Valve looking to contract experienced Mesa developers to work on the open source AMD driver for OpenVR

Finally! I always wondered if Valve will take steps to either directly supporting studios to port games or support the development. Now they do! I guess to have a fully working steam machine they'd need to promote VR as well. (:

This is really nice. I love it when companies are offering developers the opportunity to further improve an open source stack. Even more when they are not directly related to this stack, nor major players in the OSS world.

As a side note, I very, very seriously considered applying there for the year-long internship I am doing right now, but was ultimately deterred by their notice that they needed 5 years of professional experience in the industry. I so much wanted to help with their SteamOS efforts. And I am here, doing a slightly boring internship where I don't really learn anything new (but, granted, where I acquire experience).

Sorry for ranting and exposing my personal/professional life here, but that's how Valve job offers make me feel, and I expect I am not the only one :/.

now we're talking!

What happened with contracted LunarG/Valve Intel drivers? Where is Valve contracted GFX debbuger? Where is finished SteamOS? Years are passing...
Valve making good presentations with ZERO deliveries. Last 7-8 years Valve only knows how to take 30% from someone elses work.

Quoting: GoLBuzzkillLast 7-8 years Valve only knows how to take 30% from someone elses work.

Bitter much? You think building and maintaining the Steam infrastructure or supplying the 2 terabit/s bandwidth is free?

Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: GoLBuzzkillLast 7-8 years Valve only knows how to take 30% from someone elses work.

Bitter much? You think building and maintaining the Steam infrastructure or supplying the 2 terabit/s bandwidth is free?

Not only that, but progress takes time. One of the only reasons Vulkan has been pushed so quickly is Valve. Valve also hired the SDL creator, created SteamOS which is one of the major reasons we have all the games we do and the list goes on.

Valve aren't perfect, and can be slow to react to things, but let's not bite the hand that essentially opened up a lot for us eh.

For my part, it proves that Valve needs AMD to create a new price bracket for the Steam Machines.

I really do like Nvidia (I have a GTX960 4gb) but objectively, their products are more in the higher end of the spectrum. AMD is always cheaper and a little under Nvidia, when it comes to performances.

This is probably one of the reasons why the original Steam Machines launch was so "underwelming". I wouldn't be surprise to see a "Steam Machine launch 2.0, VR Ready" when AMD will be all set.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 13 October 2016 at 12:38 pm UTC

Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: GoLBuzzkillLast 7-8 years Valve only knows how to take 30% from someone elses work.

Bitter much? You think building and maintaining the Steam infrastructure or supplying the 2 terabit/s bandwidth is free?

I didnt say that and I didnt say anything wrong, why are you defending them? Do you think running Microsoft, Oracle, EA is free? They dont make new games, they destroy old ones (latest CS:GO pay spray 50 uses; in 1.6 CSS it was free and you could make your own, even CSS was not made by Valve, all that time CS:GO bugs are not fixed for years). They said games run faster on Linux (their games), in practice all games run slower or/and look worse plus we get whole new set of bugs that dont exist on Windows. They together with AMD/Nvidia said OGL AZDO can increase performance, nobody has used it. They said it is possible to have lower latency/input-lag on Linux, in practice it isnt. Pretty much everything Valve said about Linux is false in practice. Everyone that is saying that they are going to support Linux are doing everything on Windows from ground up and usually after product is released some of them then do half-assed Linux support.

Why they did not pay Mesa devs 3-4 years ago? Compared to Windows graphic stack Linux one is crap and still is to this day, you cant have bad drivers and bad graphic stack on the platform that is "Future of gaming". Mesa still does not support 4.5 fully.

Mesa and graphic stack development is not easy, it is niche, I wish them luck in finding good developers, LunarG guys are obviously terrible when Valve needs new people, VOGL is crap Alpha 2 years later, bright future indeed.

Like any relationship there are ups and downs. Linux gamers were starting to reach a low place with Valve on Linux in recent months. They may have been silent but once again brought us flowers & chocolates. Even though Gabe eats 30% of those chocolates I don't think that makes them a bad, after all a relationship is about sharing.

they will probably only contract 2