Fake Debian Developers Try To Get Free Linux Games

With Valve giving away their games free to Debian developers and now Valve's games are free to Ubuntu developers too, sadly it's no surprise there's some individuals trying to be impostors and get these games for free by posing as the developers.

Joseph Shields of Collabora wrote an interesting blog post this week about "fake Debian developers" ever since Valve Software and Collabora partnered up to give away access to Valve's games on Steam for registered Ubuntu and Debian developers, since Valve has long been recommending Ubuntu Linux as a platform for running their Steam client and Valve's SteamOS is based upon Debian.

At the time the blog post was written, almost 25% of the Debian developers had requested their keys for gaining free access to the Valve titles offered via the Steam Linux client. Of the 279 developers granted access, 22 requests were defined. Of the 22 faulty requests, 10 didn't meet the official requirements while seven had tried to fake their credentials, even registering email addresses and trying to fake the emails of Debian developers.

Sadly this doesn't come as much of a surprise... While at first there were many that just wanted Valve to offer official Linux support via the Steam client and Source Engine, now that it's here, they want it at no cost. There's also other Linux distribution developers out there also wanting free access to Valve's Linux games. There's also many Phoronix readers out there who depend upon this site as the sole source for Linux hardware content and news yet utilize AdBlock and other measures that are a severe deprivation to its well being. There's also been blemishes to Valve's other Linux work with users unsatisfied with optional closed-source bits like the Steam in-home streaming and VR interfaces, etc. A few years ago when there were many Phoronix exclusives about Valve's forthcoming Linux work, users didn't believe it or they simply wanted it, but now that they have access to it they want it for free, which really doesn't show well for the Linux community especially with its minority market-share compared to Windows gamers. I've also heard similar criticism of Linux gamers from my surfing buddies. In the end, we shall see how well Linux gaming can compete with Windows from the perspective of game studios or whether they end up with unsatisfaction like from the early LGP and Loki days.