Valve Is Now Giving Away Their Games To Ubuntu Developers

[GreatEmerald]

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.

"By many"? It's recommended by Valve.

[d2kx]

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.

Yeah, because Valve is really struggling with money and isn't hiring everyone who didn't run fast enough right now... you know them well.

[Cann]

Yeah, because Valve is really struggling with money and isn't hiring everyone who didn't run fast enough right now... you know them well.

Where did I imply that, may I ask?
The issue isn't that Valve can't afford it. It's because they rather let the community do the work for them free of charge.

[Cann]

"By many"? It's recommended by Valve.

By many, I also mean Valve as well.

[FLHerne]

Surely the Mesa/Gallium3D and other FOSS driver devs would be the obvious next choice, given the large inroads that can be made in game-specific performance?

[mmstick]

Where did I imply that, may I ask?
The issue isn't that Valve can't afford it. It's because they rather let the community do the work for them free of charge.

It's not like Valve is forcing anyone to do anything for them; besides, is that really a bad thing? Valve is a game developer who hires the best game developers in the industry first and foremost, so they should focus on making games. They do have employees who are really into Linux like the SDL developer, and they are creating some nice debugging utilities for other game developers. Not to mention, they have driver developers working closely with them to help optimize and fix bugs in their drivers, so what more can you really ask for from a game developer? Valve is a huge name in the gaming industry. Would you prefer EA or Ubisoft?

[FutureSuture]

Surely the Mesa/Gallium3D and other FOSS driver devs would be the obvious next choice, given the large inroads that can be made in game-specific performance?

That would be wonderful! Valve, please make it so!

[daniels]

Surely the Mesa/Gallium3D and other FOSS driver devs would be the obvious next choice, given the large inroads that can be made in game-specific performance?

yeah, i'm working on that this week.

[AJenbo]

and kernel

[dee.]

Where did I imply that, may I ask?
The issue isn't that Valve can't afford it. It's because they rather let the community do the work for them free of charge.

So?

That's exactly the benefit of the open source model. Businesses get good software for "free". Users get to enjoy the benefits of the inevitable improvements made to all that open source software, caused by the interest and investment of said businesses. Everybody wins!

It'd be a different thing if Valve wasn't a good FOSS citizen, if they only took others' work and didn't contribute anything back. But so far, seems like they're contributing. I mean, it's not like with FreeBSD that gets one night stands with Apple and Sony who slink away in the morning and never call back the next day. Linux is GPL'd so if Valve makes contributions, we all benefit from them.