Slashdot Mirror
Gabe Newell Talks Linux As the Future of Games at LinuxCon NA
Slashdot's Timothy Lord is attending LinuxCon in New Orleans this week and writes in with the following.
"Valve
co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell says in no uncertain terms
what the brain trust at Valve thinks: When it comes to actual users,
'Linux is currently insignificant by any metric' (by any metric that
matters to game companies, at least, like number of players, minutes
played, and — all important — revenue). On these
fronts, Linux players are 'typically under 1 percent' of what game
companies see. But that's not the upshot. The takeaway is just about the
opposite, says Newell: 'The future of gaming is on Linux.' Newell
expounded on the present and future of games on Linux in a keynote
address at LinuxCon
North America, which kicked off today in New Orleans. He
described ways Valve is working to improve the landscape for games on
Linux, and hinted at new hardware developments from the company in the
near future." Keep reading for the rest of Tim's report.
Since
Valve's 1996 founding, the company has come out with a rash of
well-known games including Half-life,
Counterstrike, and Portal, for
personal computers as well as the console market. In that time,
though, Valve, like the rest of the computer world, has gone through
structural changes driven by the falling costs of both computers and
bandwidth. These, says Newell, have increased the relative value of
design and game quality in general, but also marketing and —
crucially — distribution paths. That has ramifications
throughout the games industry, including the emergence and growth of
online delivery for games and updates. (Valve’s own system, Steam, is
up to 50 million users by itself; the console infrastructure is even
bigger: Sony
claimed that many users three years ago). The changes in
relative costs have also spurred free to play models and large-scale
e-sports. (Large scale is no joke: According to Newell, "At the last
tournament we held, we had over a million people watching it
simultaneously.")
Newell describes a trend toward end-users being involved, though, not just as spectators, but as content creators. He describes this in fairly sweeping terms: “Games will becomes nodes in a linked economy, where the majority of digital goods and services are user generated.” That sounds a bit grandiose, perhaps, but it’s grounded in numbers. “The Team Fortress community creates 10 times the amount of content [that developers do],” says Newell. While he says Valve has always been happy to compete with other game studios (“we’re a little bit cocky”), “the one entity we wouldn’t ever want to compete with is our own users; they’ve already outstripped us dramatically. It’s not by a little bit; it’s an order of magnitude already.” Broad-based distributed development like that is what open source has been whipping up in the world of software for decades.
Creating games or games content, though, isn’t for the faint of heart: centralized online app stores (Apple’s in particular) “put an enormous number of roadblocks in front of doing that,” including developer approval as well as vetting individual apps and updates to them. In that context, he says, few users have the stubbornness or wherewithal to get through that. A more streamlined system for taking advantage of eater player/developers is needed.
“Several years ago, we thought ‘OK, if our model is correct, we need to help making Linux a good gaming plaform for users and developers.” To that end, Valve makes for a case study in how Linux has been creeping in: the company shipped the first dedicated games server running Linux in 1999. Now, most games servers run Linux (now several hundred thousand — and “probably a million”).
Those game servers are dishing up prodigious loads of data: “Near as we can tell, we’re generating something like 2 to 3 percent of worldwide mobile and land-based IP traffic, and that tends to startle people who don’t realize what a large sea change is going on. Even ignoring game servers, we’ve delivered over an exabyte of data year to date.” (Internally, he says, there’s approximately 20TB of content in a Linux-based version control system. This, says Newell, is true for companies like Bungie, too.)
Impressive as those data-shoveling numbers are, they don’t exactly shout desktop (or living room) success. But steps that Valve (along with other companies) has taken make it easier to swallow the claim. “Several years ago, we thought ‘OK, if our model is correct, we need to help make Linux a good gaming plaform for users and developers.” The first major move, says Newell, was to get a game — a real, graphics-intensive game — going on Linux. The process, though, revealed a “sweater thread” of issues, revealing flaws in in all parts of the stack: faulty drivers, gaps between Linux distributions’ included software, pitfalls in the user experience, and flaws in the company’s Steam tools.
In the course of resolving problems in each of those layers, “The good thing is that if we get a game like Left for Dead running, we’ve probably worked through issues for lots of developers. We’ve definitely solved problems for the Call of Duty team, or Tour of Duty, or whatever. The games aren’t that different; the key thing is to get changes all the way through for users. In February, we shipped [the Linux] Steam client; today -- at least when I got on the plane -- Valve has 198 games running on Linux.“
The bug-fixing and code-developing isn’t just a sporadic effort; the company has “several guys on SDL,” started by current Valve employee Sam Lantinga, and is co-developing a new Linux debugger, in addition to the work they’ve done on the LLVM debugger.
Making Linux a better platform for games is necessary, but may not be sufficient in itself, though. Platforms tend to cluster not just by operating system, but by context: platform, mobile, and console games don’t always play nicely: “As a user, I shoudn’t have to buy new games, or have new friends, or whatever, just because I’m sitting on a couch.” With Linux certainly a more-than-viable software platform for games, but still in the chicken-and-egg world of low user and revenue numbers that discourage spending developer time on Linux end users, Newell says the next step is necessary work on the hardware side of the equation, to smooth the open-source path between the developer and back-end data handling side of the games business to actual end-users.
“One of the things we had to do, is we're staging out the different pieces we think are necessary for staging to make Linux the future of gaming,” said Newell. “Our next step, having done these other pieces, is on the hardware side. There are thermal issues and sound issues, but also a lot of input issues.” He closed with this tease: “Our next step on this is to release some stuff we’ve done on the hardware side. Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there, and what are the hardware opportunities we see for getting Linux into the living room."
Newell describes a trend toward end-users being involved, though, not just as spectators, but as content creators. He describes this in fairly sweeping terms: “Games will becomes nodes in a linked economy, where the majority of digital goods and services are user generated.” That sounds a bit grandiose, perhaps, but it’s grounded in numbers. “The Team Fortress community creates 10 times the amount of content [that developers do],” says Newell. While he says Valve has always been happy to compete with other game studios (“we’re a little bit cocky”), “the one entity we wouldn’t ever want to compete with is our own users; they’ve already outstripped us dramatically. It’s not by a little bit; it’s an order of magnitude already.” Broad-based distributed development like that is what open source has been whipping up in the world of software for decades.
Creating games or games content, though, isn’t for the faint of heart: centralized online app stores (Apple’s in particular) “put an enormous number of roadblocks in front of doing that,” including developer approval as well as vetting individual apps and updates to them. In that context, he says, few users have the stubbornness or wherewithal to get through that. A more streamlined system for taking advantage of eater player/developers is needed.
“Several years ago, we thought ‘OK, if our model is correct, we need to help making Linux a good gaming plaform for users and developers.” To that end, Valve makes for a case study in how Linux has been creeping in: the company shipped the first dedicated games server running Linux in 1999. Now, most games servers run Linux (now several hundred thousand — and “probably a million”).
Those game servers are dishing up prodigious loads of data: “Near as we can tell, we’re generating something like 2 to 3 percent of worldwide mobile and land-based IP traffic, and that tends to startle people who don’t realize what a large sea change is going on. Even ignoring game servers, we’ve delivered over an exabyte of data year to date.” (Internally, he says, there’s approximately 20TB of content in a Linux-based version control system. This, says Newell, is true for companies like Bungie, too.)
Impressive as those data-shoveling numbers are, they don’t exactly shout desktop (or living room) success. But steps that Valve (along with other companies) has taken make it easier to swallow the claim. “Several years ago, we thought ‘OK, if our model is correct, we need to help make Linux a good gaming plaform for users and developers.” The first major move, says Newell, was to get a game — a real, graphics-intensive game — going on Linux. The process, though, revealed a “sweater thread” of issues, revealing flaws in in all parts of the stack: faulty drivers, gaps between Linux distributions’ included software, pitfalls in the user experience, and flaws in the company’s Steam tools.
In the course of resolving problems in each of those layers, “The good thing is that if we get a game like Left for Dead running, we’ve probably worked through issues for lots of developers. We’ve definitely solved problems for the Call of Duty team, or Tour of Duty, or whatever. The games aren’t that different; the key thing is to get changes all the way through for users. In February, we shipped [the Linux] Steam client; today -- at least when I got on the plane -- Valve has 198 games running on Linux.“
The bug-fixing and code-developing isn’t just a sporadic effort; the company has “several guys on SDL,” started by current Valve employee Sam Lantinga, and is co-developing a new Linux debugger, in addition to the work they’ve done on the LLVM debugger.
Making Linux a better platform for games is necessary, but may not be sufficient in itself, though. Platforms tend to cluster not just by operating system, but by context: platform, mobile, and console games don’t always play nicely: “As a user, I shoudn’t have to buy new games, or have new friends, or whatever, just because I’m sitting on a couch.” With Linux certainly a more-than-viable software platform for games, but still in the chicken-and-egg world of low user and revenue numbers that discourage spending developer time on Linux end users, Newell says the next step is necessary work on the hardware side of the equation, to smooth the open-source path between the developer and back-end data handling side of the games business to actual end-users.
“One of the things we had to do, is we're staging out the different pieces we think are necessary for staging to make Linux the future of gaming,” said Newell. “Our next step, having done these other pieces, is on the hardware side. There are thermal issues and sound issues, but also a lot of input issues.” He closed with this tease: “Our next step on this is to release some stuff we’ve done on the hardware side. Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there, and what are the hardware opportunities we see for getting Linux into the living room."
One thing(among others) that drove people to stay with Windows for their home PCs has been that games have used windows as a target platform. Microsoft decided their games division should push their consoles as hard as possible, even directing partners to target the consoles above windows.
Valve recognized early that Microsoft was a competitor and couldn't be the only provider for environment. A push to linux on steam is going to drive abandonment of windows. Microsoft has damaged their headline product to push a broken model of black-box entertainment.
Whatever. Steambox; the proverbial unicorn of the console world.
This should be easy. This should have been on the shelves in 2012.
WTF valve?
1. The check is in the mail.
2. Linux is the future of gaming.
3. I won't cum in your mouth.
Wouldn't the Year of the Linux Desktop have to occur before the Year of Linux Gaming?
just saying is all.....
Part A has essentially happened. Everything by valve that's not way-too-old-to-port has been linuxified.
Part B isn't going to happen because they want developers to target whatever audience they feel like.
My laptop is for work. My console is for gaming. I wouldn't jeopardize my work to play games. As soon as there is a steam box, i'll start gaming with linux.
Licensing aside. BSD and Linux comparisons aside.
Aren't the PS3 and PS4 running variations of FreeBSD? Would this not be exactly "Nix in the home for gaming."?
FreeBSD titles are bound to be easier to port to Linux than say FreeBSD / OpenGL to Win8 kernel / DirectX, correct?
If those assumptions are correct, it would appear that he's late to the party.
1) Switch to the Wayland graphics stack -- games don't need X11 and all its complexities
2) Provide a Direct3D-compatible state tracker so devs don't have to mess with OpenGL
3) Linux really, really needs a Visual Studio. The reason why Visual Debugger is so great is largely because of the rest of Visual Studio. No, Eclipse doesn't count.
Game devs are used to the Windows ecosystem. Compared to it, what's available on Linux is stone knives and bearskins. Until that changes, not many game devs will be enthused about Linux development.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
This really sounds like it is more of a hardware push than anything. They can build the OS for their gaming machines and servers with linux cheaper and I would guess easier than doing an OS from scratch. I'm guessing the "Linux is the future" talk is better marketing spin.
Part A has essentially happened. Everything by valve that's not way-too-old-to-port has been linuxified.
Nice to hear. Last time I checked, almost all their newer games like Portal 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive weren't available on Linux. Glad to know they've finally fixed this and started taking Linux seriously.
Right, and Natalie Portman is never going to target a guy with a SlashID in the high 7 didgits.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Not the last time I checked.
I have been waiting for portal 2 for ages now. When they can't even get the first party stuff ported what are the odds the other stuff ever will?
complete list of valve linux games on steam
Yeah, I can see Portal 2 didn't make it. That sucks.
Nor L4D2, nor HL2 save for beta.
I appreciate the effort but my spending would be higher if there was something I did not already own. I bet that is a big part of the less than 1% and the dropping number of linux steam users. They should have held off announcing until they had some actual games.
...thank you, Gabe Newell!
Natalie Portman is never going to target a guy with a SlashID. Full stop.
FTFY
Process of elimination points at Linux.
Windows is starting to be unfathomable for even the common user with the monstrosity that is 8.
Mac is...apple. I don't think dealing with them professionally is ever a good idea.
So that leaves Linux.
Everything by valve that's not way-too-old-to-port has been linuxified.
Great joy and merriment! I'm off to play Portal 2 on linux!
Should I end the post here, or clarify it's sarcasm, or take a whack at 'the linux gaming is a lie' humor?
CounterStrike is a disgrace to the CounterStrike franchise.
I took on a project of trying to convert my gaming machine to Ubuntu this summer. No wine, only native games that would run on 12.04LTS. The result: Summer is over, and I'm back on Windows.
At first it was nice to see more games running on Linux, and even Steam available for Ubuntu. However, the vast majority of title's I owned on Steam weren't available, and the ones that were were buggy. Take for example the Valve title DOTA2. It works on Ubuntu through steam, natively, but it's slower, and has several annoying bugs when typing in chat and minimizing the fullscreen to the desktop.
Skype works, but was buggy. My headset worked, but had more static, etc, etc.
What's more is I had two random crashes. One due to a kernel update that rendered my machine unbootable, and the other (after a fresh reinstall) due to a nvidia proprietary driver update that continuously crashed X server on boot. I'm not sure what the underlying issue is with Linux. I'm not sure why it's so difficult to get anything that's a binary (not open source from the repositories) working properly. But this seems to be my experience every year since about 2006 when I attempt to transition everything to Ubuntu.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
1) the future of graphics APIs lies with openGL ES3.0, ES4.0, etc. DirectX is acknowledged to be a dead-end even by Microsoft
2) the 'windows ecosystem' is actually crap for games (even though it is currently better than anything else). Take when MS depreciated gaming access to anything other than the main 2 mouse buttons. Games using MS mouse APIs suddenly lost all the functionality of modern mice. It was years before MS put this functionality back into Windows.
Then take MS's godawful support of in-game video and sound codecs. Sensible companies use open-source solutions to sound codecs, and open-source or third party codecs for video.
And again, consider Microsoft's putrid driver model for modern GPUs. No game can afford but a handful of state-changes per frame, making most clever uses of the GPU impossible. The new console from Sony, the PS4, is able to completely revolutionise the use of the GPU by allowing hundreds of times more state changes per frame then any Windows gaming PC.
All Microsoft gives to games developers is a mediocre set of standards, many of which (as with 'Games for Windows Live') suddenly wink out of existence when MS gets bored with them. If a gaming PC could be programmed 'to the metal' (as is the case with the Xbone and PS4), the game would run at least 3 times better for any given combination of GPU and CPU. The Microsoft 'tax' is at least 66% of the potential performance of that hardware you own.
As for Visual Studio, well NOTHING prevents one from using visual studio to create Linux (or Android) apps. A Windows environment can easily emulate enough of a Linux gaming environment to make the final cross-port trivial.
(Future) Gaming on Linux is all about 'to the metal' coding similar to what the best games will be doing on the PS4 in a couple of years. Go study the architecture of the PS4 (and the Xbone). The Windows PC will NEVER adopt Huma/HSA designs in any significant way, and the dreadful driver model of Windows 7/8 is never going to see significant improvement. Microsoft doesn't have enough juice left to create a 'to the metal' replacement for DirectX. .
So these must be mirages:
Left 4 Dead 2
Half Life 2
Half Life 2: Episode One
Half Life 2: Episode Two
Right, and Natalie Portman is never going to target a guy with a SlashID in the high 7 didgits.
I can confirm the above is true.
Fuck Ajit Pai
They should run a promo for 2-3 years that lets game developers collect 90-100% of Linux ports/new games' profits on Steam sales. It may get the ball rolling and move the culture forward to commonplace .
Part 2 won't happen the way you said, but valve can give "a large cut" of the revenues for games that support all SOs, that way it starts to get worthy port for linux... until there are linux user enough.
I just clicked through the 17 pages (at 25 items/page). With the exception of Valve's own games (Half-Life games, Orange Box), the list seems to be composed mainly of games already ported to Linux (or cross-platform in general) and available through other channels (direct from developers, GoG, Humble-Bundle). Many seem to be casual or puzzle games originally designed for mobile platforms/tablets. Quite a few entries are tiny bits of DLC that seem designed to monetize by nickel-n-diming the user (Dungeon Defenders seems to have the most items in the list).
All in all, not all that impressive. I'm not feeling the Linux love yet and wasn't moved to get a Steam account.
HL2 isn't beta any more. But yeah, I'd buy more Valve games if I didn't already own them. I played through Portal again (with the open source Radeon driver), and have been playing HL2 now and then, but I usually end up booting to Windows for gaming, just because I'd rather play Bioshock Infinite or whatever. The next big Linux game coming up seems to be Football Manager 2014, but that's just a glorified spreadsheet. I remember playing it under Wine when it was Championship Manager 10 years ago, and it actually ran faster than under Windows.
With PC gaming its really important that the graphics drivers are easy to upgrade.
I recently purchased the humble bundle and tried running a couple of the games on a linux install on a recently purchased laptop. While the distro I was running was supported by the games in question. The drivers needed are apparently new enough they didn't make it into the most recent version of that distribution. So, instead what I got was a GL SL v4 system where the shaders didn't work well enough to actually play the games in question.
Uh, what a PITA. All the games just worked in windows 8 on the same machine, but the install process to upgrade the intel HD 4000 graphics drivers is basically dependent on the distribution maintainer. The process for doing it by hand quickly unmotivated me enough to give up. I don't need to waste 4-5 hours recompiling 1/2 of the linux graphics stack to just upgrade my drivers. This from a guy who maintains large parts of an embedded linux system at work.
I can't really imagine how anyone really runs linux who isn't a kernel hacker. I had to manually hack the blutooth driver on that machine, write a custom script to disable the touchpad, and only after a few days discovered how to control the LCD brightness because the built in KDE/etc tools weren't working. All this on a laptop that actually has worked better in linux than any I've previously owned/used.
Bottom line, linux needs to create a proper driver ABI and dump the kernel symbol versions for something more like C++ name mangling. Then the drivers will only fail to load if the kernel API's actually changed rather than because someone happened to recompile the given kernel version on a different machine.
*golf clap*
I drank what? -- Socrates
And part C won't happen because you're probably "gross".
We have been waiting ages for another ZORK. Please, somebody? A game that's all brainteasers and wordplay and fake magic and really really bad puns? And no shoot-em-ups, and no swear words, just family fun? Please?
Ah, I stopped checking about a month ago.
Valve should release something new, it has been ages since anything interesting came out from them.
They are not worth it. A modded wii and torrentz and you'll have more games to take up more time that you'll care to (it can run nes,snes,mame, etc).
99 for a used wii and you are good to go. Games on PC are too expensive especially when hardware is artificially obsoleted. (Radeon HD3450 now no longer works on xorg 1.3 which all new distros use.) HD3450 works great for all games I've played on Linux (low settings sure). I'm not buying a new graphics card just to play games on Linux. xorg fucked me, and ati fucked me. Fuck gaming on PC especially on Linux.
Part A has essentially happened. Everything by valve that's not way-too-old-to-port has been linuxified.
If anything the opposite seems true. The really old goldsrc stuff (HL, opposing force, blue shift, CS, TF:C) seems to have been ported and so does the first generation source stuff that was kept up to date (HL2, HL2:EP1, HL2:EP2, HL2:DM, HL2:LC, portal, TF2, CS:S). I also notice DOTA 2 and deathmatch classic are aslo available on linux but I don't know what engine branches they used.
The games based on more recent branches of the source engine (alien swarm, left 4 dead, portal 2, CS:GO) do not appear to have linux releases. Nor do the source engine conversions of the original half life and counterstrike.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
My son says: "My Source games run better on Linux than on Windows by about 15% - once the majority of games get a Linux version I'm done with Windows for good"
Linux as itself is pretty much unusable by most of the population. Everything is patch over patch over old support of things that shouldn't exist any more. Linux need a BIG, HUGE cleanup before people can start working with it.
The link he posted showed a grand total of 23 games. One released in 2013, one in 2010 and the rest 2009 all the way back to 1998. I give Steam credit for taking this on and for the prices they are charging but I believe Newell is blowing smoke up Linux user's butt to increase sales.
There is a significant portion of gamers that have a Windows boot just for gaming and would love to stay 100% in Linux. It is not good enough that a game
works in Linux, but it has to work as well or better in Linux. If it is easier to just boot into Windows, or the gaming experience is better in Windows, then people will continue to play games in Windows.
There is an insignificant portion of Linux gamers that refuse to boot Windows for games and so simply will not buy Windows games. This is where the new money comes from, and there is not a lot of it. This is why there is so little focus on gaming in Linux.
Game companies have to want to make games for Linux, and not simply for the purpose of making more money. Microsoft has recently been doing a great job of pissing off independent and off-beat game studios, which makes Linux look a lot more enticing. This is good news for Linux gamers as it is really the only thing that is pushing companies like Valve into making Linux versions of their games.
TL;DR;
Stop buying games that are not made for Linux if you want companies to start making games for Linux. Game developers see no reason to support Linux if Linux gamers buy Windows games and boot into Windows to play them.
Anyone else think that a canonical list of games is going to ship down the world's longest river and kindle something hot and steamy on top of TV sets? Because that's what I've been seeing for more than a year now.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Benjamin Millepied probably doesn't go on Slashdot.
Just saying
If their chosen product can't do something, then that something is unimportant, or shouldn't be done, or makes you a sissy, or whatever. They can't admit that the thing they are a fan of is less than perfect so they hate on things it does not have.
I've gotten that with numerous things regarding Linux. Games would be one of them. A Linux fan is trying to convince me to switch so I say "Ok, if you wish to convince me then here are the things I do with my computer that you need to show me how I can do in Linux." Games are a big one, since they are my primary form of entertainment when I've free time, and many of the games I want don't run in Linux. Often the response to this is "You shouldn't play games on your computer, get a console if you want to play games." That's a bogus argument, of course, but it is what they do rather than just admit "Ya, Linux is probably not the right answer for you at this point."
Same shit here. Visual Studio really is an amazing development environment that makes for some efficient workflow. There is nothing else I'm aware of that is as good. So fanboys hate on what it does as stuff that you "shouldn't need" and that you should just "man up" and do it their way.
"You should be playing games on your computer!"
What you are really saying is "The OS I'm a rabid fanboy about can't do that, so I hate it and don't want others to do it because it makes my OS look bad!"
That is very silly. Playing games on the computer is a perfectly valid use for it. One of the great things about a computer is it can do, well, almost anything. You can have a computer that does a whole host of different things, all in one OS. And games are a great form of entertainment. They are much more stimulating and interactive than TV, and they are good value for the money in terms of hours of entertainment per dollar spent. If you don't enjoy them that is fine but acting as if they are invalid is stupid.
It is even sillier to imply that you should only want to do "real things" which really sounds like work. Guess what? When you grow up and get a real job you'll find that after working for 8+ hours a day, and then doing housework and all that, you don't feel particularly inclined to do more work that you don't need to. You may wish to unwind. How you do that may vary, TV, books, yoga, videogames, music (listening or playing), sports, etc, etc. However whatever you do, that is not a waste of time, it is quite necessary to maintain a healthy mental state. Focusing all of your time and energy on work is a surefire way to burn out.
Also, if you don't believe that you can do "real things" with Windows, that only belies your own zealotry and inexperience with computers in an enterprise setting. Real shit gets done on Windows every day, all over the planet.
what audience are they going to feel like targeting?
windows is on the decline, PC and laptop sales are stagnant, partly because of the Windows/Manfuacture stagnation that new PC sales are dropping, and with it, windows is going down.
In the future, the only PC users will be the boutique type, it will be hard to find an off the shelf desktop.
The only people who will have desktops will be the type that build their own, and they are more likely to want linux or a windows alternative than windows, and are no encumbered to take windows by default, and linux is cheaper.
This will grab the attention of the PC game makers, who have to decide what android/iOS/console games they actually want to port to the PC.
since android already runs the linux kernel, and supports things like OpenGL, I imagine it'd be a hair easier.
It would actually be a simple matter to get most gamers to switch to Linux, which is to stop releasing on Windows.
What we have here is a scenario that is similar to the issue of the dollar coin. It isn't that people actually have any strong preference for paper dollars, it's that they're used to it and will keep using paper dollars as long as they exist. If you want successful adoption of a dollar coin, you can't just introduce a new coin, you have to stop printing the paper dollar. And the same goes for operating systems. Stop giving Windows as an option and gamers will jump to Linux overnight, regardless of whether they've been looking to switch or not.
Gamers will follow the games, that has always been the case.
That bastard! I know M$ screwed up windows 8 just so they could sell me windows twice. Once for the OEM 8 key and again for my Windows 7 "Upgrade".
Well played.
List of all steam linux games, not just those by Valve: 409 results.
Sorry Natalie, I'm married.
So Gabe is learning that Microsoft is planning on walling up and is moving to keep his options open. That's good, that makes business sense. But there's a problem...
Steam has made the concept of a perpetual, one-time rental service palatable. For the vast majority of purchased made on Steam, you don't own your games anymore. Sure you never technically "owned" any of the games, but you know what I mean - you could keep them and back them up, make copies of the installers and whatnot and not rely on a vendor to authorize continual access to the game. But Steam does, and what's worse, people are happy with this. I suppose it's better for a lot of people than to have to deal with buggy disc-based copy-protection checks and what not, but it's still DRM.
The problem with this is that because the majority of people have no problem with this and see no long-term ramifications for this, everyone releases their games on Steam. That's fine, except it becomes the ONLY option to get a lot of games. I cannot get Dishonored DRM-free - it's Steam or bust (or torrents, but that's not financially palatable to developers I suppose). So if I have a problem with Steam's EULA or ToS, I'm basically unable to play the extreme majority of top-tier titles, and only some of the indie titles out there. GoG provides a good alternative, except that they don't cater to Linux users which reduces my interest in them as a long term source of games (I use Windows now, but won't be forever and want to ensure I have an exit strategy).
Of course, in terms of Linux, no-one has made such an impact in getting games on Linux than Valve has with Steam for Linux. However, this in turn might reduce the motivation to make a DRM-free Linux (or Windows) games if Steam is there and us minority fellows aren't worth the trouble. Which saddens me greatly, because it means DRM will never leave us because too many gamers cannot stand on principle, or simply don't care. I'm not going to say my opinion is any more right than anyone elses, so please avoid the flames.
And hairyfeet, don't reply to this. I know you're unable to understand the concept of differing opinions.
Except, you know, literally all the improvements that have hit Steam and have raised the bar of PC gaming many-fold.
But yeah, video games and stuff, forget about infrastructure.
Half Life 3 will only be available on Linux.
Linux as itself is pretty much unusable by most of the population. Everything is patch over patch over old support of things that shouldn't exist any more. Linux need a BIG, HUGE cleanup before people can start working with it.
Linux since Windows 8 is definitely more usable, and always has had the advantage of being incredible easy to maintain. On Linux nothing is patched, almost everything is recompiled at the next release which can be often as six months. Everything needed fits on a CD.
complete list of valve linux games on steam
How did the parent get to +5 Informative? The GP said...
almost all their newer games like Portal 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive weren't available on Linux
...which is two of Valve's five most recent games, and they're not on this list.
When the only recent games a company releases on a platform are a free-to-play game and a sequel, I think it's safe to say said company isn't taking the platform seriously.
The link he posted showed a grand total of 23 games.
For what it's worth, that search link doesn't filter at all when viewing the page with NoScript (it just shows a list of... all of the games on steam, I think?).
I would happily keep Windows for games and Linux for everything else, but Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with UEFI and Secure Boot. If they're essentially going to FORCE me to choose one or the other then I'm personally going to choose Linux
What sort of forcing are you referring to? Windows 8 can run without Secure Boot, and all x86-64 PCs and motherboards certified for Windows 8 default to Secure Boot but let the owner turn off Secure Boot. Yes, I'm aware of unfounded rumors that a future version of Windows will act like Windows RT and forbid PC manufacturers from letting the owner turn off Secure Boot.
lol mostly a bunch of generic, throwaway, multiplayer-only FPS games.
What he means is that they're going to sell Linux mini computers for your TV that boot directly into a 10 ft. designed steam.
Anything for the Linux Desktop (and FOSS) is purely tangential groundwork for an eventual console. Gabe seems at least reasonably intelligent. I'm sure he realises Linux on the Desktop is a lost cause..
Go Kernel!!
Haven't heard of most of those. Let me know when they get more AAA titles (ie, games that people actually play) and fewer crap indie projects that nobody's heard of.
Worst-case scenario is pretty much where Windows 8 permanently cripples the PC gaming scene by forcing people to migrate over to consoles or deal with a crappy desktop experience.
It takes all of five minutes to restore a not-crappy desktop experience on Windows 8. Google classic shell. After you install that, the only thing you really have to use the environment formerly known as Metro for is create a new user.
even the entry-level Linux distro's all seem to be going the same route as Microsoft with the tablet UI thing.
That's why I recommend Xubuntu to people who are familiar with the Ui of Windows 95 through 7.
Python comes with a Tkinter-based editor called IDLE that can open a module by name or open a function by right-clicking a line in a traceback.
The only thing that has raised the bar of PC gaming is GoG.
Debian Sid has nvidia-detect, a fantastic piece of auto-configuation software.
Not exactly what you asked for but definitely a step in the that direction.
People who buy game consoles want gaming performance at a price under $400, which may require some sort of subsidy. They also want a large selection of games, which requires the console maker to find some way to reassure publishers that sales of legit games won't have to compete with illegal copies. They also want to buy consoles with cash in retail stores as opposed to sight unseen online, which requires the console maker to find some way to reassure retailers that shelves won't be flooded with absolute crap like back in 1983. That's why consoles have lockout chips and disc-based DRM and developer entry barriers and the like.
current compositors already suck significant gpu cycles from games.
You need some sort of compositor to be able to draw "friend wants to play" requests and other game OS UI overlays in the corner of the screen.
Write it for opengl, and it's relatively easy to port it to any platform with 3d graphics, including windows. Managing one renderer > managing two.
You still need the DirectX renderer for Xbox 360 and Xbox One ports, provided you can find a publisher on those platforms.
Video games are clearly targeted at kids.
And parents of kids. And cousins on whom those parents rely to babysit the kids when the parents are having a night out. And people who used to be kids. Apart from games based on characters licensed from preschool E/I cartoons, "Rated E for Everyone" doesn't mean only for kids; it means what it says: for everyone. The Animal Crossing series in particular has been used to train a work ethic in at least one adult Asperger patient.
The only games that are targeted at adults are japanese video games
There are plenty of M-rated games with western developers.
Every dollar spent on a Zork sequel is a dollar not spent on another of Actiblizzard's current franchises like Diablo or Starcraft or Call of Duty. I imagine Actiblizzard management sees a better return on investment in these cash cows than in the Infocom catalog.
I wonder how many people called him Centepied.
Re:Guess that's why Valve is so behind Linux (Score:3)
Valve should release something new
I don't think Valve can count high enough to make something new. As I write this, your comment has achieved a score that no Valve game can match.
That isn't much different from saying that I should have one tablet for games and one tablet for work.
Back in the PDA days, that was the case. Someone made a program called DSOrganize that added some basic PDA functions to the Nintendo DS, but Nintendo took legal action against distributors of the memory card adapters that people used to run DSOrganize on a DS. Or you might want the flexibility of an Android tablet for work but want to play iOS-exclusive games.
Half a year ago I had an epiphany: I looked over the shoulder of someone programming Java on Eclipse.
He just kept hitting TAB until the data types of the parameter list matched /without understanding what the function really does/. At once I understood why most Java code looks so crappy.
Spoken like someone who didn't live through the golden age of PCs. The PC isn't doomed and it isn't going anywhere. More laymen will be using computing appliances like tablets and single function devices and all that means is that the computing world will revert back to the way it was in the 80s and 90s.
Personally, I prefer it that way. Keeps the tech unsavvy out of my realm and will boost the quality of PC games.
Wait. Let me think. If you have a wife to dump and you're homosexual, doesn't that make you a lesbian? But then... Natalie Portman!
I sure wish I was lesbian... Alas, 7-digit SlashID (but *almost* 6-digit...)
He's probably too busy danseuring. When he's not having to endure hours of vacuous nonsense from his bimbo wife, that is.
The infrastructure is actually harming the gaming field. It is just bright shiney DRM. I would rather just get the game from a normal website than deal with steam.
Waah, I only want to play big corporate games on a non-corporate operating system.
Let me know when you start using a real operating system (that people actually use) instead of a crap operating system that nobody's heard of.
Dota 2 is available on Linux, so is L4D2, so is HL:Source. I'd say you should check your sources.
Newell said "... 2 to 3 ..." therefore Half-life 3 confirmed!
Missed the betas, namely "the source engine conversions of the original half life and counterstrike."
Actually, the number of games is 174. Your search includes videos, mods and demos, among other things.
Is Linux compatibility the reason HL3 isn't out yet?
I for one have welcomed:
- Friends lists (no more chasing people down over mumble/IRC/AIM/ICQ/TS)
- Groups (easier to deal with chunks of people at once, great for organizing events)
- Workshop (One click modding)
- Marketplace (Lets me be an awful person and buy things from other people, no weird 3rd party sites)
- Automatic patching (to be fair this should be done by most games)
- Ability to get those same games with one login, on any machine I use it on
- Big Picture/console mode
And those are just the features that I use, not even all the features of Steam. A stand-alone game (other than automatic patching perhaps) brings NONE of this. Please learn how to spell and look into why people enjoy DRM. You're getting mad at the DMV requiring you ALWAYS HAVE A LICENSE AT ALL TIMES if you want to drive the car that you own.
Automatic patching should be done by the OS package management not by the game itself. Clearly years of windows use has prevented you from learning this. Same with the ability to get games on any machine.
I am not mad at the DMV at all, that makes sense. DRM does not make sense. It only hurts honest buyers.
It only hurts honest buyers.
So all the evidence to the contrary (in the example of Steam) is just ok to ignore?
Despite your views on DRM (it is bad, there isn't really any way around that), to completely ignore all the good that comes from Steam, just because you cannot play the same game 5 times at once on 5 different machines (or whatever legitimate Steam-fear you have in 2013) is selectively picking your arguments.
DRM is bad. DRM is usually nothing but a headache for the honest buyer.
Steam is DRM.
Therefore all humans are cats, right?
What evidence? The fact that there are a couple features I would never use that you like? Oh wow big picture mode, you could never get that by turning up the DPI.
Steam offers some minor conveniences, mostly that should be found in the OS.
However, you have to have a pretty narrow expectation of what you do on your desktop. Basically it is good for network related tasks, e-mail, web, remote systems access, that kind of thing. It is also ok at document authoring, good enough for more individuals, but potentially problematic in business settings (where people go apeshit with Excel macros and such). It is acceptable at media playback provided you have the right hardware, and nothing you want to play back has DRM.
So you can use it for basic desktop usage, if that's all you do. If you want to do that then the other trick is making sure you have supported hardware. This generally means that the hardware be popular, and not too new. Don't get latest and greatest, stay a couple generations back (which is no big deal these days, it is still plenty fast).
However if you want to start doing gaming, media creation, that kind of thing, well then prepare for a fight, and to perhaps simply not be able to do what you want.
I'm a proponent of Windows desktops, in part because I'm a Windows support professional so it is what I know, but Linux is something that can work on some desktops. You just have to be aware of the limits, and be ok with them. If you are a gamer, that is generally a show stopper right there.
It's always the year of Linux these days. The only way Linux like systems will every hit it big for PC's is if/when Android comes to the PC and it's promoted by Google. Android is the first well known Linux version, and it needs to take advantage of that. If you think your average Joe knows anything about Ubuntu then you are mistaken, but ask him what phone he has an it's probably an Android. "Oh, there is an Android PC? Hey I have an Android phone so why not get an Android PC too!". That's the thought process of the masses and if Linux wants to get any actual marketshare on the PC it needs to please the masses. If you don't want to please the masses then stop trying to win the gaming hardware war because you won't get it both ways.
Take the hardware and plug it into a HDTV via HDMI, does it display correctly in full 1080P with no overscan/underscan issues? Currently, that answer is NO. At least not on my HTPC with an AMD A10-6700 APU. Underscan is still on by default with no GUI option for disabling it unless you install the proprietary drivers and Catalyst software, and it defaults to a lower resolution with no option to increase it to 1080P. All of this stuff should "just work" and does "just work" with Windows 8.
k
This signature is false.
Waah, I can't play any of the good games so I'm going to deride them for being too mainstream for my unique as a snowflake, esoteric counterculture tastes that nobody can possibly understand.
I already use Windows. You know, the OS that everyone in the world uses. That's the reason I'm able to play real games instead of having to make do with half finished shit indie projects masquerading as games.
No, my OS provides it just fine. My beef is that he is claiming their advantage is something I don't need or want. I get nothing other than DRM out of them. For FSM's sake they could even keep that but give me a damn repo for games rather than use their stupid method.
Once again Gabe has to put up or shut up because he is notorious for telling everyone what they are doing wrong, but then not delivering it himself.
Why is iTunes centralized game store bad but Valve's centralize game store good?
Also it is pretty rich that Gabe is lumping himself into game consoles considering he shit on them 5 years ago as being the wrong way to do gaming. Now Valve is supposedly preparing a game console.
I mean Gabe says this kind of shit all the time somehow believing that Valve is doing something completely different and more righteous than anybody else but calling out their competition for it.
Ultimately what Valve is trying to do is to make Steam the de facto standard for running games on Linux, largely because he has shat on every their content platform and those platforms want nothing to do with Valve. Gabe is just as much trying to create a walled garden on Linux as Apple or Google has done on their respective platforms.
Gabe wants to monopolize Linux gaming, period. That is the only future Valve will survive in.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Iphone 5 is no mistake, n it also very good , but too bad you have a staff , ,don't know he had give you any suggestion , may be bad luck, I wish you Apple company I phone be good lucky n earn more money than be for , I hope my wish will give u come true,
Not even a low 6-digit??
I've been using IRC since 1994 and surfing the WWW since around the same with netscape navigator 2, and mIRC 4.5
how is that going to be like the 1990s, I vividly remember the 1990s