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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.
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Quoting: MaelraneQuoting: 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" ;)
Windows has its Win32 API written in old C and this API hasn't changed for 20 years (some additions but really no removes). This makes Windows binaries that are 20 year old run as good as new ones on modern Windows OS:es. Windows is extremely backwards compatible.
Mac OS X has its Cocoa API and Carbon stuff which is also standardized for all OS X:es.
Linux has no standard at all. There is no standard package manager, there is no standard package list. There is no standard C++ runtime. Nothing is standard because everything is moddable. Valve have defined a pack of libraries that is all you need to make any game.
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Quoting: GuestValve creating its own platform means reliance on that platform. This is about GNU/Linux and gaming - and there are problems in relying on steam's runtime. It means sticking to libraries they provide, library versions they provide, and doing only what they say. You're getting ridding of any freedoms you might have to control your own system - you might as well use Windows.Not really. Commercial games depending on a "runtime" or rather a fixed set of libraries doesn't do much to limit your freedom. Everything outside of Steam still uses the libraries installed on your system.
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Quoting: alexQuoting: MaelraneQuoting: 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" ;)
Windows has its Win32 API written in old C and this API hasn't changed for 20 years (some additions but really no removes). This makes Windows binaries that are 20 year old run as good as new ones on modern Windows OS:es. Windows is extremely backwards compatible.
Mac OS X has its Cocoa API and Carbon stuff which is also standardized for all OS X:es.
Linux has no standard at all. There is no standard package manager, there is no standard package list. There is no standard C++ runtime. Nothing is standard because everything is moddable. Valve have defined a pack of libraries that is all you need to make any game.
Thats not true there is the lsb. Every Distribution which want to be LSB compliant need to have this standard included.
Ubuntu
fedora
debian
and the list goes on.
Last edited by Glog78 on 18 October 2015 at 4:00 pm UTC
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Edit #23423423: With "standard" I meant "standardized API for games". Not just "any standard". Arghh...
Last edited by on 18 October 2015 at 4:21 pm UTC
Last edited by on 18 October 2015 at 4:21 pm UTC
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psycho_driver Oct 18, 2015
Probably already suggested by someone somewhere, instead of having both tux and steamos icons cluttering up the store they could just toggle. If a game has linux depots have it use the tux icon by default. If it passes muster to run on steamos then replace the tux icon with the steamos icon.
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GustyGhost Oct 18, 2015
Quoting: alexJava 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?
Minecraft was never made available on Steam. Minecraft Storymode, yes but that's a different game. And I don't see Java being included in the Steam runtime any time soon because legal issues.
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I think this is a good move. It's damn annoying to buy a game, have it not launch, and then have to research, usually in the forums, as to why that is the case, and then figure out how to fix it on your particular distro. That being said, the Steam Runtime itself ought to be expanded or expandable in some automatic manner, when a game needs something like Java, or whatever, and if needed, present a EULA - just like it already does with some games.
Last edited by adolson on 18 October 2015 at 4:54 pm UTC
Last edited by adolson on 18 October 2015 at 4:54 pm UTC
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mindplague Oct 18, 2015
This is why I love you guys. You have a vested interest in the Linux gaming scene and I'm grateful for that. Keep up the great work!
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It's been some years since I installed something from Steam on Windows and I don't know if it still a valid point, but on Windows when you first launch a game that had additional dependencies it launched the wizard for each one, that I could rememeber things like DirectX, .Net or VisualC runtime were installed this way if they were not already in the system.
What Steam should do is provide a similar way of installing those most common dependencies like Java. If the problem is the variety of package managers, that I assume it may be a risk, they could support only the SteamOS distribution and let other distributions manage it on their own.
Last edited by Devlin on 18 October 2015 at 5:04 pm UTC
What Steam should do is provide a similar way of installing those most common dependencies like Java. If the problem is the variety of package managers, that I assume it may be a risk, they could support only the SteamOS distribution and let other distributions manage it on their own.
Last edited by Devlin on 18 October 2015 at 5:04 pm UTC
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Comandante Ñoñardo Oct 18, 2015
Well.. As a former Windows XP SP3 user, I want linux apps that I can download, install and run with a single click... everything must run out of the box.. The Linux game devs have a very long path to go if they want a massive migration.
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