Thanks to me getting in touch with the Starbound developers, it seems a Valve rep has taken to reddit to explain what's going on with games having their SteamOS icon removed.
You can see the conversation here, but for those who cannot access reddit it is copied below.
When asked about the SteamOS icon for Starbound on reddit, a Starbound developer said this:
Thankfully, a Valve rep has replied to it directly with this:
This makes the situation much more clear, and should help both desktop Linux and SteamOS look better for everyone to play games.
The icing on the cake here for me in particular:
Glad to see a Valve rep in the wild, and helping with developers and users concerns. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
You can see the conversation here, but for those who cannot access reddit it is copied below.
When asked about the SteamOS icon for Starbound on reddit, a Starbound developer said this:
QuoteTo my knowledge we've not yet had official communication with Valve about this, we've e-mailed them asking wtf, but we haven't gotten a response and probably won't until at least Monday. This is our best guess to the problem. Who knows, it might be the launcher. I just can't say it's necessarily the launcher yet.
Thankfully, a Valve rep has replied to it directly with this:
QuoteWe've been removing the store bit from games that cannot run against just the Steam Runtime, without additional dependencies on the host system. Games that fail this are impossible to support reliably across multiple distributions, and will not be publicly advertised on the Store as supporting Linux going forward.
All concerned games are still purchasable, installable and playable on Linux.
To my knowledge all developers have been made aware as we were doing this, let's chat on Monday.
This makes the situation much more clear, and should help both desktop Linux and SteamOS look better for everyone to play games.
The icing on the cake here for me in particular:
QuoteThanks for the clarification on exactly what is going on. Do you have a VM image or other test environment that we can use to determine if our game passes muster? (Also, Valve employee in the wild, how awesome is that?)
"To my knowledge all developers have been made aware as we were doing this, let's chat on Monday."
We found out due to someone from GamingOnLinux contacting our community manager about it. It kind of took us all by surprise. Though it is possible you contacted us at some point and we may have simply missed it?
Glad to see a Valve rep in the wild, and helping with developers and users concerns. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
0 Likes
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
This time I agree with Valve. If something it's supposed to run on SteamOS, then it has to run on vanilla SteamOS. No exception.
Do we need to have a Linux icon? No, that would also confuse things.
I think individual devs should get their act together.
Plus, adding pre-compiled Java might be a nightmare from legal p.o.v., not sure the small devs would be able to.
Stop using Java for your games and develop in C/C++, I know it's not a good answer, but quite frankly if you use Java you'll be entangled in legal bulls**t with Oracle till the end of the days (see Google vs Oracle w.r.t. Android... they're getting sued to have copied the API, think if you try to redistribute the Oracle build...).
Do we need to have a Linux icon? No, that would also confuse things.
I think individual devs should get their act together.
Plus, adding pre-compiled Java might be a nightmare from legal p.o.v., not sure the small devs would be able to.
Stop using Java for your games and develop in C/C++, I know it's not a good answer, but quite frankly if you use Java you'll be entangled in legal bulls**t with Oracle till the end of the days (see Google vs Oracle w.r.t. Android... they're getting sued to have copied the API, think if you try to redistribute the Oracle build...).
2 Likes, Who?
Crazy Penguin Oct 18, 2015
Quoting: melkemindCome on now.
Nope! A habbit is no excuse :D
Quoting: EmazzaTPlus, adding pre-compiled Java might be a nightmare from legal p.o.v., not sure the small devs would be able to.
Can't see any legal nightmare with OpenJDK, which is the refrence for Java nowadays. Maybe you will have to get a license for some libraries, but not for the Runtime Environment. Which could be easily distributed with SteamOS as it is in any other Linux-Distribution.
Quoting: EmazzaStop using Java for your games and develop in C/C++, I know it's not a good answer.
You are right, it isn't! I would rather develop in C# then in C/C++. :D
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: liamdaweValve have needed to standardise something for a while, I see this as a step in the right direction for anyone using Steam on Linux. Things were a mess before, and now a little less so.
While I don't buy this argument on premise unless you're linking against some insane versions or something, this could however be a minds eye perspective thing because how many times have we heard "I can't support 200 distro" arguments because developers are idiots? This could be seen as a "we only have to support that distro" kind of thing without them realizing it runs under every other distro (red hat excluded since it's base is ancient).
And I agree with the poster about Java, make the game have a Java icon then because Java isn't a native Windows library/runtime either.
Quoting: Crazy PenguinYou are right, it isn't! I would rather develop in C# then in C/C++. :D
You mean on a Windows machine or on Linux? ... Or both I guess.
Last edited by Xzyl on 18 October 2015 at 2:43 pm UTC
0 Likes
I love it - use the already standardized Steam Runtime if you want to be on SteamOS!
No different from using the PlayStation SDK or the iOS SDK or the Windows Runtime SDK etc. This will raise the quality and ensure input and graphics is handled the same way for every game. This means games doesn't need to link statically and other bad things.
They already made this public a long time ago - use the Steam Runtime. Some did not and now they pay the price. Nothing different from being tossed out of the Apple Store when you don't obey the quality rules. I want all my games to get the same updated libraries when Valve does an update - I don't want some games having its own bundled shit being outdated and full of bugs.
I don't really care for the Tux icon - this is not about "Linux" - this is about Valve creating its own platform for their own commercial gains - just like Google did with Android. But since the Steam Runtime runs on any Linux distribution all SteamOS games will run on Linux. You cannot have some apps installing shit in you computer like Java or .NET (Mono) or any other scripting shit that can mess with the system. You keep to the given libraries and you are good.
Last edited by on 18 October 2015 at 3:19 pm UTC
No different from using the PlayStation SDK or the iOS SDK or the Windows Runtime SDK etc. This will raise the quality and ensure input and graphics is handled the same way for every game. This means games doesn't need to link statically and other bad things.
They already made this public a long time ago - use the Steam Runtime. Some did not and now they pay the price. Nothing different from being tossed out of the Apple Store when you don't obey the quality rules. I want all my games to get the same updated libraries when Valve does an update - I don't want some games having its own bundled shit being outdated and full of bugs.
I don't really care for the Tux icon - this is not about "Linux" - this is about Valve creating its own platform for their own commercial gains - just like Google did with Android. But since the Steam Runtime runs on any Linux distribution all SteamOS games will run on Linux. You cannot have some apps installing shit in you computer like Java or .NET (Mono) or any other scripting shit that can mess with the system. You keep to the given libraries and you are good.
Last edited by on 18 October 2015 at 3:19 pm UTC
3 Likes, Who?
QuoteThis makes the situation much more clear, and should help both desktop Linux and SteamOS look better for everyone to play games.
reallly ?
- it does not help desktop because now if a linux users looks at (for example a Java based game) they will not see the SteamOS icon and thus have totally no idea it runs just fine on Linux.
- for developers of the Java based game (as an example again) this means less Linux people will buy their game.
This make it clear for SteamOS, totally agree, but this does not make it clear for Linux users.
1 Likes, Who?
Java is however a big problem since Minecraft for one is using it. Maybe you could compile it using GCJ:
https://gcc.gnu.org/java/
I have never tried but with some minor "porting" it might compile. Or maybe they could make the Steam Runtime include Java?
https://gcc.gnu.org/java/
I have never tried but with some minor "porting" it might compile. Or maybe they could make the Steam Runtime include Java?
1 Likes, Who?
For those that didn't comprehend, the SteamOS icon is still a Linux icon, SteamOS is a distribution like all the other and if a game doesn't run on every distribution then it doesn't run on Linux. We are not going to have a logo for Ubuntu, a logo for Fedora, a logo for Arch ... if the game doesn't run everywhere then it's no good.
Developers should already know that their game is supposed to run in an environment limited to the Steam runtime (https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/linux_landing, they can bundle directly all the missing libraries in their game.
Revenge of the Titans is also a Java game and it doesn't have lost is SteamOS logo, why ? Because OpenJDK is bundled with the game, it does cost about 70MB but the game can run on any distribution without the cost of telling the user to install Java.
Developers should already know that their game is supposed to run in an environment limited to the Steam runtime (https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/linux_landing, they can bundle directly all the missing libraries in their game.
Revenge of the Titans is also a Java game and it doesn't have lost is SteamOS logo, why ? Because OpenJDK is bundled with the game, it does cost about 70MB but the game can run on any distribution without the cost of telling the user to install Java.
7 Likes, Who?
Quoting: BdMdesigNQuoting: Maelrane...
Of course, one difference is, that on Windows you could just tell the .exe that it needs to install that dependency, without having admin-rights or so... but that's the only difference I can think of spontaneously.
...
Häääää???? You are wrong. read the bold text from you again. You need admin-rights to install any kind of software on Windows.
Na, only if you want to override protected folders, registry keys and such... basically just like in Linux. ;)
http://superuser.com/questions/725326/how-can-non-admin-users-install-software-in-windows-7
but ya, that's basically most software out there:
http://serverfault.com/questions/611499/let-users-install-software-without-local-administrator-rights-on-domain
What I wanted to say though: Valve could make it easy to install such 3rd party software on SteamOS.
Last edited by Maelrane on 18 October 2015 at 3:34 pm UTC
0 Likes
Quoting: NyamiouFor those that didn't comprehend, the SteamOS icon is still a Linux icon, SteamOS is a distribution like all the other and if a game doesn't run on every distribution then it doesn't run on Linux. We are not going to have a logo for Ubuntu, a logo for Fedora, a logo for Arch ... if the game doesn't run everywhere then it's no good.
Developers should already know that their game is supposed to run in an environment limited to the Steam runtime (https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/linux_landing, they can bundle directly all the missing libraries in their game.
Revenge of the Titans is also a Java game and it doesn't have lost is SteamOS logo, why ? Because OpenJDK is bundled with the game, it does cost about 70MB but the game can run on any distribution without the cost of telling the user to install Java.
You my fried said it better than I could. We want a standard and even if that standard is chosen by Valve it makes every game run on all Linux platforms. That's good.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: NyamiouFor those that didn't comprehend, the SteamOS icon is still a Linux icon, SteamOS is a distribution like all the other and if a game doesn't run on every distribution then it doesn't run on Linux. We are not going to have a logo for Ubuntu, a logo for Fedora, a logo for Arch ... if the game doesn't run everywhere then it's no good.
Although the numbers are (not) in our favor... Windows has a lot of versions too, so has MacOS. Nobody bats an eye if Windows Vista is not supported, or Windows XP etc.
I mean, I know what you're going to say, but
If the reason turns out to be additional requirements, then there should be a distinction between "Desktop Linux" and "Couch SteamOS" ;)
1 Likes, Who?
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me