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."

Comments

Re:What's the point?

[Microlith]

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.

you might as well just go back to it.

I'm trying to get away from it. Games moving to Linux gives me more reason to leave.

what we need to get these people to do is to give us the code to their engines (even if under a mostly proprietary license).

Some do, eventually.

that way we will be able to continue enjoying what makes GNU/Linux attractive and play games as well.

How about we move games, and users, to Linux first? Silly absolutist stances accomplish nothing.

Re:What's the point?

[AvitarX]

I'm all for DRM, I really like the accelerated desktop experience personally.

Re:Walled Garden

[ninetyninebottles]

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.

Re:What's the point?

[Internetuser1248]

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.

Re:And the Linux naming experts strike again

[RCL]

Seconded. I feel that people who use Linux not even for gaming, but for anything graphics-related, are a tiny minority. Available API (de facto standard: OpenGL + SDL) sucks, drivers suck (except for NVidia, who gets blamed for being binary), development tools suck (see TFA about OpenGL debugger), distributing binaries is problematic.

Desktop integration isn't there ("standard" SDL will not help you detect multiple monitors), when your app crashes you are left with broken screen. Just allocating too much (overcommit by a few GB) memory can make your Linux desktop unresponsive enough so you have to SSH to it from another machine and kill the offending process.

Now compare it to Windows where TDR allows you to survive even a driver crash! There's A LOT of work needed if Linux is to become a good desktop, and the majority of it is not about fancy UI. It's about getting a solid graphics stack, good support for debugging, good tools built on top of that. Frankly speaking, I'm not sure that community can provide that. This requires unification of will on a large scale, and community tends to produce loosely-knit patchwork of locally optimal solutions.