Gabe Newell's vision for Steam: More choice, more democracy, less Greenlight | Hacker News Reader

Gabe Newell's vision for Steam: More choice, more democracy, less Greenlight

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42 pointscjh_48 comments

Without a sandbox you're still at the mercy of every game you install. Even on Linux every game you install could upload the contents of your .ssh folder, your .mail folder, or ~/Pictures or whatever's in your user folders.

And, even if it doesn't do itself if the game does any networking then if there's any bugs in the networking code someone can use that as a way into your system.

Here's hoping Steam can build a sandbox.

Note: This is also the problem with systems like the old PC/Mac/Linux Boxee. How do I know the apps I'm one click installing can't read my whole HD? I don't :-(

Apple's App Store, Windows 8's app store, iOS's app store, Android's App store, and Chrome's App store all try to solve this problem. AFAICT Steam does not.

I'm not sure why this is especially more dangerous than ordinary Linux packages provided by distros, let alone games installed by means other than Steam. A game is an executable, running any executable with your privileges provides access to your home directory. That is ordinary design for a Linux program. What is the home directory for, anyway? Again, it is absolutely normal for ordinary programs including multiplayer games to use the network.

Connect your PCs to the internet through a firewall and don't install Steam on production servers.

The point being: right now distro provided packages are screened and vetted, as are steam games. Moving away from that model has obvious security implications.

This is the fundamental tradeoff between security and usability.

It would be more secure to basically give every application you install it's own home folder and keep it restricted to that.

OTOH an image editing program should be able to see images used by other image editors, a file transfer program should be able to use my SSH keys to log me into various servers etc.

The only way around this would be to have some complicated fine grained permissions system that requires apps to know about other apps that might want to access it's data.

Linux's Capabilities framework is one such fine grained permission system. That, AppArmor, SELinux, or a similar system could be used to sandbox apps and games.

Yes, but try explaining SELinux to my mother!

The point isn't that SELinux will be used by your mother, but that SELinux or similar will be used by Steam and the Linux distributions to make sandboxing happen automatically behind the scenes.

Yes. Check out LXC (Linux Containers). I can clone a full Linux system, boot it and be at the prompt in well under a second. It can be a read-only root system, with vastly restricted permissions, easily shapeable/QoS-able virtual network interface, resource guarantees (disk I/O, CPU, memory, etc). Works kinda in to the OSX-style '.dmg' (distribute a "disk image") notion. I think the future of Linux consumer-oriented software distribution may be something evolving toward this area. IIRC ChromeOS under the hood uses this stuff a bit, havent taken it apart yet.

Part of the allure of Steam is that everything on that service has been vetted before I ever see it, if not for fun then at least for being a game and not malware.

Not sure how I feel about this. Sure, the users will catch the problem eventually and get it pulled, but in the meantime you would be really leery about downloading something new.

This is largely an illusion. Take the war z. They were able to release a dishonest incomplete game, and it took community outrage to bring it to valve's attention.

It's not that it required community outrage it bring it to Valve's attention, necessarily; sometimes fixing problems involving business and business relationships just takes more time than folks want/expect. When a product is released with a simple bug, it's usually not the users complaining for hours nonstop about it that gets it fixed (though sometimes it is), but that it takes time to debug, fix, test, and ship the fixed version. The same thing often applies to business decisions like this.

Again, I mentioned that it wasn't screened (necessarily) for completeness or 'fun' - just that it wasn't malware disguised as a product.

I'm not sure if that's ultimately true. The Steam store only has several thousand apps. When you consider the % that are malware or harmful on say the android or iOS store, it's entirely likely that steam is being saved by statistics and possibly basic (automated) virus/malware detection.

In a recent speech by Gabe, I think he said they'd still check for malware. But he didn't give any details, so I'm not sure if he actually has a plan to open the market, but in the same time has a system for checking malware, or he was just saying that.

That is why the user created stores would be great. You'd still get curated content, just not from steam. So it might be even better than today, in the sense of "properly" curated content!

Seems like they could offer both. If they watch the traffic they could approve the most popular games but still allow people to use games immediately if they want to.

Yep, Steam to me has been a place where I know there is a certain quality standard.

If I wanted to just download random files I'd go to pirate bay or mega upload.

I still want to see a complete redesign of their UI. It's slow, unresponsive, and I don't even think it's native code. They have the resources to do it.

If you're talking about the in-client store UI, I believe it's PHP-generated markup rendered in an embedded WebKit browser. Given that the overlay browser uses the same tooling and also renders pages slowly, I'm inclined to believe they're doing something inefficiently, but don't necessarily need to resort to native code to fix.

Native code may be runtime faster, but there's huge advantages to leveraging HTML. You'd have to either -

* Define your own serialization/markup for describing a UI, then specify a network transport for it.

* OR, just bake the whole UI in native code and fill it in with data pulled down from an API. Update the binary when you want to make UI changes.

Neither solution comes with the ease-of-development and flexibility that HTML/HTTP provide.

I was mainly referring to the steam UI (friends list, library, etc). The store UI might not have the best UX, but it's not "slow"

The store isn't a disaster, but it's slow (multi-second load times). And every other part of their UI, like loading my achievements for some game, or loading a Friend's profile page, or whatever, is like using dialup. Load times in double-digit numbers of seconds.

This might explain the odd scroll behavior I've experienced on my laptop. Mouse scroll wheel works fine, but touchpad scroll gestures never do.

>I would buy everything from Old Man Murray. - Gabe

This brings back memories. One of the funniest OMM game reviews I recall reading was of American McGee's Alice:

http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/56.html

Interesting...while reading this, I started picturing Steam becoming something a bit more like Etsy, but for digital goods. Anyone else sort of get that vibe?

Yep. There's a lot of potential for some games to almost go beyond being games and become platforms - Skyrim, Minecraft - if the community was allowed to sell material they created for it.

Wow, what? They're opening their servers up as a way for anyone to host anything? How will that scale?

I assume they're going to have to do something to prevent people just uploading cracked versions of games that are otherwise available for money.

The best thing for them to do would be simply to adopt the app store model, whether it's Apple's or Google's. Open to all comers who can pay the fee, but with a brief approval process.

Greenlight was a failed experiment, and it's extremely encouraging to see them acknowledging that. Valve could be, if they want to, the platform for all indie games, not just broadly popular ones. So far they've resisted that, and I can't imagine it's been a particularly good business decision.

I know people want "curation", but have you seen some of the crap that's already on Steam? Probably not, because it rarely features on their storefront, which can always be curated regardless of how many other games they accept and sell, which might only be found through a search or a direct link. That's the best of both worlds.

I too am very interested in the logistics of this, I imagined some kind of 'pull' system where the higher the demand the more it is replicated.

The piracy issue will be interesting, although I guess this could be dealt with by using a team of mods and/or scanning their servers for possible infringing files.

Interesting times ahead.

Nice to see an Old Man Murray shoutout. Last I heard, one of the writers of that site and other web classics was working at Valve, so maybe some of the wit and wisdom can live on.

Both of the OMM writers work for Valve these days. And you can tell, when you play Portal or Portal 2. (Or Psychonauts, which Erik co-wrote.)

All of which games you should play, JUST FOR THE WRITING.

I want to play Psychonauts but it's just a mess, runs like crap on my fast-as-hell PC.

This game gets so much nostalgia cred, someone should really clean it up.

So, I didn't play Psychonauts until last month. It runs silky smooth on my 5-year-old machine (high-powered machine for the time). So your problem isn't the game, it's some interaction between the game and drivers, or something. Maybe take it for a spin on a crappy laptop or something. ;)

And this game has no nostalgia for me, but it is amazing. The gameplay, which is mostly 3d platforming, isn't the stand-out (though the gameplay is better than I expected). The amazing thing is the writing, both in terms of dialogue/voice-acting, and in terms of the plot. So awesome. It's surprising how few really good writers there are in gaming, and how most gamers apparently don't even notice, and so the standard is so low. And then you play a game written by Tim Schafer and/or the OMM guys, and boom.

Thinking about this a little more, sounds like they are basically creating a cross platform package manager.

Being able to pull down a game , a movie and a web framework all from one place and be mirrored on all of my computers could be interesting.

One of the things I would like for Steam is to add the original publication date of all games (not just the date they added the game to Steam) and let me sort my collection by that date.

Let him make it DRM free first.

The publisher can decide if he wants DRM or not. Steam offers both.

They don't discourage it as well and don't give you a way to filter out games which are really DRM free. DRM free has a few different aspects:

1. Being able to save the installer and install it at any time without connecting to their servers.

2. Having no extra components ("clients") running parallel to the game in order to play it.

3. Being able to play without connecting to their servers.

In contrast other publishers (like GOG) have a principal DRM free stance and simply don't accept games with DRM. This should be the position of distributors - to discourage DRM proliferation. So if Gabe Newell talks about improving Steam, let him start with the subject of dropping DRM.

I'm fine with Steam supporting DRM for the developers. I wish they would label it, and label it CLEARLY. When I buy a game, and then go to install it, and only then find out that I have to install some Ubisoft rootkit, I feel betrayed.

(yes, if I wasn't so dopey, I'd remember to never buy anything from Ubisoft, but it's only the worst offender, not the only one)

1) I'm not sure about though I don't think you can call that "Digital Rights Management" (edit: thinking about it, yeah, I guess it actually is DRM)

2) and 3) are both perfectly possible for DRM free Steam games.

Steam itself is a form of DRM.

Though only in so far as to requiring you to install it through steam.

Not true.

I have physical media for some of my games that are "steam" connected. I cannot lend these to another person, nor give them to another even in my own household because they are locked to my account in Steam.

I cannot play some of my Steam, actually I think I only have one that will play, without first connecting to Steam.

So if Gabe wants to sell us on a brave new world perhaps he should free the games Steam holds hostage now.

As I said, that's the publishers/developers choice, NOT Steams.

Outdated list of DRM-free (once installed) Steam games: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/list_of_drmfree_games_on_st...

Every steam game I own requires the steam client to be running while I am playing the game, the games become bricked if I remove steam so this is DRM. I can go into offline mode for most games, but the client must always be there.

Installing the game requires both the steam client and a connection, this is authorizing the install and is DRM.

You already have Desura for that.

The more the better. I don't use Steam because of DRM, and wait for GOG to start selling Linux games (many of their Windows versions work well with Wine, and older ones are DosBox/ScummVM based so they work as well, but having native Linux games in addition would be even better). Desura is good - I use it already.

You can vote for proposal to add Linux games to GOG: http://gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games

> The more the better.

Yes, and more in this case means something for all kinds of users.

As both a gamer and a game developer I want Steam in its current form. Your negativity simply looks like fanaticism to me.

DRM is an unethical tool to begin with. As a game developer what benefits does DRM give you, besides the fact that it's insulting for your potential paying customers and degrades their user experience? In practice DRM has no useful application neither to end users nor to game developers.

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