Slashdot Mirror
The State of Linux Gaming In the SteamOS Era
An anonymous reader writes: It's been over a year since Valve announced its Linux-based SteamOS, the biggest push yet from a huge company to bring mainstream gaming to Linux. In this article, Ars Technica takes a look at how their efforts are panning out. Game developers say making Linux ports has gotten dramatically easier: "There are great games shipping for Linux from development teams with no Linux expertise. They hit the 'export to Linux' button in the Unity editor and shipped it and it worked out alright. We didn't get flying cars, but the future is turning out OK so far."
Hardware drivers are still a problem, getting in the way of potential performance gains due to Linux's overall smaller resource footprint than Windows. And while the platform is growing, it's doing so slowly. Major publishers are still hesitant to devote time to Linux, and Valve is taking their time building for it. Their Steam Machine hardware is still in development, and some of their key features are being adopted by other gaming giants, like Microsoft. Still, Valve is sticking with it, and that's huge. It gives developers faith that they can work on supporting Linux without fear that the industry will re-fragment before their game is done.
Hardware drivers are still a problem, getting in the way of potential performance gains due to Linux's overall smaller resource footprint than Windows. And while the platform is growing, it's doing so slowly. Major publishers are still hesitant to devote time to Linux, and Valve is taking their time building for it. Their Steam Machine hardware is still in development, and some of their key features are being adopted by other gaming giants, like Microsoft. Still, Valve is sticking with it, and that's huge. It gives developers faith that they can work on supporting Linux without fear that the industry will re-fragment before their game is done.
This Linux gaming renaissance is most likely a side effect of how every other gaming platform besides Windows uses "something else". That something else is Linux compatible. That reduces the distance between Linux and what has already been ported to.
Android, MacOS, even the PS4 and Wii's are intermediate steps towards Linux.
It's no great surprise that the most interesting ports for Linux are being done by a MacOS porting house.
Beyond the big titles, Linux is a significant part of the market. The indies were already porting to Linux because of this.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The downside of installing Windows in a VM is that you need to install Windows ...
Unless you pirate it it is not free
Indies are porting to Linux because the idea of a Linux game means that they'll get some love that they wouldn't otherwise get. It's a market that is presently untapped as most big studios haven't yet come to care about Linux as a platform. They ship Linux, they get guaranteed press, ergo more sales.
Thirty four characters live here.