Valve Blog Announces Dates For Steam Linux External Beta

An anonymous reader writes "In the third post to the new Valve Linux Blog, the Linux team has announced that starting next week they will begin their internal beta, with an external beta of 1000 users to begin mid 'some time in October.' There will be an external beta sign up page made available 'soon' according to the blog."

Comments

I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[pecosdave]

but as someone who ditched Windows back when Win2K was still new I'm not really up on it.

Is it closer to an iTunes like store, an Apt like installer, or is it some sort virtual machine running a standardized program, like Flash, Java, or a console emulator?

Also - how does it compare to something like the Ubuntu Software Center I used to install Torch Light and the rest of the recent Humble Bundle stuff.

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[bersl2]

More like iTunes, plus the usual social additions expected of gaming communities (IM, chat, voice, achievements, etc.).

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like an itunes store/software center, but for games. You can talk with your friends, even if you're both in games (shift+tab iirc will bring up an overlay in any game). Also they're porting the source engine (iiuc), so we'll (probably) have games like L4D2 and maybe even Half Life 2. More info on their blog: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[crafty.munchkin]

iTunes wishes it was as good as Steam!!! This should be awesome, it'll be good to have some L4D2 games with the guys at work on our lunch break. We're running a mix of linux and mac systems here, so everyone should be able to play :)

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[webmistressrachel]

Slashdot is miraculously blessed by IT departments. In one of the offices I work at, their connection is so limited it's untrue - even stuff like the Community Recycling Network (crn.org.uk) is blocked, and the block page says "Category: None" so it may even be a whitelist.

Yet all the slashdot subdomains and the main one are completely unfiltered - along with, suspiciously enough, things like The Register and xkcd. So it's geeks policing geeks I guess. I get a free pass!

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[NemosomeN]

The simplest way to explain Steam is that it is DRM done right. If you pirate the game, you get the game for free. But, you lose auto updates, chat client, steam trading, access to servers with anti-cheat features, etc.

It deters piracy by adding value to legally purchased games.

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[DarkTempes]

Think of a webkit-based instant messaging client and app store mixed together. It keeps your games up-to-date, has really good sale prices, and makes it stupidly easy to play games with friends.

The downside is that there is DRM (many games have to be launched through steam to play them) and it's kind of a pain to play games when offline.
In the past Valve has said that if they were to ever dissolve then they'll release a DRM removal tool.

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[guises]

There are certainly people who see value in Steam's added services, but it is most certainly not "DRM done right." Every game purchased through Steam requires online activation, every single one. A stark contrast to the iTunes comparison - even when iTunes was DRMing their media, an internet connection was never required.

I'm not sure what "DRM done right" would be, DRM is after all a limitation on what you can do with your purchased media. For me however, any form of DRM that requires me to ask permission before I can read or watch or play with my stuff, that will never fall into the "acceptable DRM" category.

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The simplest way to explain Steam is that it is DRM done right.

Speaking as somebody who recently lived in a hotel with shitty wifi for 6 months, I have to chuckle at that statement. It stopped being "DRM done right" when it decided it wouldn't let me play my single-player game while the wifi was down.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree with most of your post, especially the point about it being a deterrent to piracy, but really it's not 'right' it's just courteously applied lube.

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[wolrahnaes]

There was a long-standing bug in Steam which made offline mode unreliable for anyone who shuts their computer down regularly.

When you'd shut down Windows, Steam would apparently just sit around and fail to heed the warnings the OS gave it until it would be forced to close. This made it not properly save the offline mode token, so if the next time you launched the client was without an internet connection, you were SOL.

If you closed Steam before shutting down it worked fine, but since this wasn't common knowledge and you don't usually plan internet outages at the consumer level as far as an average user cares it didn't work.

The actual cause of the bug was identified publicly by a user a few months ago and shortly followed by a Steam client update which resolved the problem. At this point offline mode works exactly as expected.

Re:I've got a vague idea of what Steam is -

[Spad]

Every game purchased through Steam requires online activation, every single one

You mean the online store, that you're using, while online, to purchase games, online, requires you to be online to install your game, that you download while online? Say it ain't so.

The Steam DRM is optional, btw, entirely up to the publisher, which is why a lot of older games don't have it and can be run without Steam once they're installed.

1000?

[Anonymous Coward]

"an external beta of 1000 users"

Wow, they are rolling it out to the entire Linux gaming community at once with plenty of spots to spare.

Re:1000?

[artor3]

And I hear a few of them even have a sense of humor!

Re:1000?

[interval1066]

Do any of them have a sense of humor?

$ man woman
No manual entry for woman

No, not at all.

Anyone else first read "External" as "Eternal"?

[bersl2]

Heart skipped a beat there.

Re:Anyone else first read "External" as "Eternal"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Eternal Beta" does describe certain types of software you can find on Linux...

Re:Anyone else first read "External" as "Eternal"?

[pecosdave]

As someone who's used Linux nearly exclusively for more than a decade I'll proudly say:

Most of it. The better stuff anyways.

There's a lot of Alpha and cobbled together feeling stuff on there also. Still, when I go to work and use my Windows 7 machine I look at it and wonder how my coworkers could possibly go home and continue using that crap.

You won't have to use Steam to benefit from this.

[Jartan]

The intent is more to get Steam users off Windows and onto Linux than to take advantage of the current Linux market.

With Windows 8 announcing an app shop and scaring the hell out of small time developers we could finally see a real push for Linux adoption.

Re:Mandatory Binding Arbitration

[NotQuiteReal]

you can't sign away your legal rights

This would be clicking away your rights, that is totally different, and probably patentable.

if this is viable maybe no more windows for me

[Dan667]

if Steam works on Linux with enough games I may just skip Windows 8 and everything after that.

Re:I would just like to say

[NemosomeN]

I doubt Gabe Newell is familiar with hunger strikes.

You forgot the $ and DRM

[cbhacking]

Mostly true, but Steam is also a storefront wrapping a DRM system. Some Steam games can run apparently without Steam running and signed in (none of the ones I've tried, though), but many can't. To be fair, that's sometimes because they use Steam for in-game features (multiplayer matchmaking and such) but often it's just for the DRM. There are almost no free (as in cost, much less freedom) games on Steam, so it's not much like a typical Linux package management repo in that way either.

As DRM schemes go, Steam isn't that bad; it can run in an offline mode for up to a month or so without connecting to Valve's servers, and it quite handily avoids the whole "You have used up your limit of X activations" BS. It brings a host of other problems, though, like the inability for two people to play two completely different games at the same time if they were purchased on the same account. It also has the usual "you don't really own it" BS of DRMed media, such as the complete inability to resell any game.