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Why Valve Wants To Port Games To Linux: Because Windows 8 Is a Catastrophe
An anonymous reader writes "Gabe Newell wants to support Linux because he think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in PC space. He wants to move away from a closed ecosystem of Microsoft Windows 8. He recently made a rare appearance at Casual Connect, an annual videogame conference in Seattle. From the allthingsd article: 'The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior. We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.' Some Linux users think that this is a win-win situation for Linux users as it will brings good game titles on the Linux system that haven't been there and it will protect steam business model from both Apple and Microsoft."
Look no further than iOS and Android. No matter what the fanbois of each platform say, games invariably are among the top downloads.
So the summary is implying that several years ago when Linux Steam work began, somehow Valve knew that Windows 8 would be bad even before Microsoft had done much with it beyond initial planning? TFA actually presents a much more balanced picture: Gabe Newell had an interview, and spoke about many things including wearable computers, open platforms, and Linux support. As usual, the Slashdot submitter posted the most inflammatory piece, and the editors like it that way. TFA only even mentions Windows once, in the quote TFS copied!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
In my opinion, the biggest hurdle that Valve will face won't be porting Steam itself over to Linux, but porting the library of games over.
While I don't know what the actual facts and figures are, I think that it's a fairly safe bet that most of the games on there will have been coded around Microsoft's DirectX graphics API, making the games themselves Windows-only. Yes, they can be rewritten to use OpenGL instead, but this would require substantial effort -- Valve would have the resources to do this with their own titles, but some of the other publishers on Steam may be of the opinion that it's not worth the effort.
This is as close to a perfect example as one can get as to why vendor lock-in is a bad thing. Arguably, the DirectX lock-in is probably why gaming on OS X hasn't really taken off either.
Still, this move by Valve could well be the snowball that sets off the avalanche...
Getting the Steam catalog to 'Just Work' on linux isn't going to be a picnic
It should be a lot easier to make it "just work" on an OS you have the source to than an OS you only have hooks, many of them undocumented.
Nobody else seems to have any trouble making their software "just work" on Linux. Hell, I bought a bluetooth dongle that supposedly had no Linux support at all, I plugged it in and it just worked. On the Windows box I had to install software and drivers and reboot a couple of times, and it kinda sorta worked.
In the last 10 years, MS and Linux have switched places in the useability and maintenance aspects. Windows needs far more maintenence than previously, and more than Linux, and is far less useable than Linux. This is the opposite of the situation 10 years ago. Anyone who has used both OSes lately is aware of this.
Free Martian Whores!
This has been the typical "disaster" that has been suffered by EVERY company who have built a successful business model based on Windows:
If it is profitable, then sooner, rather than later M$ WILL steal your business.
Ask Lotus, Borland, Word Perfect, Netscape, Corel, and so on how it felt.
Unfortunately I see little different with the case in Win8 than in any of the predecessors.
Steam are screwed.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
I guess I missed where Steam won't work on Windows 8 like it does on Windows 7. Please link.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
He's right in many more ways than one. Hedging his bets against a future in which Microsoft is his biggest rival is only one reason for doing this. The other big reason is simply to expand the gaming market, and to lead it.
It's no secret that the Linux world is full of endearing geeks and nerds who love to play video games --- there could hardly be a bigger truism! And yet they are totally under-served on their favorite platform, and frequently have to run a Windows box for the sole reason of being able to play their games. That presents an obvious business opportunity.
By supplying Linux gamers with good games on their favorite platform, not only is he expanding his customer base to a whole new audience of Linux-only gamers, but is also making it possible for Linux gamers to avoid running a Windows box at all. And that can remove one of his rivals from the competition entirely. It would be a move of genius.
What's more, if Linux gaming takes off bigtime (his company certainly has every opportunity to make that happen), then he will be the leader in a new gaming frontier, and everyone else will be playing catchup. That is worth a gamble all by itself, and it's not even a high-risk venture.
I think Gabe's business nose can sense a big opportunity here, a huge and almost unexploited market that he can make his own, while at the same time safeguarding his future against Microsoft.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
And it is THAT, that right there, that I don't get. Are you telling me MSFT hasn't run a single focus group? hell I've had over 400 folks that has gone through my shop try it, everyone from teens to little old ladies and down to a person they HATE METRO on a bog standard non touch desktop.
And lets not kid ourselves, the economy is a corpse and both AMD and Intel are reporting sales slumps as it is so do you honestly believe that adding a HIGHER price now by adding touchscreens is gonna do anything but torpedo the figures of anyone stupid enough to try? Hell has nobody in fucking Redmond ever been into a Walmart? Or a Best Buy? Have they ever bothered to ask anyone selling PCs retail WTF is going on? Walk into ANY B&M and what you see sure as fuck ain't "ultrabooks", oh they may have ONE which they'll tell you an't selling for shit, but what do you see? AMD as far as the eye can see, why? Because the "sweet spot" is between $350-$500 with the $400-$450 laptops being the biggest sellers and you just ain't gonna hit that price point with most of the Intel line and you sure as hell ain't gonna hit it by tacking on another $100-$150 a unit for touchscreens that nobody wants because poking your damned laptop or desktop all damned day is uncomfortable!
So that is what I don't understand. I mean surely to God they can see that freightrain of failure rolling down the track full speed ahead, can't they? Can't they see that the desktop and laptop form factor simply doesn't work with a touchscreen? Hell have they even looked at the sales numbers for non tablet touchscreens? I have, last figures I could find had just 4% of the X86 units being sold with touch and BTW that was counting industrial like POS and kiosks. if you remove those? Less than 2% of the world X86 market is being sold with touch.
And before anybody says it, yes i know they are getting the shit stomped out of them in cell phones, but how does torpedoing the only OS business you aren't getting stomped in make ANY sense at all? If they wanted to use a single codebase, with the Metro UI on the tablets and phones and a standard desktop on...well desktops and laptops? Okay, makes sense and saves money by cutting out reinventing the wheel. But what they are doing here is completely batshit, its just the opposite of the "Hey lets make phones teeny tiny desktops!" that they did for a decade with WinCE. Can they not read reviews in Redmond? Can they not see the memes on YouTube where people throw a relative on Win 8 just to watch them be lost and fumble around? How can you not see what a fucking disaster you have about to take a shit all over one of your few remaining profitable divisions MSFT?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That is not "easily", which was obviously my point. A mouse can have several buttons to hit and convey intent.
Your example is using one type of possible intent conveyance (long touch) to emulate another (right click). But it's still limited - it's not as effective, and we're removing an intent option (we can't use long touches for other things). With a mouse for example we can have right click and long right click, if we so choose.
I was not factually incorrect in anyway.
Actually I'd say from watching my customers who have had them get me tablets that the reasons tablets have touchscreens? Is that people use 'em as big oversized iPods. Watching my customers they aren't answering their webmail, or writing a doc, or frankly creating squat with their tablet, they are playing music or video or at most Googling something from the couch, like what the name of the actor is in the show they are watching.
Frankly the ONLY ones pushing the whole "post PC" thing is those that stand to gain from tablets. be it by lock down like Apple and MSFT, or eyeballs like Google, or the hardware manufacturers that hope they can have a MHz war with ARM like they did with X86 from the early 90s through mid 00s. But actually interacting with the people buying the things i can tell you they are NOT replacing their PCs, be it desktop or laptop (most have both) for a tablet or smartphone.
In fact, and this will blow the mind of many a geek but the average consumer? Does not look at the phone or the tablet as a computer at all! The phone is a "phone that plays games and does Google" and the tablet is a "touchscreen that lets me watch videos and does games and Google" and that's it. As far as they are concerned it might as well be a washer and dryer because to them its an appliance not a computer!
So it isn't about what is or isn't a good solution or form factor, its simply about accepting the reality of the market. Once PCs went multicore they passed "good enough" and went into "insanely overpowered" for the vast majority. Hell do you think anything Suzy the checkout girl is doing on a PC is gonna stress even a 5 year old Phenom I triple? Of course not, so she doesn't buy a new one until the old one breaks. We are VERY close to seeing that in ARM as well, just look up "ARM dark silicon" to see we are about to hit the wall just like we did with X86 but in this case the wall is power instead of thermal as the batteries simply can't feed the chips. Once that happens and everyone who wants one has one the bottom will drop like with X86, sure people will break a few more of these than computers but it won't be a boom like today.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.