criteria is. I'm a developer for a small distro called Frugalware ( check it out btw, it quite nice I'd say ) so why don't I and my colleagues get these free games ? Or people who contribute to the kernel or gcc or ...
To be quite honest though I don't really give a shit as I don't play games. I prefer to do more productive work and yes, contribute to open source projects in my spare time.
One thing I'm sure of is that I don't regret being a Debian or Ubuntu developer. While Debian is good but way to complicated an archaic I really don't like Ubuntu too much and would never contribute to it.

[GreatEmerald]

When it was only Debian devs I could certainly understand that ( Steam is based on Debian ) but not I'm not sure what the criteria is. I'm a developer for a small distro called Frugalware ( check it out btw, it quite nice I'd say ) so why don't I and my colleagues get these free games ? Or people who contribute to the kernel or gcc or ...

I assume it's because Ubuntu is the recommended distribution for standalone Steam.

[uid313]

Ubuntu members can get @ubuntu.com addresses....

I don't know.
You'll have to do more than sign the Ubuntu Code of Contact (CoC).

Maybe a ubuntu.com address isn't enough, maybe a canonical.com address is needed.
I don't know.

[xeekei]

Now Ubuntu developers can wait for Portal 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive just like Debian developers!

Don't forget Alien Swarm!

[Cann]

Another interesting "forbidden fruit" offer by Valve.

Unlike Debian developers, I doubt many of these have a 'no DRM allowed' standing to abandon.

Valve is really profiting from this, considering
A) They don't really lose anything by "giving" the games away since the vast majority of the money make through the 30% they take off each sale.
B) They have the open source community to do the work for them for free, rather than hiring developers themselves to improve the software, saving them even more money in the long run.
C) They get free PR to look like the good guys by "giving away" their software.

[eidolon]

C) They get free PR to look like the good guys by "giving away" their software.

Or they look like they're playing favorites (see post #14, for example).

[Cann]

Or they look like they're playing favorites (see post #14, for example).

I doubt this, as Debian is used as their base for SteamOS, while Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based distributions are the most common distributions as well as having the largest hardware support.

If I were to make my guess on where they would offer the developers their games free of charge, I would say the Fedora developers are next on their list, due to the popularity (I'm basing this on the list available at Distrowatch, which may or may not be accurate). However, considering Ubuntu is recommended by many for standalone installs of Steam, this may or may not happen.