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]

Cedega is a hacked up fork of Wine which is itself an incomplete and buggy implementation of Windows APIs on linux - why would you have similar expectation of Valve's official ports? Running portal on a Mac right now, it's infinitely superior to anything achieved through emulation.

Re:I am happy.

[jandrese]

The problem is that a lot of official Linux ports are just the game running in Cedega! Since the Source engine is derived from an engine that has been ported to Linux natively however, I would be surprised if Valve went that route instead of just providing a native client.

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.

[MBGMorden]

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).

And that's one of the few benefits I see in the uptick in Mac popularity. 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.

Now, that doesn't mean that a Linux port is merely a recompile away, but it DOES SIGNIFICANTLY cut down on the amount of extra work you'd need for a Linux version of the game. The publisher still might not put one out (ie, Blizzard puts out MacOS clients for all it's games, but still no Linux versions - shame, because the ONLY thing I'm switching to my Windows machine for now is the Starcraft 2 Beta. Everything else is on Ubuntu), but it increases the likelyhood by a lot.

That said, this might mean that I finally have to start buying "real" graphics cards for my Linux machine. Previously my position was "buy the slowest version of the latest generation" for features alone (VDAPU for example), but if games actually start coming out I'll need to rethink that.

Re:I am happy.

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I have an emo lawn. It cuts itself.

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.

[node 3]

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

What I'd be interested in is to see how well Linux ports do on Steam if/when it comes to Linux.

I have a suspicion that Valve and other games that launch today for the Mac will see a notable spike in sales. Mac users are known for being willing to pay for software. Linux users, not so much. Games, however, are one of the areas where the anti-proprietary sentiment is at its weakest, so it'll really be interesting to see how well Steam would do on Linux. A successful Steam launch has a lot of potential upside for Linux in general. Either way, it will tell a lot about the Linux market as a whole. I hope it does well, but I'm not terribly optimistic. I know there's a good deal of desire for games among Linux users, but X11 OpenGL drivers, audio libraries, different package managers and repositories, etc., do pose technical challenges that are mostly absent on Windows and Mac. Fortunately, by going native with OpenGL, the Mac launch has covered the most significant hurdle, which is breaking reliance on DirectX. WINE/Cedega/Cider are far from being a sufficient solution to this (as the no doubt countless "I can finally ditch my Windows partition" posts to come from Linux users will attest to).

On the Mac side, I can't see how this will be anything but a success. There have always been more Mac games than people commonly make it out to be, but having a single "iTunes for games" type of thing is huge. This should make native ports much more numerous, as this will do a lot to allay fears that a developer might have about putting effort into porting a game yet failing to recoup the costs.

for your convenience, the URL they didn't give you

[FooAtWFU]

the download page.

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

[Diantre]

Awww come on now. Steam is, IHMO, the only gaming platform that does DRM well. You simply have to register your game to your account and you can play anywhere afterwards (even in offline mode). The only time you have to connect to the internet is when registering your games (that you likely bought over the net anyway). Non-intrusive and practical; I can download my games on as many computers as I want and play them whenever I want.

Re:What to do

[amicusNYCL]

Show your support for a model which not only works, but is actually being done correctly. Companies like Ubisoft and EA are great examples for how to completely ruin a distribution platform like this. Valve is, and has been for many years, an excellent example of how to do it right. This type of protection is no more "evil" than requiring the CD to be in the drive (that being said, I still refuse to purchase GTA4 even over Steam because of the additional DRM added by Rockstar). Show companies like Ubisoft and EA that you reject not the concept of online distribution, but their specific implementation of it, by supporting a company like Valve which is committed to a good experience for its customers. Just as companies who make terrible decisions against their customers deserve to be boycotted, companies who prioritize a good customer experience also deserve to be rewarded.

In other words, help Valve prove that Linux is a viable market for games, and that even free software folks are willing to pay for high-quality games. It will give companies like Ubisoft a lot to think about.

Re:What to do

[Amouth]

Steam really has matured to a very nice product.

I personally like using it as i don't have to keep track of all my install CD's .. and i can have them installed on my laptop and desktop.. remove as i need space/

even for the net only and DRM part - Steam has put out notices in the past that in the event that the steam network was to go away they would push an update removing the need to auth on the client so that it wouldn't stop working..

now many people can argue that they say that but woln't do it BUT out of the different publishers and networks Steam seems to be the only one actually doing GOOD work - and i have YET to see them re-nig on something, and there for will give them the benefit of the doubt and my money - until they give me a reason not to.

Re:What to do

[Sancho]

They can still take away access to your legally purchased games. This is actually one of the most unreasonable DRM schemes in existence.

Spoken by someone who is waiting to hear if they disabled his account, if his account got hacked, or what, since he's unable to log in with the new client.

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

[vux984]

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.

I'm not worried about copying a CD, but i do like being able to move them from PC to PC. After I finished portal, I'd like to *give* it to my brother. But unlike a normal game, that's not possible. Either I give him my whole steam account (which is against the ToS), share it with him (which is against the ToS), or create a separate steam account for each steam game i buy (which makes steam a hassle, is frowned upon by valve, and may even be against the ToS, and then give him that... which is against the ToS)...

Steam kills the right of transfer and resale. They do it by claiming you are entering into a perpetual rental agreement instead of a sale in the fine print. (Despite advertising that you can "buy" games.)

I'd rather just get a CD.

I don't want to live in a world where the rights of property ownership have been subverted by making all purchases perpetual rental agreements with onerous terms and conditions. How long before you go into a store and buy a pair of ice skates with fineprint that you are entering into a rental agreement, and that you aren't allowed to lend anyone the skates, or give them away, or cover the sponsored logos, and that they've been implanted with sensors and rfid tracking technology to enable them to enforce these rules... and you aren't allowed to tamper with it... not because of a DMCA... but simply because its just a rental after all. You don't even really own them.

Re:What to do

[X0563511]

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 do have to say though, I don't lose any sleep over this. You 'signed' the ELUA, and you went and acted like a jackass ("hacking" in a multiplayer game is nothing but being a jackass) and the consequences for such an act was meted out. It's not like they were innocent.

Re:What to do

[Smelly Jeffrey]

and i have YET to see them re-nig on something

The word you are looking for is renege.

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

[devent]

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.

How is that different for any other EULA for any other proprietary software you bought? Check your EULA for WindowsXP/Vista/7 there is the same crap that you only got a license to use and that Microsoft reserve the rights to cancel the license at any time for what ever reason.

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

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Steam has put out notices in the past that in the event that the steam network was to go away they would push an update removing the need to auth on the client so that it wouldn't stop working..

Notices where, exactly? In the terms of service? In the license agreements? Is the source code in escrow?

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

[smash]

So what happens when the industry moves on and CD drives are no longer available, and future optical drives do not support the bastardized CD copy protection used? Before you laugh - it already virtually happened with floppy drives (certainly 5 1/4" floppies already).

Your games requiring physical media will either:

• not work
• require a patch from the publisher - if they're still around
• require a hack from the community - which is a DMCA violation

In short, you're potentially screwed.

Physical media protection (CD) is just as bad, or potentially worse than online protection these days.

Time to see what mainstream games do for Mac/Linux

[chocobanana]

Great news! I'm really looking forward to see what Steam, as a mainstream game distribution platform, will do for Linux and Mac.

But does it run on Lin-...

[Kirin Fenrir]

...oh. So it does. :)

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

[joe_bruin]

Even better, free Portal for PC and Mac here: http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/

Re:But, for now..

[binarylarry]

No but they obviously wrote an opengl backed for Mac OSX.

Since that's done, it's trivial to port the renderer to Linux (which also uses OpenGL for native 3d hardware access). The renderer is probably the most complex part of the engine, so that means adding Linux support is much cheaper than it would have otherwise been.

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?

Re:Wanted linux games..

[Anonymous Coward]

Tough shit. You can have tux racer.

Re:32 or 64 bit?

[binarylarry]

They both run fine for me under 64-bit Ubuntu.

What?

[Diantre]

I can't wait to see the mac users' faces when they are told to enter something in the console :)

Dedicated "Steam" Distro of Linux

[DarthVain]

in 3... 2... 1

Painful

[drdaz]

I'd been looking forward to this for a while now. Having installed I find out that Steam doesn't support case-sensitive file systems.

Color me disappointed.

Their 'solution' is here:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8601-RYPX-5789

*Sighs*

Re:Painful

[Blakey Rat]

OS X (which is a certified Unix, for whatever that matters) creates case-insensitive filesystems by default. You have to go out of your way to make a case-sensitive one.

This is because Apple, like all right-thinking people, realizes how stupid and hard-to-use a case-sensitive filesystem is. (Debate below. :)

Re:Painful

[flink]

Heck, I'm not sure I've ever *seen* a case-insensitive filesystem on any UNIX-like OS.

OS X's HFS+ filesystem is case insensitive. It's case preserving, like NTFS.

$ echo bar > FOO.txt
$ cat foo.txt
bar
$ ls *.txt
FOO.txt

Re:Painful

[Blakey Rat]

Whats hard? No one would ever notice really, with a GUI the issue is moot unless you care about it.

Or until they hit "sort by name".

You really have to be a douche bag to make an app that cant' deal with case sensitive file systems. It takes effort or absolutely unacceptable programming practices to accomplish what they've done.

Then don't use it, and relax a bit. It's not like you're out anything: you didn't have access to Steam yesterday, and you don't today.

Re:Painful

[Blakey Rat]

Apple's HFS has always been case insensitive, back to 1984. This is only an issue because, since OS X is based on Unix, a certain (tiny) subset of people want to use it "the Unix way". Real Mac users (meaning: have been using a Mac longer than 5 years) wouldn't, in a million years, go out of their way to format a drive as case sensitive.

Re:Painful

[lederhosen]

There is no debate. Everyone that has some programming experience with unicode and multi language support knows that the *only* sane way is to have case sensitive file systems. Maybe the right thinking people (at apple and other places) should realize that the current locale should not influence if two file names are to be treated as equal (the reason is that not all languages agree on which characters are uppercase/lowercase versions of each other).

Re:Painful

[Anonymous Coward]

Case-sensitive filesystems may be sane for PROGRAMMERS, but they're not sane for USERS.

As a user, I couldn't care less about how hard it is for you to deal with it. I'm not a machine, I don't want to start thinking like one just because the programmer working a layer or two beneath me can't figure out a way to make it work for people that think like humans.

MS and Apple have no problem doing it, and their systems are just as multi-language as any Linux release.

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.

Re:My Question

[slimjim8094]

Yes. Just like they're doing for Mac.

Valve doesn't screw their customers.

Re:why buy WoG through Steam, instead of NOT throu

[Tei]

I give you some reasons:
  - You already trust the Steam shop. This is important for people nervaous about his credit card details
  - You have a centralized location to re-download. If you move to another computer (or OS), you just click to download again
  - If you have savegames on your Mac, Netbook, PC, ..these savegames follow you around. You can start playing on the netbook, continue on the Mac and finish on the PC.

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:and my big question is

[ninjacheeseburger]

The answer is yes amazingly. If you own the game you can play it on any platform that supports it.

TF2 is NOT available today

[slimjim8094]

The summary is wrong. Team Fortress 2 will NOT be available today. It'll most likely be out next Wednesday.

In fact, it doesn't even show up in the list of owned games.

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

[BitZtream]

WHY THE HELL DO EDITORS APPROVE POSTS LIKE THIS WITHOUT A GOD DAMN URL TO THE IMPORTANT BITS.

For fucks sake, it takes your users to actually post the important parts of the story slashdot, come on.

User driven content is one thing, slashvertising for some other site that doesn't even have the information your users care about is just retarded.

Thank you FooAtWFU for providing the one bit of information I actually cared about (And joe_bruin below for the free portal linkage)

Re:MS Buyout

[elFarto the 2nd]

Doubt that'll happen. Gabe Newell left Microsoft to start Valve.

Here's my take:

[metamatic]

1. Valve's DRM isn't horribly invasive or system-destroying.

2. They do the right thing by having cheap prices on downloadable games--including $2.99 special offers.

3. They are now doing the right thing by supporting Mac and Linux, and by allowing your existing licenses to work with any platform. This is really key, because it means that people who have a PC just for gaming and a Mac or Linux box for everything else will be encouraged to switch to Mac or Linux entirely and drop Windows. If you had to re-buy all your games, that wouldn't happen.

4. If we all support Valve, it'll show that gaming on Mac and Linux can be viable, and maybe help break the stranglehold Microsoft has on PC gaming.

So I already spent $10 with them, and plan to support them more. Once Mac and Linux gaming takes off again, then we can start supporting people who offer DRM-free games.

Valve has said *nothing* about linux

[BrianRoach]

The Telegraph in the UK reports that there is a Linux version confirmed ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7715209/Steam-for-Mac-goes-live.html ) .... They cite no source for that information, and Valve hasn't said anything about it. Every other blog / "News" site is parroting their report.

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

[pyster]

You will be able to spot the mac users a month from know as they all scream the cake is a lie randomly.

Re:MS Buyout

[MachineShedFred]

Or, according to the interview with Gabe Newell available on Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

RPS: I have a friend (an idiot) who is determined that in six months Valve will be owned by either Microsoft or EA

Gabe: Tell him that I’m not interested in buying either one of them.

Asked and answered.

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

[Pharmboy]

You get the game free, forever, if you get your license now. Steam is actually pretty damn cool about licensing. When they first started Steam, I took my copy of Half Life from 1998 (original version) and moved it to my Steam account. I just downloaded the game, again, on my work computer, so it is installed on several systems, even though I bought it retail, not from Steam.

From my experience, they pretty damn good to deal with, and I have something 30+ games through them. Most of them bought at 50% to 75% off during their weekly sales. I'm 45, so even if the game is two years old, it is still new to me. I don't need to buy the same week it comes out. I'm waiting for Bioshock 2 to go on sale right now, or at least a free week long pass. They do lots of those.

And according to the Steam client itself, if you get the free Portal, you can download and play for Mac or PC, or both. They flatly say that they will do that for all games, so if it has a PC, Mac and Linux versions, you can buy it once and download it on all 3 different systems at no extra fee. One more reason I love giving these guys my money.

Re:Wanted linux games..

[MBGMorden]

Simple: because it works, works well, and is simple.

Screw with dependencies and in 5 years when everyone is running version 5.0 of the library that you coded against the 2.0 version of, then things are going to break.

Put the install files in /home/user (or at a MINIMUM /opt) and they are easily trackable, contained, and not likely to be misplaced.

And you CERTAINLY don't want half or more of your potential customers having to hit Howto's and archaic command line tricks to get the thing working.

Re:Case matters more than you might think

[Blakey Rat]

Case-insensitive filesystems already preserve whatever case you originally named the file as (on Macs: back to the original HFS in 1984.) This is already a completely solved problem.

Nice try, though.