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Valve Continues Recruiting Top Linux Talent
An anonymous reader writes "Valve Software, in their Linux Steam / Source Engine effort, plus the rumored Steam Box, is continuing to hire top Linux developers. So far they have poached the lead developers of the DarkPlaces open-source engine used by Nexuiz/Xonotic, the founder of Battle for Wesnoth, and just yesterday they hired Sam latinga, creator of Simple DirectMedia Layer. According to Michael Larabel, they are still trying to hire more Linux kernel developers, driver experts, and other 'extremely talented Linux developers.'"
Hope they port all those -games- to linux. A Linux Steam client isn't enough.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
*eyeroll*
Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo may be in for an interesting landscape in 2013.
It's reasonable to assume Valve isn't doing this for the Linux desktop (though they may be doing things in such a way that Linux desktop is covered 'for free'), but likely related to the other rumors of a Steam branded game console.
If Steam gives a console-equivalent experience in a manner similar to their PC platform, it's likely to be as capable as Sony and MS platforms but a lot more approachable. The 'big studios' are likely to be very enthusiastic about it. So the 'AAA' games will likely hit a Valve platform and probably with a bit more aggressive pricing (at first) compared to Sony and MS.
On the low end, Ouya may stir things up significantly.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The only reasons your game box might be unstable are a) failing hardware b) some crappy 3rd party "optomizer" and c) noob overclocking.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Steam is a pile of !@#$% whether its on Linux or Windows. What Valve needs to do is get busy on L4D3.
Seriously, Linux as a high-end game platform is the worst idea I've ever heard. What are people going to dual boot their game boxes to support all of their games? Do you realize how hard it is keeping a game box stable as it is? Now we are having to screw around with keeping it stable on Linux too?
This is a huge waste of time, and suggests how no adults are running the show over at Valve.
Are you the guy I always see at the truck-stop diner double fisting coffee with a cigarette in his mouth?
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
a Linux-powered Steam Box in the works? Probably not, given the technical challenges of getting Steam's huge library of DirectX-based games to run reliably on Linux, but it's an intriguing possibility.
Really, but unfortunately, it would be only a wish. Except if Christmas exists of course.
I keep my Win7 only because of the games. Like DiabloIII. And some others. Nothing else. Actually, i found out that i do play a lot of flash games, for which you don't need WIN troll.
does Gabe count, or is he a suspected silent partner in phoronix by now?
Given that it seems all Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony will be going with AMD for their next-gen graphics hardware, nVidia will likely be the one to supply graphics hardware for the Steam box (as their Linux drivers are by far the most mature).
If they want to port games to linux, why is it a weird requirement?
They are buying knowledge specifically experience not just skills. They are employing people who know far more about linux development than their current staff do.
Employing windows or whatever devs will delay them from having productive staff and will increase the chance they take the wrong approach to the problem. Only the genius windows devs will avoid thinking the windows way is the standard or best way to do something in linux.
DRM. Customer lockin.
I'm interested to see if this means that these newly hired valve devs will be put to improving the now lackluster Linux graphics drivers. In addition, with pressure or cooperation from valve, nvidia or and may also be more likely to improve on their open source / Linux drivers as well. Either way, this is probably gonna be a win win for the Linux / Linux gaming community.
But... this landscape is actually a fractal. If you zoom in a bit you can see whole new landscapes open in front of you. Someone who mostly programs in C# on windows system may not be entirely comfortable with writing a socket server on a UNIX machine. The various UNIX graphics libraries might be confusing and annoying to that person as well. As you start to learn the differences for things like socket handling on BSD style systems (And HPUX ugh,) you start to realize that platform experience does matter. Maybe not so much for your average application development, but if you're trying to squeeze something out of the hardware, it kind of does. A while back I wanted to write a segv stack dumper for C on an AIX system. The interrupt handler installation was pretty standard, but the stack dump code was VERY AIX specific.
Likewise on the language side of things, sure you can pick up the basics of Perl or C or any other (reasonable) language pretty quickly, but mastery of any specific language is something that could easily take an entire career. There's always something more to master. Maybe you want to force loop unwinding with funky switch tricks, maybe you want use C++ templates to set up matrix math at compile time. Maybe at some point you realize how unmaintainable doing that sort of thing actually is and decide not to do it anymore. The more you delve into any one area, the more you will find to learn. Things that looked good at one level might be completely different at the next.
The vast majority of programming projects out there really don't need this level of mastery, of course. Which brings you back to the top of the fractal. If you're the kind of person who can recognize the patterns, you can get by reasonably well on any platform in any language. But for any specific task, someone with more experience on that platform or with that language will almost always write more efficient code.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Poaching is the act of taking another persons livestock. The use of the word in this context means the author considers people the equivalent of livestock to the corporate ranchers.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I did my Google Summer of Code project under Sam. He's a great guy, and he basically wrote SDL from nothing. Hell, as far as I'm aware, he's possibly the only living person who understands its autotools-based build system ;-).
He won't just be able to port games. If the rumors are true and Valve is building their own full-scale gaming platform (a Valve console, say), then putting Sam Lantinga with the Source engine for starters will be a great start to their platform's API.
Top people will jump at a chance to work on something they really want to work on. They're generally already doing something they really like which is why they don't hop around, but that doesn't mean someone can't come up with something they like even better. These people basically have the opportunity to bring gaming to Linux. If they can pull it off they'll be in Linux history forever.
The knowledge they are buying in this case seems to be the specific experience porting games to Linux. That makes sense. It's a particular task and type of programming. If they were just going after programmers who know how to write software for desktop Linux that would be silly. It's not sufficiently different from writing software for platform X to justify limiting your candidate pool. Employing "Windows or whatever devs" is fine as long as they are competent, and I wouldn't want an incompetent programmer no matter which platform he was most familiar using.
Valve was valued at between 1.5 - 2 billion last Feburary by Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions/
They are also more profitable per employee than either Apple or Google. I think they'll be able to put up a fight. Sure their gaming market isn't as large, but they produce games that are played to have fun, versus casual games you can play for a minute or two while the barista is making your whatever crap your drinking.
Everyone wants to work for Valve, they have no problems with talent and are snapping up well known devs.
If they were just going after programmers who know how to write software for desktop Linux that would be silly.
You sound like you mean application development. These are lead devs who have proven they have skills to make things happen in linux, some of which are unique skills that are not needed for dev work in mature environment.
I think you will find you don't employ an experienced dev just for his coding skills that often.
Audio and video support is probably the biggest factor. Audio drivers are probably easier to fix -- and good support for a few popular chips, especially the integrated audio chips, would go a long way. So, that leaves video support, with lots of chips and cards out there. Performant opengl and directx api support without help from chip makers isnt going to be easy - and from what posters have said before, vendor supplied drivers leave something to be desired.
They can fix the case sensitive problems in their own source. It will cost them something, but it is something they have control over.
Sounds you don't know dick. Are you some kind of entry level C# clown? Man, you are stupid as shit.
Welcome to Slashdot, Ghost of Steve Jobs!
... its Sam Lantinga (with an N before the T).
C'mon, we should welcome these former Digg regulars instead of insulting them.
Although GP did pack an amazing amount of nonsense into about six sentences.
So what, you need changes to the Linux kernel in other to make the game platform work smoothly? That doesn't sound good. Either Steam sucks as a platform or Linux sucks for doing game-oriented graphics.
It's times like this I'm sad when we've got a completely non-DRM store like GOG which is completely overshadowed by something like Steam, where the access to your games are entirely in the hands of Valve and if something fucks up, you can't play. We've now got a generation who believe this is OK, rather than someone older like me who's seen enough issues with such a system to be extremely weary of it.
I guess the only good part is that the number of people who've been fucked by Steam restrictions are probably far and few between, but given the little time most of us have to play games, I don't see why we can't just be fickle and go to non-DRM stores when purchasing games to feed what is ultimately a waste-of-time hobby.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
> Linux is failure. Any big project that associates itself with the platform FAILS.
Android?
Writing "Hello World" is the same on every platform. Doing real work isn't. Valve is trying to do real work.
Lantinga was at one of the first linux game companies, Loki Software, way way way back in the day, the company was trying to port windows games to linux and make a profit. Didn't work out so hot, but Lantinga made SDL out of it, and then he got the job at Blizzard .
Cmon folks lets get his name right.
While SDL overall is a great library, Sam is undoubtedly talented, and I thank him for releasing a great library, in many ways, I would not want him in charge of many things. I used to be a heavy SDL user so I am extremely grateful, but I have to say after moving on to SFML, Ogre, and other open source libs (as well as professionally working with everything from UDK to custom in-house engines and low-level libs), I want to stab SDL in the face. I can't really blame him too much since C is C, but sometimes that lib makes me cry.
Sam seems like a guy with some good ideas or who might be great for grunt work, but SDL is a horrid library in terms of design. Retrospect is nice of course...wish he would redo the lib from scratch. SDL has caused a lot of people some serious pain over the years, but conversely brought us leaps and bounds over what was freely available before. SDL is anything but a showcase of great design, although one could argue that it "just works." Such is the case with a lot of of software open or closed source in general. I just hope he has learned from his mistakes. Your comment about the build system is very revealing - if only one person understands it, this is not to be commended.
I can tell you one of the major barriers to entry I've faced in both the games and business software industry with open source is the horrid and neglected APIs, and in the case of C and C++ especially, the ridiculous build systems (bjam and boost, SDL and autotools, and so on). Hopefully he can learn from Valve and likewise they can learn from him. Wish him the best, but please don't let him design any more APIs without a sane human being editing and challenging his assumptions.
Linux has been the go to desktop for people in the know. I know have used Linux as my professional desktop for 20 years.
How ever getting Linux people does not imply any change to the game clients. For Valve to work, and it does, one has to assume it runs on Unix and and in this day Linux is the #1 Unix. So getting Linux developers to make the Valve servers better is a no brainier.
If your gaming platform was Linux it would be stable. Windows has so many holes in, its never going to be stable. You only hope is that the producers make Linux CD's for you. With the ability to install. But of course UNIX's philosophy is source code compatibility, some thing that few people understand the value of that. Source code implys open source and its hard to hide away your profit margin in that case. Open Source code is why Linux(UNIX) is portable across so many hardware platforms. Windows is not portable it only runs on Intel chips.
I've been hoping to ditch Windows entirely for years, Linux and the applications and desktops have improved for years. Games are the only connection I still have left with it but it's at the cost of a bitter hateful relationship with it too. As always, we shall see!
I'm a little late to the conversation, but my suspicion is that Valve is working on a console (or maybe hand-held) to compete with the PS2 and XBOX and DS3. Why else would they (also) be hiring kernel developers, driver experts, and other low-level Linux talent?
Let's face it, there are three things keeping Microsoft's OS in business: the Office ecosystem, games and people who spent their whole lives learning one way of doing thing, and don't want to change. Everything else not only can be done better by someone else, but is being done better by someone else.
With every new OS release, Microsoft themselves screw the people who fear change. Office is still the cash cow, but between LibreOffice and the Googlighting Stranger, their desktop suite is only a few years ahead. I can't comment on Sharepoint and Exchange, so I'll concede they probably play a major role in many businesses, and that many of those same businesses have no interest in Windows 8 Metro. Finally, there's games. Games, and DirectX games, was the reason to buy Windows. Hell, it's the reason I run it. But, in the heavily politicized corporate environment of Microsoft, games have a problem, and that problem is spelled XBOX. So we get abominations like MS GameZone, Games For Windows Live and Games for Windows Marketplace, or whatever they're calling it now. The Xbox people can't have windows cannibalize their games. This is how Microsoft lost to Linux in the HTPC battle: an Xbox belongs in the living room, not a Windows Box. Things have gotten so bad, the other players in the industry have their own Microsoft-Free group to promote gaming.
So Valve brings on board a developer with demonstrated skills in making cross-platform gaming tools. If they were able to produce a set of tools that allowed games to be developed and easily ported between the various full flavors of Linux, Mac, PC and Android, worked on Chrome OS, and connected to the largest online game delivery platform in business, well, wouldn't that be cool?
Don't worry, they'll probably do something less ambitious and more profitable.
Keeping a windows install stable and performance is actually quite hard, if you use it on a regular basis it gradually deteriorates even today, as you install applications you end up with all manner of background "updaters" running, and when you uninstall something there is often some cruft left behind.
Keeping a windows box that is used solely for gaming actually gives you a much better chance, since there will be much less application churn and a lot less installed in general.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
linux is a failer? thats news to a lot of fortune 500's I'll be sure to call them up and tell them that the wise one has spoken and shown us our folly.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I'm always all for more games in linux and better gaming platforms for linux to ease in development of games, both of which i see Steam bringing. I'm curious if they will keep with the general spirit of the linux community and contribute back. Im hoping that them hiring plenty of linux talent isnt taking them away from too many open projects that attracted steam to them in the first place. Steam could probably contribute some good improvements back to the linux community in the forms of kernel patchs, improvements to X, graphics libraries, and im sure a whole host of other things. They aren't obligated to do that but I'm really hoping they do contribute back in some ways. Regardless its good to see them increasing their effort to deliver games to linux.
http://interserver.net/
If valve does make a linux (or anything) based steam box console, to drive sales they can release it with exclusive versions of Half-Life 3 and Left For Dead 3.
They could then release versions for other systems and PC later. Wouldn't be a bad way to get a foothold in the market.
Silence is a state of mime.
Just uncheck the "apptray icon" and "fast launch" thingy after you click setup.exe I've been running a Vista then a Win7 for years, lots of games and programs installed, no signs of slowdown. And it's just a Core 2 Duo, not an i7 beast.
Kill yourself, idiot.
Oh myyy, that's some very, very good news. All the other Linux devs Valve hired recently, as Phoronix reports, and now Slouken, the creator of SDL. Seems like Valve has already built itself quite a nice team of Linux game devs. I've waited for something like this to happen since the (sigh) unfortunate demise of Loki games... It seems at last the time has come for Linux to become a full-fledged gaming platform. That could also help a wider penetration into the desktop OS market, eventually.
I'm very glad Slouken landed this, it seems like a perfect position for someone like him. I felt really sad when he left Blizzard, as there were some between-the-lines indicators that he didn't leave it quite as consensually as it was reported... And then went on to that 38studios which infamously collapsed recently...
Well, I just wish the best of luck to Valve and their Linux team, and will be anxiously waiting too see what they'll come up with...
I must be tired, I skimmed over the 144 current comments and did not see a single mention of
"Year of the Linux Desktop"
I am honestly surprised. Honestly.
Moron, your comment is the only failure here. Fuck off.
You just wrote three paragraphs saying absolutely nothing. Maybe instead of rambling on about the API, just say _what_ is wrong with it. Nobody is going to take your comment seriously if it doesn't contain a single sentence of constructive criticism.
There are lots and lots of things wrong with SDL. I agree with the grandparent. IIRC, the last time i tried it I found these faults:
* Slow implementations leading to unneccessary latency in both input and audio/video desynchronization
* Thread unsafe
* Generally feels icky
It was years and years ago I tried SDL though, so I don't remember exactly what was wrong with it. But I do remember it did not meet my needs at the time, in fact falling far short of them. One problem, I think, was that it was too simple, and, since I used OpenAL for audio and OpenGL for graphics, all I really needed besides that was some sort of input library. Eventually I found one with less lag than SDL and settled for that. A couple months later my team fell apart and I threw the code in the bit bucket, but that's a story for another time...
Anyhow, moral of the story: SDL left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth, simple as that.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.