Portal Released For Steam On Linux
phoronix.com
phoronix.com
With Google and Apple already controlling the mobile app stores, various console manufacturers controlling their own ecosystems, and Microsoft attempting to abandon their "open" Windows (so they can run their own app store) - the industry is shifting into a position of hardware/OS manufacturers/monopolies taking massive cuts (30%) from the software market. Valve, without any hardware of their own, but a very large PC app store with a significant user base, really has nowhere else to turn. Gabe himself has expressed quite a bit of dismay over Microsoft's recent decisions.
I expect them to use everything in their power to make Linux become a mainstream thing. They're going to port all of their own games to Linux, and I expect at some point there will be Linux-only discounts for their games.
I really hope Microsoft underestimated their power, and that Valve is capable of doing this. It'll be better for all of us. The software industry is heading in very bad directions, and this is at least a glimmer of hope.
Ok try not to laugh....
HL3 releases in the next few years.... only available on Linux for the first few months
It would just be icing on the cake that they don't have to pay 30% or whatever to anybody else for those early adopters.
I have a lot more respect for the people behind Humble Bundle/Wolfire, who went out of their way to support Linux long before it was cool [3]. Plus they don't force DRM middleware on you.
[1] http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/
[2] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/11/valve-tricked-h/
[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/the-humble-thq-bu...
[2] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/humble-thq-bundle-thre...
Your citation [2] doesn't in any way support that viewpoint. Actually, there probably aren't any citations which support that viewpoint, because EA is about as far opposite from Valve as a gaming company can get. (Zynga is likely the polar opposite.)
Maybe Valve isn't as bad as EA, but it's hardly as good as its reputation.
Details on that would be interesting. I have to say my first thought is that they probably get a lot of indie developers that want on the Network, and don't want to devote and entire position to explaining why not every publisher gets in Steam just because they want to.
> In Team Fortress 2 ... they ruined the game's integrity through introducing a microtransaction economy
So, they take their free to play game, and add the ability to customize your characters in ways that don't affect gameplay that make them money, and they have all of a sudden ruined the integrity of the game? Is it ruined because they want to make some money from it? I seem to remember that when they were just starting the hats, they were also putting out large updates for the player classes, for free.
> take advantage of to promote other Steam games.
You state that like it's bad for it's own sake. What's wrong with them promoting their other games?
I haven't played any TF2 and don't have any strong opinions on it, I just wanted to point out that it wasn't originally free to play. It was released as part of The Orange Box in 2007 and went free about 4 years later.
Early on, the game had a consistent 1960s theme and each character had a consistent distinct sillhouette and behavior, so the game was easy to pick up and it was reasonable to play it competitively. It had great game design. Over time they ruined all of that for the sake of profiting off of addicted players.
I can't help but think that the hats actually add to the game, by allowing players to choose a semi-custom look for their character while playing, making a specific character easily identifiable.
Your reasoning make it sound like you're just upset that they took something that you had been accustomed to, and changed it. I note how you didn't mention any stats, or even a hunch as to whether most players liked or disliked the hats.
Additionally, you cast the players as "addicted", and Valve as somehow taking advantage of their addiction. Let's get this straight. The players aren't addicted to TF2 (even if you somehow proved they could be addicted to competitive FPS muliplayer, there's plenty of alternatives), and Valve isn't taking advantage. To do so they would have to be preventing play unless people bought something, which they aren't. They simply provided an additional, fully opt-in set of features.
Finally, if you don't like playing with hats because it ruins some behavior you had come to rely on, find other people that feel the same way and start your own server and enforce a strict policy of exactly what's allowed. That's done often in serious competitive play anyways, isn't it?
If this makes linux more popular as side-effect, so be it.
Can you blame them? I'm surprised they can make the numbers work even now, let alone 5 years ago. The probably still don't...its probably just a long range bet.
>Plus they don't force DRM middleware on you.
DRM is the future (not that I like it). The trick is simply to make it DRM like Steam where people barely realize its DRM and rather than EA's crap idea of DRM.
Why?
It seems entirely reasonable to me to have an equilibrium where there's some nonzero market niche of people who oppose DRM for practical and/or ideological reasons, and some nonzero number of developers that realize they can get access to that market by forgoing DRM on their products.
Case in point: Just yesterday I saw Torchlight 2 was on sale on Gamersgate. I was totally ready to buy it on the spot. Then I saw that it was Steam-only. And I didn't buy it for that reason, and that reason alone.
Those dollars from my entertainment budget are now ready to be captured by non-DRM products. If there are enough people like me, we can push back DRM, or at least keep it out of some corner of the market.
If you don't like DRM, vote with your wallet.
I hope GOG will become comparable numbers wise, since it's the only big DRM free alternative as of now. Though they lack Linux releases yet. (Keep voting here: http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_versions_of_games).
I've thought of GG as being a minor player but legitimately mainstream and big enough to worry, if not threaten, Steam.
OTOH I've always thought of GOG as owning a niche (legacy titles) that nobody else is much interested in, its very name sort of denotes how it's restricted.
They started that way to gain the traction, but they definitely don't plan to stay that way - they add new titles and aren't focusing on old games exclusively anymore. I view them as a solid competitor to Steam which will threaten them even more in the future, since they have a resolute DRM free stance. Linux additions would boost GOG position a lot IMHO. They still work on adding old titles though, since that's their original specialty and that's a good thing.
I'm not sure about Gamersgate - never used them. Are they DRM free? If not, they aren't really offering anything better than Steam does, and won't compete with GOG here.
I don't buy this -- Steam is just another walled garden app store with the same conflicts of interest that we're used to seeing, such as giving top billing to their own products on their store, using DRM, promoting itself as an advertising space, etc.
The problem I have is: where are all the GPL'ed games? The Torque Engine was just released with a permissive free license, which is good, but it will probably take a really good engine being released as GPL to get people to really start embracing the development of games in a community-driven way, rather than being stuck in the ivory tower like most games are now. There really isn't any other meaningful way for us to oppose these abusive "app stores" rather than shunning them so that we can turn to more community-driven efforts.
All the id engines have gone GPL. Ogre3d is a popular engine base.
A lot of game studios use some derivative of Unreal 3, which Epic will never GPL because they make money selling rights to it.
Most other engines, even beyond that, will have some proprietary inclusions that they don't hold licenses over, such as with the JK launch.
The lack of community FOSS game engine projects from the ground up is strange to me. It seems it would make a lot of sense for major industry players to band together and develop a really rock solid engine in the FOSS world to minimize the costs of engine development, even if in the short term they lose the benefit of being able to license their engine or profit off specialized graphics or gameplay tech they put in it.
And, of course, software patents are a constant threat.
I completely agree, though. There is a complete lack of solid open-source game software.
It's hard to get a large volume of unpaid volunteers to collectively work together on a creative endeavor. If I'm going to spend my free time working on something creative then it's going to follow my vision and not someone else's.
If you want a community driven game nothing is stopping anyone. Quake 3/Doom 3 are GPL'd. Unity is cheap. Plenty of games are incredibly mod friendly. There's been no better time in gaming history than to be indie than today.
I'm not sure how you could say Source engine isn't mod friendly. Lots of great mods have been made using it.
Professional grade engines are also becoming increasingly available at very affordable prices. With Unity there's really nothing stopping anyone from making any game they want.
- Freeciv - Wesnoth (Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics) - Nexuiz, Cube, Warsow, Open Arena, Alien Arena, and the other 68 quake 1 clones
There are very few creative Open Source games. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is one example, it's an OS game with no commercial equivalent. Teeworlds is another. OS developers only reach consensus on widely liked game concepts, creativity is very unlikely to be accepted. Instead of working on something exciting, they work on something everyone hates the least. It's a management problem, not technical or motivation problem. Votes become vetoes. http://blog.asmartbear.com/ignoring-the-wisdom-of-crowds.htm...
You don't buy insurance from the hospital or heaven forbid, Pfizer. You are only guaranteeing that all of the terms and conditions are against you. So why do the same with software by giving either the platform maker and/or publisher's extra leverage (yes, Valve publishes their own games, a whopping 1 game per year, but they'd likely quit making games before they'd give up selling someone else's software)? This is the unsung problem of UPlay, Origin, etc. as well as iTunes and whatever MS call their market places this week.
3rd parties need customers to exist. 1st parties can just make deals with other 1st parties for their survival. It is the same problem we had with the recording industry. Who cares if CDs are $15? There is plenty of money in breakage, movie tie-ins, TV singing contests, cell phone ring tones, advertising cross-overs, etc. In other words, mass market incest.
The road of the 1st party is the road to gamer fuel, in game ads, E.T., slow matchmaking services, platform locking, and above all product stagnation. Folks can hate Steam for whatever reason, fine, but please, go to another 3rd party if you can. Without them the future is bleak.
As far as GPL'd games go, they have the same problem as regular games. Asset generation for AAA titles is too expensive and too slow. If you want to fix that problem don't look to a new engine that will be outdated by the time your game is finished or a distribution platform. Devote your time to breaking the development cost/time problem and give that to everyone. As soon as we beat that, we will break the "1999 cycle" and we'll get the game that people beg for but the industry can't afford to produce.
As for the Justice Department intervention? I wouldn't hold my breath.
And Microsoft made the mistake last time around of ignoring the Justice Department. They won't this time.
I think the EU might have something to say about that.
Perhaps WindowsRT will become the consumer OS and Windows (x86) will be the 'professional' OS
Also, I'm sure the bankruptcy courts will wait for a policy change before allowing Valve's (or any of those walled garden competitors) dismemberment.
The other scenario would be if windows moved to a rolling distribution type model, perhaps even for free. They could pull that move then.
This forced a good update to nVidia cards that helped boost all cards performance under Linux to be actually playable.
Once they port over DOTA2 (currently one of their most popular games that makes $$ after Team Fortress 2) this should also cause a large kickstart in driver performance as more users play their games on Linux.
Linux becoming a leading desktop OS is all about defaults. Unless it is sold in Best Buy on laptops as a default option, priced below the Windows variant license costs, it will always be a niche product because it requires users to go absurdly out of their way to find or install it.
The Steambox is much more likely to rectify that. Consumer Linux PCs in the guise of game consoles will get it wide deployment.
First, it is cheaper, so the store can advertise lower prices. Second, many Linux distros look really nice, so if they have them set up on display their will be people who by it for that reason. Then, the first mover would get a reputation as the place that sells that awesome looking computer (and cheaper than the others). Third, their is little direct cost to trying. They can install it on a few laptops, then if it doesn't work, re-image windows on them.
Of course, (I suspect) the main reason this has not happened yet is the (legitamite) fear that customers would be the computer and then say 'it doesn't work', when it cannot run software X, or open file Y.
But the drivers are there. If you are running any modern distro worth its salt, your graphics will work out of the box with the FOSS driver, and switching to the proprietary one is little more than a package get. Which is even easier than on Windows where you have to manually get the graphics driver if Windows doesn't recognize the card (sometimes it does).
All through high school and my Bachelor of Software Engineering degree, and now working full time, I'm completely dumbfounded when Windows or Linux users talk about device drivers.
What a shocking waste of time.
Perhaps with a driver update from the vendor... oh wait, no.
Those are two different discussions.
Obviously when Apple controls the hardware and software there are going to be some trade-offs, one of which, as you pointed out, is a lack of frequent updates.
I, personally, am just fine with that.
Linux on the other hand, over the past 7 years I've been running it, works OOTB for all hardware I've ever thrown at it, especially lately.
Weird.
FWIW, I'm a web developer, but I've been playing with Linux since I was 11 years old (2001).
They're going to have to I think if they want to compete with League of Legends.
use these options : "-gl -window -novid -noborder -w 1920 -h 1080"
"System Requirements PC or Mac with USB port Windows® 8/ Windows® 7 / Windows Vista® / Windows® XP (32-bit)/ Mac OS X (v10.6-10.8)"
I enjoy the ability to fully utilize my right hand and minimize the amount of movement I do to and from the mouse, both for work and general computing.
Depending upon what you want from your mouse ( in the case of the naga, do you want custom binding of macros to buttons beyond a numeric keypad? => if so you need the driver support :( )
A good alternative that I use on my linux machines is: http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-mice/razer-lachesis/
Which has its own memory to retain macros(can be a pain to load, I have typically used windows VMs w/ drivers :/)
okay, just color me surprised that anybody needs that much accuracy. I stopped playing shooter games in ~2004.
s/surprised/bemused/, I suppose. AAA games are srsbzns.
If I wasn't into gaming, I'd be able to move completely off of Windows. But until games are available and peripherals "just work", that's not going to happen :(
They have always 'just worked'.
Is everyone with these stories using some obscure hardware which requires propietary windows drivers and/or some obscure distribution or something?
I'm not trying to be snarky or dismissive, but I've been using Linux for the last 14 years and I've never had any of these problems people talk about with regard to basic input devices or audio drivers.. even when I went through my Gentoo phase.
I also converted entirely from a Windows-only XP world, to a hybrid Ubuntu / 7 for gaming setup, and now I'm just running Arch only. I always got my pointer acceleration to align perfectly between them.
Hell, even the DPI switching on the G500 works. I think it is built into the mouse, though.
The lack of games is my main issue - if that was solved, I may go buy a keyboard that works on linux :p
Otherwise it might look like FUD to any outsider that could help.
noppoo choc mini (only the new ones, the old ones work fine on linux). The keyboard at least is a solvable problem, and the weirdness is in large part due to the weird firmware which sort of pretends to be two keyboards. I found a fix for OSX, but was unable to figure out how to get it work in linux in under an hour. So, I just got an older keyboard for work where I have to use linux, and went back to using only windows at home.
I'd love to be in a situation where people who made peripherals made them work on linux in addition to windows, but that's not the way things work atm :(
I'm mostly talking about RTS games (think StarCraft) as well as some rhythm games (think Osu!) where persistent mouse behavior is essential to playability.
Competitive fps players actually often play at very low dpi on essentially barebones hardware (think Intellimouse Optical @ 400dpi) compared to what's out there. Because these older mice don't actually have any dpi switching functionality, they usually don't require any special mouse drivers.
This is also not about whatever special fancy macro buttons on the mice not being supported.
RTS players tend not to care about this because they do not need the level of accuracy required to ping off headshots while moving, thus they're happy with "good enough" while manipulating DPIs in ways that'll cause all sort of sensor problems which could be a deciding factor in an FPS game.
If you care about having the best mousing experince you're really talking about using a deathadder, g400 and their kin. You are correct though, fancy macro buttons and high price tags tend not to get you the best mouse. But to think the RTS player relies on their mouse as much as the FPS player is folly.
(OK so that was wine, but it worked pretty well :)
Tonight I played the first half of the linux beta at 1920X1080 resolution and it just made me giddy. I'd been waiting a long time for this day.
I had it running fullscreen and pretty perfectly. Fullscreen was 1280x800, mind. But it worked fine. L4D and L4D2 I've had working too.
It's really "Steam on Ubuntu". Some other distros are supported with 32-bit only packages, but if you're running a 64-bit OS you need .deb package support.
I haven't installed 32-bit support on any Linux system I've provisioned this decade. Even corporate IT at my job, who are normally borderline incompetent at providing a workable environment, have native 64-bit packages for everything I use.
So when Steam (and Skype, and so on) gets released "for Linux", I just sigh and shake my head.
I'm a Linux user. And I can't run your program. Don't tell me it's "for" me.
I want to support Steam on Linux because I think it's a good thing. But I don't want to install 32-bit support in order to do so.
I realize that I'm complaining about something that has an easy workaround I'm refusing to use. But it's weird that they'll support 64-bit Ubuntu and not 64-bit anything else.
I'm excited for the eventual Steam Apk Store and Steam Games for Android.
Maybe Valve will distribute Steam Android devices, but that seems silly.
If Valve wants to get mobile, they need to hope for the success of Ubuntu Phone / Plasma Active / Tizen. Even Ubuntu Phone is probably going to block in the Canonical app store competing markets.
Android already has a game store. It doesn't make any business sense for Valve to try to compete with Google Play Store.
About Portal: It has to be profitable enough to justify the huge cost of porting the game to Android. The same for any other game.
Here's a reddit link that goes to the presentation slides but also has some comments from one of the presenters:
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1bnaoh/valves_...
Do they? In what sense?
I wonder if MS will try to do something useful to woo game developers
Like create a games console that uses PC components and makes porting much easier?
Portal 2 page on SteamDB: http://steamdb.info/app/620/