Valve has officially confirmed that Steam will be coming to linux in the coming months! Linux after all these years is finally getting some love! With Valve releasing a new set of games for the next few weeks we should hopefully have a good set of games that we will be able to play on every platform, that and the fact that Valve will be releasing all it's source games on Mac and Windows hopefully that will include Linux aswell. The future is looking bright for Linux gaming Link to a news article + proof: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1
linux is not suitable for playing games! linux is OpenGL, such as doom. Now most games are directX's, dx is developed by Microsoft. But is Steam coming to Linux, may be a good news!
Nah it's a huge step forwards for Linux. For one it starts the platform off as a serious alternative for gaming, without having to mess about with horrible emulators. It also gives software houses decent figures of what the potential market really is, through steam stats, and is a crowbar in the locked and bolted door of M$'s gaming monopoly. Want to massively open up the number of people able to play your game? -Choose the source engine. It's a bloody good strategy. I guess it also means EP3 and Portal2 are close to being rolled out.
Yep. Would make sense that they'd try and maximize potential audiences before the biggest releases of the year.
Awesome. I used not to like Valve very much, especially when every LAN were all about CS and nothing else. I felt like I was forced to play a game I didn't like and it annoyed me. Now though, I respect Valve a lot for doing a lots of gutsy moves that are actually meant to help gaming instead of just milking it like the others are..
Is it Valve's fault CSS was hugely popular? As for the OpenGL thing - I don't see that as a big problem. Going forward it may be a better option - rather than ship a DX9/10 and DX11 renderer with a game, why not just an OpenGL one? It'll run on everything but the Red Ring of Death box.
That's not necessarily a good thing, and could just move the PC gaming monopoly away from Microsoft to Valve (though I suppose it could be argued that is a good thing). It would also mean there would be less variety in games if they all used the same engine, and the source engine is pretty outdated graphically now anyway.
There... Fixed that for you. You're spot on about OpenGL, though. I remember you could run HL in D3D mode (being based on the Quake engine it was native OGL) and it ran like a dog. There's not really much you can do in D3D, which you can't do in OGL *and* it's platform-agnostic. Gimme some OGL love...
at least now, people can properly enjoy OpenGL gaming without bad performance on non-Windows platform. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_windows_part3&num=1
I think there's a wider view to consider, vis opening up platforms through steam. If software houses don't see an advantage in offering an OpenGL renderer, then that's up to them. Valve is however giving them the option to market simultaneously on multiple platforms. Also there's a vast difference between Microsoft Windows, a format, and Valve, a publishing house. Valve have competition in the desktop gaming market, Microsoft Windows does not. Gaming has always been the Achilles heel of Linux, and it's about time something was done about it. I've sat in a press meeting with SUSE PR, where I was told unequivocally that "Linux is not for gaming", which I think was a decidedly short-sighted view. GG Valve IMO.
I can't wait for this! I still use Windows 7 as my main gaming platform, but the more choices there are, the happier I am - Especially when they involve Linux.
Linux isn't a platform for games, not much money to be made there by developers, thats why its never taken off, there's no money in it
And how much money is there in Mac gaming? It's not uncommon knowledge that Mac's generally come with bad graphics cards plus if you ever want to upgrade you have to pay through the teeth, yes they have a bigger user base but there is still money there to be made otherwise why would Valve choose to support both the Mac and Linux? Why would 2K Games choose to release Bioshock on the Mac years after it's release? Why would id Software choose to release a Linux client to most of their games aswell as a Windows client?
Once you've developed a game in OpenGL for the Mac, Linux is never going to be far behind. A new version of Unigine Heaven is coming complete with tesselation, bringing it into DX11 territory. Clicky As I've said, OpenGL works on Windows, Linux, the Mac, BSD, the PS3, Wii, PSP, DS, iPhone, Android etc etc. It makes sense to develop for that first. D3D only works on Windows and in modified form on the 360. Besides, open standards are all the rage these days...OpenAL is already handling sound duties in most of our games after DirectSound was killed off in DX10. The mac does come with some poor GPU's, but you don't need a lot of power to run Bioshock - its Unreal 2.5 with knobs on. Same goes for Call of Duty 4. We're looking at it from way ahead of the curve with our high-end GPU's, but even my macbook pro with a 9400m runs Portal just fine. Apple are selling nearly 3,000,000 Mac's every quarter, so it isn't a market that is going away. Clicky
I like this move. Announcing it for teh mac was just moving from one closed platform to another, with a move to linux, things can actually get interesting now. Yay for neckbeards, welcome to gaming!
