Ryan Gordon On Valve's Steam, Linux Porting

Here's some interesting comments from Ryan "Icculus" Gordon about the latest state of Linux gaming and what's ahead.

Hitting the Internet this week is a new interview with Ryan Gordon on his Linux game porting activities, thoughts on Valve's Linux efforts, and other similar topics. Here's some of the interview highlights:

- Ryan views Valve's Linux work this year, Unity 4 on Linux, and the other Linux gaming accomplishments as just "good foundations to an awesome 2013."

- Ryan believes that Valve coming to Linux is specifically because of the Windows Store found in Microsoft Windows 8. This is a large part of it as when I was first to report back in April on Gabe Newell's distaste for Windows 8.

- Also good for Linux gaming have been Humble Bundle, Unity game engine on Linux, and Kickstarter seeing lots of Linux-friendly work.

- Ryan feels that game developers/publishers who claim the demand of Linux game ports not justifying the extra development cost are short-sighted. "A one-man team--me--can take a completed game and port it to Linux. Usually this is pretty fast and cheap. If they had concerned themselves with portability right from the start, there would be no problem at all."

- Google Earth is Ryan's favorite project to date that he ported to Linux.

- Ryan has been very busy working on Linux game ports with Steam coming to Linux. Among the recently-announced ports that he has been involved with are Killing Floor and Red Orchestra. There are also "others in the pipeline."

- Ryan is still using Ubuntu Linux.

- Linux still needs a better open-source OpenGL debugger with APITrace only being a good start.

- Gordon admits that ioDoom3 is stalled at the moment. "I would like to say we'll get to it eventually, but I think everyone was much more passionate about Quake 3 than we were about Doom 3, and it shows in our revision history."

- Ryan Gordon didn't make any new comments concerning his views on open-source graphics drivers or whether there is any hope for Unreal Tournament 3 coming to Linux thanks to Valve's pressure or any chance in stance out of Epic Games.

Ryan's interview in full can be read on Cheerful Ghost.