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I would sympathize with Valve if they didn't completely ignore Linux before acting like the Linux community's best friend when it became apparent that they had nowhere else to turn to [1]. Like many, I'm a fan of their games and their flat management, but they have a history of being as short-sighted and callous as EA and I wish more people would see that [2].

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/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugaru

What? Humble BundLe totally sold out their integrity after they let THQ sell their games with the Humble Bundle brand, without linux versions and with DRM.

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/the-humble-thq-bu...

[2] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/humble-thq-bundle-thre...

I think you're being very hyperbolic. They were very explicit saying the games were Windows only and had DRM (Steam). It was its own isolated bundle.

Technically, and financially it was all good. However marketing wise not a good move. Your post proofs this. And I kinda agree.

Yes, that bundle was upsetting. I hope they don't continue this kind of stuff.

It wasn't named an "indie" bundle and it was marked quite well. I don't think it's selling out.

I was disappointed about this, too; not because it's necessarily bad, but because they had set the bar so high for themselves and then totally missed it with this. On the bright side, it raised a lot of money for charity.

Their integrity? THQ was about to tank, and they wanted to flip the games to whoever they could. I'm sure that if there were THQ-internal beta versions for Linux and Mac, they would have happily shipped them.

Valve has a history of being as short-sighted and callous as EA and I wish more people would see that [2].

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.)

If your account is stolen and becomes VAC banned, Valve won't do anything about it and you will be stuck with gimped games, regardless of how much business you gave them (back then they didn't have security codes). I can't find this on Google, but at least twice I've read that Valve just ignores emails from game developers they're not interested in. In Team Fortress 2, the staff is allowed to hop on players' servers and practically cheat by mowing down everyone with overpowered weapons, and they ruined the game's integrity through introducing a microtransaction economy that they take advantage of to promote other Steam games.

Maybe Valve isn't as bad as EA, but it's hardly as good as its reputation.

> I've read that Valve just ignores emails from game developers they're not interested in

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?

> 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?

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.

As wlesieutre mentioned, Team Fortress 2 wasn't free until after microtransactions have been around for some time.

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 really can't muster much support for your indignation.

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?

This is not about being anyone's friend: they're merely trying to keep their head above water.

If this makes linux more popular as side-effect, so be it.

"After all, isn’t that what open source is all about – the idea that collaboration and teamwork achieve amazing things?" Written by Valve in the cited blog post, despite having nothing to do with open source.

>I would sympathize with Valve if they didn't completely ignore Linux

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.

> DRM is the future

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.

they're on board now, that's all that matters.

I wouldn't say they completely ignored Linux. They did have nix servers for all of their games back when 3d gaming on nix wasn't viable at all.

> Steam is now the de-facto "app store" of the PC as far as games go

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 love this company. Since I've bought from them in the past, I get their weekend promo emails every week[1], and they are SO tempting. Wing Commander 1+2 for $2.39? I could buy 4-5 games from that list, spend less than I usually do for the Humble bundle, and actually get a lot more.

[1]: http://www.gog.com/promo/ea_weekend_promo_030513

What about Gamersgate, Desura, or plain old self-publishing?

These are smaller, and didn't reach the scope of GOG.

I'll grant that Desura is definitely a small player.

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.

I've always thought of GOG as owning a niche (legacy titles) that nobody else is much interested in

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.

They sell both DRM-enabled and DRM-free games. The DRM-free games are tagged as such, and when browsing the catalog, you can filter on this trait.

That's surely better than Steam already, which doesn't help filtering DRM free titles. Though Steam in general imposes its client DRM, even if the game itself doesn't use some heavier forms (like on-line type).

>The software industry is heading in very bad directions, and this is at least a glimmer of hope.

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.

> The problem I have is: where are all the GPL'ed games?

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.

I suspect the biggest reason this hasn't happened is that the big studios want engines that can also target consoles, which don't have publicly available SDKs. It would be hard for a project to ensure that they weren't constantly breaking the console ports when they might not even be able to run nightly builds and share the logs publicly.

And, of course, software patents are a constant threat.

Aside from third party licensing for middleware like Bink, Scaleform, Havok, console APIs, etc. I'd guess some if it has to do with the constant competition over graphics technology that's only just started to slow down in the last couple years, and perhaps that will be picking up again with the next-gen consoles.

I completely agree, though. There is a complete lack of solid open-source game software.

Most good games are made by people who are paid to make them. Or people who hope to pay themselves when their game is finished and sold.

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.

Whoa - I'm not advocating for people to work unpaid. Don't know where you got that idea. I just don't think anything can really honestly advertise itself as being "mod friendly" or "community friendly" unless it's GPL.

Community driven somewhat implies unpaid. At least it seems so to me? There's no proven business model for games that supports paying a staff and being GPL. Being GPL also means you can't ever release on consoles, handhelds, or mobile.

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.

Minor quibble - I'd say "an open licence", not "GPL".

No, that's not the problem with Open Source games. Open Source developers are more than capable and willing to work on a game. The problem is: they can't agree on anything except most basic game concepts. That's why you get:

- 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...

There is one huge difference, they are a 3rd party walled garden. They get a lot of flack but they were the only ones in a good position to do what they did at the time. The market place scene needs 3rd parties like Steam, GOG, (to some extent) Amazon, etc.

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.

I don't think that Valve is at danger at all. The types of games on Steam are COMPLETELY different from what is on app stores, and so are the prices and consumer behavior. People will pay large sums of money on Steam, in a way they won't in a mobile app store. And you can trust that you're getting a quality game.

They are in danger should Microsoft ever gain a significant foothold with the Windows Store. Microsoft can turn off "side-loading" of software in Windows and lock everyone into their walled garden. If Valve hasn't successfully migrated away from Windows by that point they will be completely screwed.

Given the importance of backwards compatibility for corporate Windows users and the history Microsoft has with the Justice Department, I find such a situation very hard to fathom. Microsoft is not Apple - they cannot use the Reality Distortion Field to get away scot-free with imposing draconian restrictions on their user base.

They'll just turn on signed side-loading in the high-end corporate version of the OS; with Microsoft providing the (revokable) signing keys as part of the corporate site license.

As for the Justice Department intervention? I wouldn't hold my breath.

If pain deploying applications on Windows becomes greater than pain of switching to Linux (porting applications and training personnel) then Microsoft might have a problem.

That doesn't sound backwards compatible to me. Businesses will just refuse to upgrade in such a scenario.

And Microsoft made the mistake last time around of ignoring the Justice Department. They won't this time.

> Microsoft can turn off "side-loading" of software in Windows and lock everyone into their walled garden.

I think the EU might have something to say about that.

Not to mention corporate customers with inhouse business applications.

Perhaps WindowsRT will become the consumer OS and Windows (x86) will be the 'professional' OS

Yeah, just like they had something to say about the iOS walled garden.

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 EU didn't force apple to open up iOS, and this is with a near monopoly in the tablet space. Microsoft doesn't have to close down windows, they just need to make windows rt the default option for consumers wanting to get a machine that runs office and some games.

EU antitrust laws aren't against monopolys per se, but against using the power of a monopoly to gain an advantage in a new market. So, Microsoft wasn't fined for having a 95% of the PC market, but for trying to leverage that share to force its competition in the internet field out of the market. Apple tablets were born with the app store and conquered (created?) the tablet market, so, no problem.It'd have been different if they allowed people to install apps from anywhere and afterwards restricted them to the app store. So, I think microsoft would be in big trouble in the EU if they tried to shut Steam out of the market by disabling third party software on windows.

MS would never be able to pull that one with an existing install base, so that's something we'd have to not buy in the first place, perhaps winRT 2.0 might look locked down like that.

The other scenario would be if windows moved to a rolling distribution type model, perhaps even for free. They could pull that move then.

Spit-balling a marketing strategy that could violently backfire here; but if anyone could pull it off, it might be Valve...

Ok try not to laugh....

HL3 releases in the next few years.... only available on Linux for the first few months

Don't laugh, it could work -- they could make an argument that, at least at first, doing a "soft release" on Linux first gives them access to a huge group of relatively savvy beta testers.

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.

Porting to Linux because the other operating systems are getting centralized software management. I never thought I would see the day.