I'm quite amused by Valve's business decision. One may say that this is the logical next step but I'm smiling on the insides. I can't help but think that they're tryig to out-Microsoft MS. The embrace, extend, extinguish policy is obvious as day.
They waited all these years to gain a significant foothold in the Windows segment. Now that they've got this, we could see them slowly expanding to Mac first, and today Linux. I mean, it's certainly a huge incentive if you're given ready access to your game library on the other OS, even though you didn't expect it when you purchased the game on Windows months or even years ago. Screams of extend. I just wait to see if the market forces themselves will play the 'extinguish' card or will Valve play it?
Once Office and a decent number of games port over to the penguin, I'm really confident that the only people who use Windows will be (a) people who know nothing about computers and use whatever it came preinstalled with (b) at work since they're not allowed to format the computer (c) they need a very specific software that is not available on Linux or Mac (Ansys etc.)
Admittedly I'm sleepy and wild-eyed, but... I have to wonder: If Valve pushes Linux as the focus of their internal development? But give it three years. What if Linux actually becomes the chief gaming environment? I can certainly see indie developers pushing Linux, or at the least offering Linux versions, as Steam currently offers both Win+Mac versions of games.
Given Linus' own comments about gnome, maybe some new attention is exactly what's needed for a new desktop environment to spring forward? And considering the freeform nature of Valve, I wouldn't be amazed to find out that some of the internal focus on the rumored "SteamBox" console turns into a new Linux desktop.
And what happens with MS? Do they chiefly become a device pusher like Apple? Are they even prepared for this fight?
Gotta admit, I never saw that coming. I thought SteamOS was dead after the failure of Steam Machines and Valve was only continuing with their Linux efforts because it's still a useful hedge against Microsoft locking everyone in the App Store. I totally did not expect them to copy the Switch use-case with it.
I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Valve's history with hardware is not so great, so it could go nowhere like Steam Machines, Steam Link, and the Steam Controller did. On the other hand, it could end up all but killing off PC gaming if it is super successful. If it lands somewhere in the middle it will at least be yet another boon for Linux gaming brought to you by Valve as more developers will port or ensure compatibility with Proton.
Well given (a) Valve's distaste for Microsoft's strategy and (b) their anyways insane profitability per employee I could see them at least releasing a title a few weeks earlier on linux and OSX than on Windows.
I'm going to take a guess that Valve is hedging their bets on a Windows 8 flop. I think it is very possible that Linux and OS X will become the two dominant desktop platforms over the next 5 years.
Valve can not really enter the mobile marketplace in a meaningful way. Both Microsoft and Apple will likely try to put the squeeze on Valve with their own respective OS marketplaces. (I think neither will successfully be able reproduce Steam's high quality user experience and extras.)
I think Valve are getting games onto mac and linux in anticipation of an xBox store, or a locked down version of Win 10 with an xBox store coming in the future.
Finally, Windows will have a package management system that it can call its own! (Steam!) Also, who wants to develop Windows 12 when they can just buy SteamOS? Microsoft has needed to buy their way into the Linux market for at least a decade, and I am surprised that it has taken them this long.
I'd be happy if Valve's other big legacy for gaming ended up being that they started a snowball that made Linux a viable alternative for gaming. For me the requirement for that would be fairly broad compatibility and a performance that's at least close enough to Windows to not give me the feeling that I'm bottlenecking the hardware I paid all that money for. Other than that I mostly use my desktop as a media server and Linux can already do that more than well enough.
All in all, I'm excited for it in a way I wasn't for the SteamOS box announcement and I really hope they can sustain the momentum for the long run!
Well - they might. I don't think Valve would hate being the gaming gateway for Mac as well as for PC, but they have great Linux support because of the Steam Deck.
Even though Steam invites its own problems (it's ultimately a form of DRM, a closed platform, and a closed-source application), as a FOSS developer I can't help but feel excited about this prospect. I know many, many people in the 15-35 age bracket who are open to and curious about Linux, even tried it, but ultimately didn't stick with it because of the lack of high-end native games and because rebooting or setting up Wine is too much of a hassle. Valve has tremendous power to change this and legitimize Linux as a platform in their eyes.
Plus, there's already a lot of games in the Steam catalogue that have native Linux versions available:
- Dozens of independent titles, e.g. everything that was in those Humble Bundles.
- Everything using the DOSBox emulator to run even on Windows, e.g. id's Commander Keen, some Lucasarts Star Wars games, etc.
- Even a bunch of AAA titles: id Software's games (Doom, Quake) and games that have licensed their engine (e.g. Human Head's Prey), games that were ported by Linux Game Publishing (e.g. Egosoft's X series of spaceflight simulators), several games by Epic (e.g. Unreal Tournament) or using an Epic engine (e.g. Rune and Deus Ex, ported by Loki), Neverwinter Nights, Civilization: Call to Power, ...
Add Valve's own games and possibly some of the other games using their Source engine, and you could easily make 100-150 games available on Linux within a year of launch just from what's already there. But even more exciting is the notion of Steam's availability making more game makers consider adding Linux to their list of supported platforms going forward because the distribution problem is solved for them.
Even though Steam invites its own problems (it's ultimately a form of DRM, a closed platform, and a closed-source application), as a FOSS developer I can't help but feel excited about this prospect. I know many, many people in the 15-35 age bracket who are open to and curious about Linux, even tried it, but ultimately didn't stick with it because of the lack of high-end native games and because rebooting or setting up Wine is too much of a hassle. Valve has tremendous power to change this and legitimize Linux as a platform in their eyes.
Plus, there's already a lot of games in the Steam catalogue that have native Linux versions available:
- Dozens of independent titles, e.g. everything that was in those Humble Bundles.
- Everything using the DOSBox emulator to run even on Windows, e.g. id's Commander Keen, some Lucasarts Star Wars games, etc.
- Even a bunch of AAA titles: id Software's games (Doom, Quake) and games that have licensed their engine (e.g. Human Head's Prey), games that were ported by Linux Game Publishing (e.g. Egosoft's X series of spaceflight simulators), several games by Epic (e.g. Unreal Tournament) or using an Epic engine (e.g. Rune and Deus Ex, ported by Loki), Neverwinter Nights, Civilization: Call to Power, ...
Add Valve's own games and possibly some of the other games using their Source engine, and you could easily make 100-150 games available on Linux within a year of launch just from what's already there. But even more exciting is the notion of Steam's availability making more game makers consider adding Linux to their list of supported platforms going forward because the distribution problem is solved for them.
What will this mean to the Ubuntu Store (and other distros "appstores") since steam is arriving on linux? I know competition (even if it's against a free service) and new things move the world but god damn everything is a mess, everybody wants to sell everything and make their own software haha.
If Valve manage to deliver a platform with an easy-install that works cross distro it would seem a very good place for developers who want to port to Linux but are scared of distro fragmentation issues.
I hope that I will be able to run games under Linux that I have already bought for windows without having to re-buy them.
While it's great they're putting support behind Linux I'm not getting my hopes up. Just look at the poor selection of Mac games available on Steam. There are plenty of great indy titles but very few big budget games. Linux support will be even worse.
I don't know anything about Valve's future plans, and I don't know anything at all about that toolkit (it was announced after I stopped working on Wine). My gut feeling is it's unlikely. There was a lot of incentive to target Linux with this tech, even though it's a smaller market than macOS, because you can control the whole stack and do cool stuff like SteamOS, which is what allowed the Deck to happen. On macOS, all you can do is sell stuff to end-users, where you also have to compete with the Apple store, which is owned by Apple, who also make the OS. Apple has also shown they're a bad partner for game companies (nuking 32-bit support; crummy OpenGL support; no Vulkan support; shaky record on OS updates breaking stuff). My experience is there's generally a lot of bad feelings and skepticism about Apple and macOS in the gaming industry due to that record.
Wow that’s huge. I hope this makes it way into proton. It’s getting to the point where windows is going to be mostly irrelevant for gaming, and ideally, for everything!
Mac is a better experience for every single thing other than gaming (that may change soon too). My steam deck is an amazing mobile gaming device. I’m hoping one day I can actually just steamos on my gaming pc and dump my last vestigial windows install.
With more and more games coming out for MacOS and Linux I think there is a good chance that gamers would just jump ship. People are incredibly invested both monetarily and emotionally in Steam.
It's ironic that this effort is trying to get gamers to buy Steam Machines when gamers already have machines far more powerful than the ones launched. Valve will have a big problem if they want to convince traditional console gamers. Which are the benefits for them if the cost is bigger? It seems TCO is good on Steam Machines on the long run but that's a tough argument for people that want instant gratification.
Steam Link seems the way to go for most HN readers, I guess, and that is the device I would buy if I had to choose. BTW, a question on this: I've read somewhere that although NVIDIA Shield works only with NVIDIA GPUs, the Steam Link will work also with AMD GPUs. Valve doesn't confirm this but says that it supports OS X, Linux and Windows PCs. Any ideas? Doesn't it run on NVIDIA's GameStream, like NV Shield does?
If there's one example of this out there showing that it could in principle work in the Windows world, it's gotta be Steam. I wonder if Valve has thought about expanding beyond games?
My gut feeling is they have more compelling reasons to port Steam to Linux. Look at the growth in the number of relatively powerful personal computing devices (smartphones, tablets, etc) that don't run Windows. It's also been suggested that Valve is looking at developing their own game console. It is reasonable to spend some effort making their system less tied to the Windows API.
They waited all these years to gain a significant foothold in the Windows segment. Now that they've got this, we could see them slowly expanding to Mac first, and today Linux. I mean, it's certainly a huge incentive if you're given ready access to your game library on the other OS, even though you didn't expect it when you purchased the game on Windows months or even years ago. Screams of extend. I just wait to see if the market forces themselves will play the 'extinguish' card or will Valve play it?
Once Office and a decent number of games port over to the penguin, I'm really confident that the only people who use Windows will be (a) people who know nothing about computers and use whatever it came preinstalled with (b) at work since they're not allowed to format the computer (c) they need a very specific software that is not available on Linux or Mac (Ansys etc.)
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