Valve porting Steam and Games to Linux

[SatanSkin]

I do hope you picked up on the sarcasm in my post indicated by the obligatory smiley

 

[Captain Newbie]

I do hope you picked up on the sarcasm in my post indicated by the obligatory smiley

Did you miss the Santa hat?

 

[shadin]

Here's to hoping. It would be a really smart move, maybe someday I'll have no use for Windows at all, since my last use for it is gaming.

 

[Dapman02]

Fully open-source games will likely never happen (at least not for new games). If the engine and content are all open-source from the start, then a for-profit developer has no incentive to produce the game. You can't really make much money selling support contracts for games. Older games that have been out for many years (like Freespace) may get open sourced, but it won't happen for any company that is still making a profit off the engine. DRM and licensing are part of it (Damn you Epic, where the hell is my Linux UT3?), but the biggest part is the income. If you can't sell support contracts, you can't make much money off of open source. I don't care whether the game is open source or not, I just want it to run natively on my Linux system.

I don't believe all applications running on linux have to be open source, I believe that you can put closed source (or non-free) games on Linux.

 

[petteyg359]

I don't care whether the game is open source or not, I just want it to run natively on my Linux system.

I don't believe all applications running on linux have to be open source, I believe that you can put closed source (or non-free) games on Linux.

Uh... isn't that what I just said?

 

[Zerix01]

I just read the article. The only response to this I have is some dated slang, bitchn'

 

[splat]

two thumbs up.

 

[Burninate35]

Just look at how great source mods are now, and image how great they will be when the linux community gets a hold of the software. Im so excited.

 

[doublejack]

Count me as another person totally psyched if this happens. Literally the only reason I have a need for Windows is games. If I can get a wider selection of new games for linux, bye-bye MS.

Fully open-source games will likely never happen (at least not for new games). If the engine and content are all open-source from the start, then a for-profit developer has no incentive to produce the game. You can't really make much money selling support contracts for games. Older games that have been out for many years (like Freespace) may get open sourced, but it won't happen for any company that is still making a profit off the engine. DRM and licensing are part of it (Damn you Epic, where the hell is my Linux UT3?), but the biggest part is the income. If you can't sell support contracts, you can't make much money off of open source. I don't care whether the game is open source or not, I just want it to run natively on my Linux system.

I don't know of any games ported to linux that have DRM. Doom3, Quake4, UT2k4, etc. All have DRM on the Windows version, but the linux flavor does not.

I also think that game developers don't have much incentive right now to make games for linux. Linux just doesn't have enough market share. However, that's the only thing holding them back. As the number of desktops running linux grows, the opportunity for profitable commercial software grows. Eventually we'll cross a tipping point and these open source OS's will be fertile ground for closed source for-profit developers.

I don't believe all applications running on linux have to be open source, I believe that you can put closed source (or non-free) games on Linux.

Correct. The GNU relates only to the OS itself. Games and applications can absolutely be closed source, for-profit ventures.

Wow, I might actually buy a new game, or get a steam account.
They would pick up a significant section of an untapped gaming market, and since they check authorization through steam they wouldn't have to worry about people making copies of the games.

Well, Valve isn't the only game developer, ya know id and Epic have been supporting linux for years (UT3 aside ) However, if Valve jumped on board it would have a very large impact, because Steam is so influential. Every gamer knows what Steam is, and software devs like distributing via Steam because it protects all parties involved. This is a win-win all around if it happens.

Color me skeptical, though. We see how difficult it is to get new games for linux. Only the most dedicated programmers like John Carmack do it, and they don't do it for the money. Instead, they port to linux to help the cause, and maybe to show off their ability. Until someone can prove there's a profitable but untapped market, I'm not sure software devs will sink the large number of man hours into the project to make it happen.

 

[petteyg359]

That's the point... if a game developer (Epic) makes any use at all of third party tools, that third party may be an *** (such as the one preventing UT3 from being released for Linux) and prevent them from releasing Linux clients. EVE Online has a Linux client. Even if it relies on Cedega to work, they at least realize that there is[/b an audience.

 

[Zerix01]

they at least realize that there is[/b an audience.

I think Phoronix mentioned this way back when first talking about a Linux Steam client. When steam starts, it polls the system for the hardware it has in it for data collection so valve knows how far to push future games and how they will run on the gamers hardware (or so they say ). So maybe they are getting the hint from all this generic data that Wine and Cedega sends back. I think Valve has acknowledged that this data is comming from Linux users. If enough people are running Steam on Linux, then Valve realizes that they are not supporting the platforms their customers use.

I'm also sure more and more Windows gamers are leaving the PC for consoles (people have been saying this for years now). Linux users tend to be more dedicated to their computers than average Joe gamer so the audience is now shifting platforms.

 

[doublejack]

I'm also sure more and more Windows gamers are leaving the PC for consoles (people have been saying this for years now). Linux users tend to be more dedicated to their computers than average Joe gamer so the audience is now shifting platforms.

There's a lot of truth to this. The best selling PC game of 2008 so far moved like 300k units (MMO's aside). That's pathetic by console standards, or even sales of PC games a decade ago. So clearly the PC game market has changed. Other than MMO's, we get very few big dollar games which are produced specifically for the PC. Instead, most are ported to the consoles.

If Valve has noticed a proportionally larger segment of linux gamers, that will encourage them to implement native support for linux as they search for a larger and more stable market.

 

[petteyg359]

We can always hope a massive number of Linux users suddenly cause an overload on Valve servers, as when Half Life 2 was released, if (hopefully when, rather than if) Valve releases their catalog in native Linux binaries <obligatory-fanatic-rant>The numbers will be huge, and show the rest of the industry that Linux does, in fact, exist. It'll be the end of Windows, forever!</o-f-r>

 

[TalRW]

I run steam in wine. I would MUCH rather have native linux binaries.