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Interview With Icculus on GNU/Linux Gaming
Via Phoronix comes a link to an interview with prolific GNU/Linux game porter Icculus about the state of gaming on GNU/Linux. Topics include Steam, Windows 8, his experiences trying to push FatELF vs full screen games, and the general state of the game industry. From the article (on the general state of games on GNU/Linux): "It's making progress. We're turning out to have a pretty big year, with Unity3D coming to the platform, and Valve preparing to release Steam. These are just good foundations to an awesome 2013."
Nonsense. Bringing in Steam and closed source games doesn't turn a GNU/Linux platform into a closed source OS. The closed bits have to behave and accept that I control the system.
I'm trying to get away from it. Games moving to Linux gives me more reason to leave.
Some do, eventually.
How about we move games, and users, to Linux first? Silly absolutist stances accomplish nothing.
Google is largely exempt from this implication so long as Android continues to come with a simple check-box for side loading software.
For Android this is already possible, as evidenced by the Amazon App Store. For Microsoft and Apple, you'll have to force the issue legally. They're quite content to maintain lock-down on their "current" platforms. I say current because Microsoft has extended the walled garden to x86, but only for formerly-Metro applications.
I'm all for DRM, I really like the accelerated desktop experience personally.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You're an idiot. DRM in the context of the Linux kernel means Direct Rendering Management, part of the graphics subsystem which does in fact help with desktop acceleration.
Seriously, fat elf? ELF was fine, it's another TLA that you might pronounce as E-L-F, but there's only one way people would say FatELF. "Just turn the GIMP into a FatELF and it'll run on all platforms.", seriously RMS should add another one to the list, free as in beer, free as in speech and free as in puns.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I feel like you are talking about different things. Steam isn't a developer, it's a gaming platform and a game store.
Agreed, but Steam is a distribution platform and a store. They add value by handling a lot of the purchasing and with value added integration. They are competing with the App stores for about half of their business model. It is likely not sustainable unless there is some sort of major technological shift.
That would be like talking about putting Steam into Game for Windows Live. You can talk about Valve putting their games into other people's store, but not Steam as a platform.
Well, yes and no. Steam is not a fixed technology. One of the benefits is that across platforms it can link users together to play, chat, share scores, etc. Valve introducing not only their games to Windows Live but also their reputation and ability to audit games to determine which ones are malware or crashy or will otherwise cause users problems is a very real value, especially if MS were to walk away from that service and leave it up to third parties. Xbox, however is the most locked down and least likely of platforms. Phones and desktop OS's on the other hand are a more plausible situation.
So, there is no scenario in which Steam can be a first class citizen. You're mixing Valve the developers, and Steam as a distribution platform.
So imagine a world where Apple announced they were going to allow absolutely any application to be distributed in the App store... but by default users would only see the ones Apple approved. Imagine, however, that users could add any company/organization they wanted to approve or disapprove of software and provide ratings for it. For example, Symantec could feed information to the Apple store and users that enabled it could (for a fee) have all applications vetted against Symantec's white/black list. Users could add the Catholic Church's whitelist to remove even apps Apple provided that did not align with the beliefs of those adherents. Users could also add Valve and see added to the store any games Valve had approved as options for purchase. Further Valve approved apps (submitted to the store by Valve) all included integration with Steam's network services to add value.
In the example above Steam is a first class citizen as much as any other distributor of software and while Apple might exclude some of their games by default for whatever reason, users could still get those games from the same place as all their other games. This is a survivable situation for Valve so long as they keep producing games and adding value with their network services (like integration with other platforms and authentication on other platforms) and Apple wins because more people can get the apps they want and Apple sells more hardware all without seriously degrading the security benefits of the current App store.
If you bring closed, proprietary, DRM-infested software onto it, you're just turning it into another Windows; you might as well just go back to it.
Nonsense. Bringing in Steam and closed source games doesn't turn a GNU/Linux platform into a closed source OS. The closed bits have to behave and accept that I control the system.
I'm amazed at the number of people with such an attitude to which you respond. For some reason, some number of unintelligent people actually believe making Linux popular and attractive to game developers and publishers, somehow Linux itself will be magically destroyed. The complete lack of critical thought to reach such a conclussion is truly amazing I completely agree with you. Even beyond that, availability of Steam and game frameworks is going to attract developers and games, which have absolutely nothing to do with Steam.
No, my point was that the stores with serious restrictions are not purely for security purposes. Google does not have a walled garden, Microsoft and Apple do, and they do because they want 100% control over the platform. Beyond security, it lets them play gatekeeper and impose a toll on both developers and users they haven't been able to before.
Every store is going to perform its own vetting, there's no real way to divorce it from the companies except in Google's case, and they'll do it anyway if they want their reputation to mean anything (and it needs improving.) Microsoft and Apple will never budge, as they want you to be their only option. Apple may have pushed to remove DRM on music, but they haven't made a peep about ebooks or movies, let alone the effective DRM that iOS as a whole imposes.
What's with the assumption that with Steam coming to Linux, games will automatically follow? It certainly hasn't worked that way for their Mac library.
And the reason why open source games need statically compiled cross-distro binaries is that these days, you need to assure your game works in an online environment.
Online play requires all clients to have the same game version. There are exceptions I guess, but they aren't worth mentioning it.
What this means is that you need all distros to release(update) your newest game version at the same time, and if they don't (which they can't realistically) users will get locked out.
A good example of this is the Spring RTS engine, probably the best open source 3D RTS engine.
Games that use it are written in Lua language and thus only system-specific constraint is the engine itself.
Recently there was a push, and hopefully from next version we will have Linux static cross-distro binaries.
This gives us both assurance that users will always be able to use the newest, just released version, as well as to have multiple engine versions at the same time.
Just imagine how much package maintenance "fun" it would be to use an old package, with all the old package deps, and to maintain that dependency tree for each old engine version if we didn't have the statically compiled binaries.
The truth is, most Linux users don't care about games.
There is a causal element there: Most people who care about games don't use linux. If games come to linux that could change.
Everything already existing hasn't been ported, but I've definitely noticed a rise in games with Windows/OS X simultaneous launch on Steam. Every game doesn't get a port, but the ones which do at least get them sooner. But OS X probably has ~15x as many desktop users as the various Linux distros, so it might not be that awesome for Linux. We can be certain the indies won't have any reservations now, though. Unity3D is huge among them, and the Linux client export is a first-class feature, like the OS X and Windows players.
OSX is dramatically closer to the market share of Desktop Linux than it is to Windows. OSX has somewhere in the neighborhood of 9-10% more of the market than Linux. This isn't to say that the Linux market is large. It is to say that the OS X market is tiny. As much as Mac fans want to rave about how their platform is a major contender, it really isn't. It is a niche OS that has been marketed well enough that it looks like a major OS.
Before the fanboys come out of the woodwork to accuse me of being a 'Hater'. Please notice that I did not comment on the quality of the OS. Only it's market share.
And the sad fact is, that as of today, Windows 8 under steam outnumbers *all* versions of Mac OS all together. You can bet that the desktop distribution to Mac is higher than Linux, so what is the point here?
Valve is caught with a problem, they are trying desperately to stay relevant in an era where XBox is actually really good, and while the integration into Windows 8 leaves much to be desired, you now give companies a huge benefit in added revenue via XBox points and Xbox Achievements (which points can unlock certain things). Simply stated, developers and publishers make more money through the Xbox channels than they do anywhere else.
I know the idea of Linux gaming is great on /. but let's face the bad news; only if the community takes on the challenge of porting games (ala Wine or something), will it ever be bothered to be played. And even then, every Linux "gamer" will keep a Windows partition because all games will come to Windows, and only some will come to Linux -- and that's in an ideal world. So if publishers/developers know this, what's the point in adding Linux support in? The games won't play as well, they will lose added revenue via Xbox points/achievements, and they will make a few nerds happy.
Sorry to say but getting a Humble Bundle developer to push the idea that Steam on Linux will be "moderately successful" to "wildly successful" is idiotic and naive. Next time show an interview from a big name publisher and let the entire interview be three minutes of laughing.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Actually, for many in the Linux community, if Linux were to become popular, it would be magically destroyed. For many, Linux is not just an operating system, it is an exclusive club. Like all exclusive clubs, the appeal is the exclusivity...i.e. "I'm better than you because I'm in club X." If the platform were to become popular, it would destroy the exclusivity, and then the nerds would have to find something else to make themselves feel superior.
Then, there are the purists. "All closed-source software is evil." As stated above, this is silly absolutist thinking. Here is the fact: A software vendors has the right to do WHATEVER THEY WANT with THEIR OWN CODE. If they want to release the code, then good...but if the vendor wants to keep the code closed, then GOOD! Neither side is "right" or "wrong"--its merely a cost/benefit analysis. Some software makes absolutely no sense being open source, while other things make perfect sense. Purists exist ONLY out of their own selfish desire to control other people.
Frankly, I say: bring steam, games, and all manner of closed-source software. Let it even stay closed, because that is Valve's decision, not mine. My decision is whether or not I install/use/purchase Valve's products.
Actually I am a gamer, and I have been wanting to move to linux for ages because it is simply better than windows. Yes I just want a toy, but linux can be a toy, linux can be whatever you want it to be and that is the great thing about it.