Left 4 Dead Demo Includes Linux Steam Client Libraries

SheeEttin writes "If you've been longing to play games from Steam on your Linux machine, you may not have to wait much longer — the Left 4 Dead demo includes some Linux libraries, in particular, one named 'steamclient_linux.so.' While the game's full release does not include these libraries, their apparently accidental inclusion in the demo suggests that Steam games will have native Linux clients in the near future. (A job listing at Valve looking for someone whose responsibilities would include 'Port[ing] Windows-based games to the Linux platform' would seem to support this.) The libraries also include several strings nonessential to a pure server, including references to forgotten passwords. Hopefully, this indicates that at least some Valve-affiliated games will have native Linux clients."

Comments

Come one, Phoronix? Seriously?

[Loibisch]

Who still believes any of the stuff they're writing?

Those libraries are used by the Linux SERVER, so they can pull updates over Steam. Yes, Steam in Linux...shocking, ain't it? That says absolutely zip about game capability.

Phoronix sees a handful of .so files and weaves a huge story about any Source games are just around the corner for Linux.

There's absolutely _nothing_ noteworthy about this...

wine already runs steam + Valve games just fine

[mattbee]

i.e. Half-Life 2, Team Fortress, Portal, right here on my Ubuntu laptop. There *is* a native version of Steam for Linux, albeit one without much of a front-end, just for running dedicated servers. So I suspect this is a non-story. Valve would be insane to worry about porting their games to Linux (at least) before they ported to the Mac, so I really think it's unlikely they're considering it. There's no common programming framework between Steam games, other than the copy protection & integration, so every game would be a separate porting job - not going to happen!

However if they could wrap up Steam, wine, Ubuntu together into a neat physical package, they could be in an interesting position to flog PC-based games consoles with a library of download titles, and *that* is the only reason they might be interested in supporting their own games on Linux. With Popcap and other cheap smaller titles making up the majority of their catalogue (even if those are not the most popular overall) and some hardware partner on board, they might have a shot if they could price a console at the low end of things.

Still- while they have an interest in keeping titles out for the XBox 360, taking on a huge platform project to compete with Microsoft would take balls of steel and plenty of money.

No, this is all crap, undoubtedly. But nice to speculate occasionally :)