There's Now More Than 1,100 Games On Steam For Linux

[pal666]

Love to see the Bohemia Interactive Studios (ARMA*/DayZ) games on Linux but lets be completely honest here, these guys have a hard enough time with one platform.

most of the game development resources are spent not on (software)developers, but on artists etc. and most of (software)developers resources are spent on not-platform-specific parts. maybe 1% of whole game is platform-specific. and after porting to mac, porting to linux comes almost for free

[pal666]

It will always be like this unless someone decides to fix the mess which is Linux right now.

no amount of spamming this bullshit will make you right

Right now, most distros are in the process of f*cking up libstdc++ backwards compatibility. You know, because GCC developers couldn't find a better way to introduce the new features of GCC 5.1. Isn't it amazing when the developers of core Linux userspace components (glibc and libstdc++) don't give a damn about compatibility.

what can you tell us about non-existent compatibility between msvc releases, imbecile?

[birdie]

Do you have proof about this, or are you just wildly accusing people of crap you don't understand here?

libstdc++ is VERSIONED, which means that unless they are doing something stupid (and i haven't looked into it, so tell me if they are) all old binary applications should still work perfectly fine. Because they'll link to the old version (.so.1) while new apps compiled with the new libs will link to the new version (.so.2)

Yeah, versioned, in theory. In practice libstdc++ in GCC 5.1 has the same soname as libstdc++ in GCC 4.0.

[birdie]

By the way, the problem of incompatible library versions has plagued Steam games on Windows, too. That's the main reason why many Steam games install their own versions of the Visual C++ runtime, DirectX, etc. Packaging for Linux should follow suit.

This is simply false.

1) Steam games which install DirectX simply update it because Microsoft hasn't created a simple way of figuring out if DirectX is updated to to a certain point (so most games simply reinstall over and over June 2010 DirectX redistributable systemwide).
2) No games, that I know of, bundle their own MSVC components. Again, they (re)install 2005/2008/2010 MSVC++ runtimes systemwide.

Microsoft resolved the compatibility problem years ago by introducing WinSxS. Linux developers are still hellbent on recompiling the whole world (in terms of FreeBSD, i.e. all the sources) whenever core components (like libstdc++, glibc, glib, gtk+, qt, etc) get updated.

[DMJC]

Tipping point?

What I want to know is, what happens when Linux has more commercial games than OSX? Right now Apple has a psychological lead in mindshare mainly because it has more software. How much more seriously will Linux be taken when it has more games available than Apple does?

[nightmarex]

Ahh, I see. I didn't imagine any distros would be using it yet, since they only released GCC 2 days ago.

That's pretty bad, then.

Thanks to Arch many bugs have been fixed and addressed before it becomes a widespread problem. For instance there was a terrible Cinnamon bug with the new version of Gnome that thanks to dozens of Arch users unable to launch their desktop environment got sorted out before it became a problem for others... who may user ci... well it got that problem sorted.

Being cutting edge cuts both ways...

EDIT: There is a testing repo which these things should be sorted out in but eh.... shit happens.

[smitty3268]

From the discussions here it sounds like Arch are. Though in all likelihood they just shipped it too soon and ran head first into these issues before they were all sorted out. Wouldn't be the first time Arch broken everything by being just a little too eager to adopt new versions of something.

Ahh, I see. I didn't imagine any distros would be using it yet, since they only released GCC 2 days ago.

That's pretty bad, then.

[TheOne]

Short of releasing any major Linux exclusives (which Valve has stated it won't do*, and which other heavyweight development companies are also unlikely to do), if Valve makes alterations to how it conducts its monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey, that could also impact the reported market share.

*(Technically it was in reference to SteamOS specifically, and while that leaves wiggle room for Linux exclusives as those wouldn't constitute SteamOS exclusives, I think it is clear the intent was that Valve won't engage in exclusionism against any platforms it already services.)

Maybe a pre-release first for SteamOS strategy would work

[eidolon]

Realistically, how high do you think the reported Linux gaming marketshare will rise once SteamOS is stable and Steam Machines hit the retail channels?

Given what is known at this time, I think Linux's Steam market share has a chance of hitting 5-8% in the next 2.5-3 years.

Short of releasing any major Linux exclusives (which Valve has stated it won't do*, and which other heavyweight development companies are also unlikely to do), if Valve makes alterations to how it conducts its monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey, that could also impact the reported market share.

*(Technically it was in reference to SteamOS specifically, and while that leaves wiggle room for Linux exclusives as those wouldn't constitute SteamOS exclusives, I think it is clear the intent was that Valve won't engage in exclusionism against any platforms it already services.)

[chimpy]

I wonder how long until Linux overtakes OSX in both number of games and number of users. Maybe end of next year?