A feature that was often requested by Linux gamers, was a way for us to show developers there's a demand for a port. Valve has delivered something interesting to help. Although it does have a small caveat, it's only if you pick one platform in your Steam settings.
Writing about it on Twitter, Valve developer Pierre-Loup linked to this post on Steam that explains it:
We have made changes to the wishlist aiming to improve developers' visibility of any interest in their title coming from Steam users playing on platforms they're not currently targeting.
If a user only has one platform filter selected in their Steam store preferences, adding a game to their wishlist will result in it being specially reported to the developer in a new platform-specific breakdown of the wishlist report:
Currently, Steam has this feature some of you might be familiar with (set it here):
Now they're actually making some more use of it, so developers will end up seeing something like this:
A simple change overall, but one that could end up proving quite interesting for developers. I don't imagine this suddenly moving mountains (being realistic here), but we've long needed something official like this to help things along a bit more.
More changes like this, to help developers decide can only be a good thing for Linux/SteamOS gaming.
Quoting: SalvatosI don't have any hard expectations as to what's coming exactly, but I'm content and optimistic that they're still very much an ally to Linux gaming.The one thing that's struck me all along is that, while they certainly still keep a lot of their code closed, Valve really do get the whole Linux/open-source thing, and the value of it.
It's easy to assume that because they haven't thrown open their repositories and ditched DRM in Steam that they don't understand, but I think that is to misunderstand open source in itself. It's a process, a method of dealing with the community, not just blindly releasing code (compare and contrast, for example, with Google or Apple). Valve seems to understand that, and I think they're in this for the long-haul.
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