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Comment by kayoone | Hacker News Reader

While this is great, its a bit sad that Valve is mostly doing all of this now, because they fear losing their dominance on windows to the native Store in Win 8.x

In the end its a win-win for everyone if it works out, just their motives are questionable.

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Well, their motives aren't sinister, which is all you can really want or hope for. In a capitalistic market, vanishingly few players will switch to Linux out of altruism.

Which is perfectly fine, in my opinion. Everything is more predictable when each player acts in their own best interests. Then it's just a matter of understanding their incentives.

Yet, players could have some amount of foresight, and not wait untill MS actualy pushes a knife into their hearth (lucky Valve this one was dull) before trying to defend themselves.

Foresight is always easy in retrospect. MS was a partner, not a treat, until the Windows Store.

>> Well, their motives aren't sinister, which is all you can really want or hope for. In a capitalistic market, vanishingly few players will switch to Linux out of altruism.

There was a time when no one thought gamers would switch from DOS to Windows.

He's trying to protect his business from a hostile actor - Microsoft. They are attacking others like Valve by radically changing the rules for what goes on Windows, and creating their own gateway.

So what's "questionable" about that? The move seems pretty clear cut to me - it's a defensive move against Microsoft's obvious trend for a closed garden of apps and games.

> He's trying to protect his business from a hostile actor - Microsoft.

And Microsoft are just responding to Android and iOS app stores.

Before Windows 8, Valve seemingly couldn't care less about Linux! It bothers me how Valve tries to make itself out to be Linux's best friend nowadays. They also talk about open source a lot despite them ever releasing only proprietary software.

Seemingly.

They've only been running all their servers on Linux PC's for upwards of 10 years now.

Leaks from years ago show that the Steam client and Source have both had Linux versions in development since around the time of the Mac beta in 2010 (two years before Windows 8) [0]. Also they've supported Linux servers forever, so you can hardly say they couldn't care less. Also also, haven't they pushed some stuff upstream and spurred interest and development in open source drivers? That's more than many companies that publish proprietary software on Linux.

Windows 8 may have pushed them over the line, and they may only be moving to Linux in order to make more money. Is that really a problem though? I think it's the breakthrough into the mainstream that Linux has been waiting for for decades.

[0] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_ste...

So because the ice cream truck was late to reach your house, and used to only sell frozen yogurt, you don't want ice cream anymore?

If they have their own agenda, why should it matter? If this benefits them and Linux, why would this development be bad?

I saw this reasoning flying around a lot when Valve started working on linux. I saw the move from linux initially as a natural extension of developing for the Mac OS. GabeN was quoted saying something on the lines of how the games were running much more stable on OSX then windows and said the problem they had wasn't related to there code.

Then I heard how performance issues. Using games performed (slightly?) better on Linux then on Windows. There was talk about mouse issues on Windows 8 and how some bench marks could be faked.

All this sounded to me was Valve wanted a better gaming environment.

Side note, I don't know how many people would be switching to Windows' store and gaming social features over Steam.

http://www.neowin.net/news/valve-co-founder-windows-8-is-a-c...

Steam is a basically a middleman for games taking 30% cut of revenue. Of course they're and should be terrified of how Apple eliminated middlemen with the App store and the 30% cut of all sales inside the app. There are things like Xfire for the social gaming features.

Agreed, I'm get the idea Valve doesn't actually care much about linux. For example, in their presentation highlighting some stuff about porting games from win to linux, every screenshot was made in windows

Well, their development workflow is likely highly Windows-based.

Nothing is questionable - GabeN wants the soft power to rule gaming. So in the times of walled/wallish gardens his goal is to prevent them of locking in the audience and gaining the hard power.

It won't be a win for Microsoft if this transition takes off. Also, of course profits and control are the biggest motivations here, not some inherent wish for linux to succeed.

No, it's clearly a business decision. But I wonder how long it has been in the works, considering that every few months, you used to get these "Steam on Linux" "news" which never translated into anything solid until Steam for Linux eventually came out.

In other news, it looks like the XCom remake will soon be in beta on Linux: http://steamdb.info/sub/35236/

Apart from the fact that I'd like to play it, it's interesting because Linux Steam has a dearth of AAA title (although it does have good indie games like Unity of Command).

If I to play some fantasy football here I might go as far as to say the Win8.x Stores might actually be the reason Valve is ditching it. Microsoft could be aiming for a cut of each game sale a la App Store and try tactics to make it difficult for them to run a parallel store on their platform. When you have a business model like Steam running on essentially the same Win8 store the margins get razor thin.

Of course I don't know for sure but for Valve to back out of Windows the way they did it's definitely a strong possibility. Don't forget "embrace,extend,extinguish".

We do know for sure. Gabe has explicitly stated that the Win8 store with its closed ecosystem model is the reason they hate Win8 and are making SteamOS.

Sometimes people just need a bit of a kick up the arse to see the light.

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