This is quite interesting, it seems Valve are actually doing some more curating on their store now ahead of the SteamOS launch.
A user on reddit posted about ~35 titles having their SteamOS icons vanish. To quote the user:
I've checked myself, and I can see that Ticket to Ride, Anodyne, Lume, WAKFU, Starbound, Evoland, Oniken, StarMade and Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten have had their icons removed. I'm not sure what other games have seen the change, as that's a lot of games to go through to find out.
I spoke with the developer of StarMade who said this:
I spoke with other developers, but some are still looking into why, and some asked me not to mention them here.
It makes perfect sense, you wouldn't want a new SteamOS user to find out a game that advertised SteamOS support needed some outside launcher/installer for something like adobe air, or flash or anything else that needs a fair bit of manual interaction not directly possible in the SteamOS interface.
I guess the minor issue for us here, is that people on desktop Linux can't get these games on Steam now, but they do still show in my library, and are installable. It's probably a good thing though, as it means any game with a SteamOS icon should install on desktop Linux without the hassle of hunting down extra's. I wonder how far this will go though? Will they remove all games that have a launcher that doesn't work in fullscreen? It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
They aren't removing the games from your library, so let's not go ringing alarm bells. However, I did say a long time ago I was worried about SteamOS becoming separated from Linux and people thought Valve wouldn't do it, I thought they wouldn't, but this could be the start for all we know.
A user on reddit posted about ~35 titles having their SteamOS icons vanish. To quote the user:
QuoteMy last three data points are:
25/09/15 - 1521 games
09/10/15 - 1555 games
16/10/15 - 1535 games
I've checked myself, and I can see that Ticket to Ride, Anodyne, Lume, WAKFU, Starbound, Evoland, Oniken, StarMade and Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten have had their icons removed. I'm not sure what other games have seen the change, as that's a lot of games to go through to find out.
I spoke with the developer of StarMade who said this:
@gamingonlinux It is because the game requires Java. When the new launcher comes out this should be resolved!
— StarMade (@star_made) October 17, 2015
I spoke with other developers, but some are still looking into why, and some asked me not to mention them here.
It makes perfect sense, you wouldn't want a new SteamOS user to find out a game that advertised SteamOS support needed some outside launcher/installer for something like adobe air, or flash or anything else that needs a fair bit of manual interaction not directly possible in the SteamOS interface.
I guess the minor issue for us here, is that people on desktop Linux can't get these games on Steam now, but they do still show in my library, and are installable. It's probably a good thing though, as it means any game with a SteamOS icon should install on desktop Linux without the hassle of hunting down extra's. I wonder how far this will go though? Will they remove all games that have a launcher that doesn't work in fullscreen? It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
They aren't removing the games from your library, so let's not go ringing alarm bells. However, I did say a long time ago I was worried about SteamOS becoming separated from Linux and people thought Valve wouldn't do it, I thought they wouldn't, but this could be the start for all we know.
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Quoting: BTRETicket to Ride has had its SteamOS/Linux Icon removed. That's a game that works with Java.
I never actually got that to work with the Steam client on Ubuntu either, and had to run it outside of Steam.
The Inner World is also Java and was ported as part of a HIB in March I think. It doesn't have a SteamOS icon now, but I don't remember if it ever had one since cutscenes still didn't work the last time I checked.
Quoting: km3kQuoting: fleskAnodyne and Lume have also had their SteamOS icons removed. Sokobond, Blueberry Garden and NEO Scavenger still have their icons though, so it's not all Adobe AIR games. At least not yet.
Blueberry Garden uses XNA/FNA now, so that's why it still has the SteamOS icon. Not sure about Sokobond and NEO Scavenger though.
Ah, now that you mention it, I think I saw a tweet about that a while back; possibly from flibitijibibo. I'm pretty sure Sokobond is still Flash though, since Alan Hazelden has said it would be too much work to do anything about it. He used Haxe for his last game though. I don't know about NEO Scavenger, but I can check both later.
Last edited by flesk on 16 October 2015 at 6:17 pm UTC
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Looks a bit alarming that they completely removed the icon and there is no clue now, whether this game runs on Linux..
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Well I think that solves the number drop mystery https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/1784?page=1
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While i can see the need for some QA i fin the fact that they removed every clue that the games are working in Linux at all from the store page a little troublesome.
Just look at Starbound's Steam page and you won't even find it under the system requirements.
I want the TUX logo back for games that work on Linux!
Last edited by Sn3ipen on 16 October 2015 at 6:33 pm UTC
Just look at Starbound's Steam page and you won't even find it under the system requirements.
I want the TUX logo back for games that work on Linux!
Last edited by Sn3ipen on 16 October 2015 at 6:33 pm UTC
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I was playing these days Anodyne (on linux of course) and I was wondering why there was no steamos icon.
Anodyne plays fine on me but I remember I had to follow instructions from the arch wiki.
I think it is a good idea to separate games that do not work out of the box for steamos but I would demand tux icon back.
As long as steamos does not have compontents that can not be used on other distributions, everything is fine and it is not real separation. Also I do support the idea of big picture but all games should be playable on desktop mode too as desktop is more suitable when you are not on couch and it would be a stupid inconvinience to force big picture.
Anodyne plays fine on me but I remember I had to follow instructions from the arch wiki.
I think it is a good idea to separate games that do not work out of the box for steamos but I would demand tux icon back.
As long as steamos does not have compontents that can not be used on other distributions, everything is fine and it is not real separation. Also I do support the idea of big picture but all games should be playable on desktop mode too as desktop is more suitable when you are not on couch and it would be a stupid inconvinience to force big picture.
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So Valve is no part of the bad guys? (Not) Cool...
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I think it would also be a nice idea for the Tux icon to sit next to the SteamOS icon too. I don't know how much work that would involve though, they could leave it to developers to tick either, or both, but then that's open to abuse if it only works on desktop Linux I guess.
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To my point of view, it's a good thing if Valve removes SteamOS icon from games that have trouble to play on Linux/SteamOS. I have Lume in my librairie and when I launch it on Ubuntu, the sound is noisy. Imagine a new Linux/SteamOS customer that pay for a game with troubles?
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Quoting: liamdaweI think it would also be a nice idea for the Tux icon to sit next to the SteamOS icon too. I don't know how much work that would involve though, they could leave it to developers to tick either, or both, but then that's open to abuse if it only works on desktop Linux I guess.
That would actually be *the* solution. Just add 4 icons and make it so that for SteamOS Valve has to test it themselves (and maybe only allow Non-EA-titles?! So they don't have to check every other day)
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They could introduce a red SteamOS logo, indicating that it is possible but not (yet) officially supported.
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