Steam Client for Mac Launches, Linux Client On the Way

CyDharttha writes with news that the Mac version of Steam went live today, along with Mac versions of Portal, Team Fortress 2, and many other games. Valve plans to make more games available every Wednesday. Several publications are also reporting that a Linux version of Steam has been confirmed, and is expected within the next few months. Quoting Phoronix: "Found already within the Steam store are Linux-native games like Unreal Tournament 2004, World of Goo, and titles from id Software such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Doom 3. Now that the Source Engine is officially supported on Linux, some Source-based games will be coming over too. Will we finally see Unreal Tournament 3 surface on Linux too? Only time will tell, but it is something we speculated back in 2008. Postal III is also being released this year atop the Source Engine and it will be offering up a native client. We have confirmed that Valve's latest and popular titles like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and Team Fortress 2 are among the first of the Steam Linux titles, similar to the Mac OS X support. The released Linux client should be available by the end of summer."

Comments

I am happy.

[CasualFriday]

AWESOME. If CS:S and HL2 run well in Ubuntu, I now have no reason to keep my Windows partition.

Re:I am happy.

[mejogid]

Right, but the same applies to Mac ports - they're generally treated equally since they both essentially require similar technologies for graphics/audio/networking - and the new Steam for OS X is exclusively native games (if you consider the handful of Flash games to be native I guess).

That, and if there's one thing we know about Valve it's that while they may take their time, it's generally pretty polished by the time they're done with it.

Re:I am happy.

[Shadow of Eternity]

Personally I just verbally abuse my lawn and tell it how fat and ugly it is.

Re:I am happy.

[BitZtream]

You want to make your game work on Mac OS X, then you have to write it to be able to use OpenGL instead of Direct3D, and write it with a Unix environment in general in mind.

Except ... as has already been found out by myself and others, they didn't write it with unix in mind. It requires a case insensitive filesystem and write access to the steam application by normal users.

That is in no way anything anyone would do on any sane unix unless they happen to still be in a highschool programming class.

Re:I am happy.

[TheRaven64]

When they say WINE is not an emulator, they mean WINE is not a system or CPU emulator. It is an implementation of the Win32 APIs, but it implements them on top of the equivalent *NIX APIs (complete with some ugly hacks to get around impedance mismatches), rather than implementing them on top of the lower-level functionality that those *NIX APIs use. For example, when you run a Direct3D game on WINE, the Direct3D functions call OpenGL functions, which call low-level driver functions. When you run a Direct3D game on Windows, the Direct3D functions call the driver functions directly. With a modern game that uses shaders, you are often doing a source-to-source transform of the shader (or a bytecode-to-bytecode transform) before then JIT compiling it for the target GPU. This means that, theoretically, there is more overhead when using WINE. In practice, if the WINE code or the low-level implementations are slightly better optimised then this overhead becomes irrelevant.

Re:I am happy.

[drinkypoo]

Just to be a dick, I think I should mention that you could use unionfs-fuse to union mount something else (a file? a directory, with -o bind? dunno what works) over the steam dir in a chroot and run Steam there to simulate directory write access.

What to do

[quadrox]

I am torn apart - show my support for linux games and make linux game purchases with steam once that is possible, or keep boycotting it because of the evil DRM that it brings...

I just don't know anymore...

(FYI: sadly, I already have plenty of steam games on my account, from a time before I realized the true extent of the DRM danger)

Re:What to do

[binarylarry]

True but that could easily change. Steam used to be Windows only as well.

Re:What to do

[Monkeedude1212]

Don't get me wrong, I like Valve, and I support Valve, I buy most of my games through Valve, but it erks me when people proclaim Valve's DRM Scheme as "How to do it right".

The only reason its the right way of distributing is because they haven't abused it for DRM purposes. One person can share a steam account as much as one can copy a CD. Multiple people can even play online should it be a non-valve game. They've tied their own titles into Steam so well that their DRM is tight for Multiplayer Valve Titles. Not that thats a bad thing, gotta protect their games and all.

I've committed to them because, as you say, they deliver a good customer experience.

But it is still completely within their power to take away every game you've purchased through Steam. When you use Steam, you agree to the EULA, which basically states that you are not buying the game, you are purchasing a license through Valve. Valve may at any time at their discretion close your steam account, or stop their servers, with no obligation to deliver you a working copy of the game. This has happened to severe hackers on their more popular titles, such as Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, though I like and support Valve's online distribution method, and Valve as a whole, their implementation does leave one paranoid, since you can lose hundreds of dollars worth of games at the sole discretion of someone else.

Should something happen to cause new management at Valve, their system is set up perfectly to screw you over worse than game you could buy in store. Just saying.

Re:What to do

[amicusNYCL]

The only reason its the right way of distributing is because they haven't abused it for DRM purposes.

That's correct, the single largest reason why Valve is "doing it right" is because they don't abuse it. They could, but they don't. Like you point out, that can change overnight, and if it did I think they would see their customer base shrink faster than a nutsack in ice water.

This has happened to severe hackers on their more popular titles, such as Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2.

Well.. I have no sympathy for people whose idea of fun is to intentionally and specifically harm the experience for 31 other players. I've been in several CS games where you've got a guy with a speed hack plus an aim bot, and it's absolutely no fun to be on either team. On the opposite team you can't even shoot before you've been headshotted, and on the same team you just feel like a dick. There's no reason to let those guys play the game, and Valve is the only authority to stop them.

Re:What to do

[DragonWriter]

If you get your games through Steam, your are subjecting yourself to some nasty DRM that will eventually lock you out of everything (no company lasts forever).

Yeah, but neither does my interest in any particular game. As long as there is a overwhelming probability that Steam will outlast my interest in the Steam-linked game I'm buying, there's not a whole lot of reason for me to be concerned by this particular concerned.

Re:What to do

[melikamp]

The DRM is not even the only issue. If you run anything that is binary and closed-sourced on your GNU/Linux machine, with your user privileges, you are basically asking for a punch in the gut. Keep doing it, folks; with so many willing targets, all of us who actually give two shits about security will be that much safer.

I came to realize that I do not particularly want proprietary games to leave Windows. This way, I have my Windows machine, which is basically a dedicated game device and a public-terminal-level-security Internet appliance. With native GNU/Linux ports, I would still have to have two separate machines, and still treat one of them as a rogue, although I would be able to save a few bucks on OS.

Re:What to do

[7-Vodka]

Why were you a sarcastic asshole when the GP was trying to make valid points?

In case you don't know; and I'm assuming you don't in good faith, Your games will stop working if they don't talk to the verification servers.

Oh, I'm sorry I shouldn't have called them "your games". I think what everyone is trying to point out is that they don't like the whole system that DRM inevitably forces on you. You no longer buy a game and own it as your piece of property. You rent it.

Makes it hard to do what you want with them and when the companies get bought out, go out of business or just change their minds and shut off the verification servers you're SOL.

Don't forget what happened with the kindle.... I want to shit on people when I hear them bragging about their kindles.

As much as players might enjoy the convenience being brought in with this new model, giving up your other rights isn't necessary. There's also the related debate of having the right to run servers yourself and playing at lan parties.

Re:What to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam seems to be down right now... that's right, their servers went down so I can't play.

Also can't play if my internet connection goes down...

why buy WoG through Steam, instead of NOT through?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why by World of Goo through steam, when you could buy it NOT through steam? Seriously, they sell a DRM-free version, doesn't require any intrusive software on your machine, your computer stays YOUR computer, no worries about what the thing might be doing behind your back, etc.

I can understand the argument of, "Well, game XYZ is only available through stream", even though I wouldn't do it myself. Buy when there's a totally un-DRMed alternative available, why would anyone chose Steam over that?

My Question

[Jaysyn]

Is will you get access to the Linux binaries if you already have the Win32 version?

Even a discount would be nice I guess.

and my big question is

[RobertLTux]

if you have several games on the windows platform will they flip you a pass to the linux versions??

(game publishers dream: having somebody "need" to buy 3 copies of a game (Win/Lin/Mac))

Re:Wanted linux games..

[MBGMorden]

I wonder if Blizzard is cool enough to compete with Valve and get a proper Linux client out for SC2? Sadly, I doubt it.

I doubt it'll happen for Starcraft II or Diablo III. Just too far along in development right now. I suppose there's a possibility of them releasing a client LATER, but I doubt it.

I think though, that EVENTUALLY they'll end up doing it. Maybe for their next unannounced MMORPG. Linux, slowly but surely, has been gaining ground. It's also a more more stable platform that it used to be. Let your product install to the user's /home directory, and statically compile your libraries in, and it'll install/run on virtually any Linux system out there.

The Heroes of Newerth install was just a perfect picture of what installing a Linux game should be like. Double click installer, go through prompts, let it finish, and I get an item added to my games menu. Just as easy and seamless as any Windows game install, and the game runs great.

Re:Wanted linux games..

[pwnies]

Give Heroes of Newerth a try. It's a dota clone++ that runs on linux/osx/windows. Was released today publicly iirc.

Re:Painful

[gstoddart]

um... Mac OSX.... and it's actually a certified Unix whereas Linux is just a unixalike (Ubuntu user here).

Never having used Mac OSX, that's news to me. (The case-sensitive part, not the Unix part.)

However, having used NextStep, SunOS, HP-UX (9 and 10), Solaris, AIX, IRIX, FreeBSD, Linux, and maybe even a couple others since about '91 -- I've simply never even seen one that was insensitive.

Heck, is a case-insensitive filesystem even POSIX compliant? (I have no idea -- just always thought case insensitive was a pretty lame feature.)

Why not make it an 8.3 fileystem and get it over with. :-P

Re:Valve ... you suck, no case-sensitive filesyste

[HeronBlademaster]

Kick ass ... steam for OS X ... and it won't run on a case-sensitive file system ... fucking brilliant guys, good job.

What's the problem? Case-insensitive is the default in both OSX and Windows; it's silly to get mad at them for not supporting edge cases.

At any rate, one would assume they'll resolve that issue before they release a Linux client, so just wait a few months if it's that important to you.

Re:for your convenience, the URL they didn't give:

[Shikaku]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/400

Or you can just activate it directly from the store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gPWjiWX-Ps#t=4m12s

Ellis sums up my feelings about the current news very well by the way.

Re:Wanted linux games..

[AntiDragon]

I remember seeing a post from one of the devs on the WoW forums (can't seem to find it atm) - they basically said that although they have no intention to create Linux native ports at this time they do acknowledge that a proportion of their fans like to run their games on a Linux based OS. So they try to keep their software Wine friendly/OS agnostic where they can. That and their codebase is probably already port-friendly by having to support OS X and Windows simultaneously as mentioned above seems to keep their software running with little to no trouble on WINE.

I suspect we'll see the same for Source games. Even more likeley we already have - they've been developing a Mac version for sometime so it's safe to assume that the Windows version already benefits from similair OS agnostic design considerations, D3D reliance asside.