It seems my recent article about Valve removing the link to the Steam Machines page caused quite a stir, so Valve have now confirmed their continued support for Linux gaming.
Truthfully, I wasn't expecting my article to do anything, however I seem to have vastly underestimated just how many eyes there are on us now. Many larger tech and gaming sites picked it up from us like PC Gamer, Ars Technica (who amusingly called us a "fan site"), VG247 and so on. Many more sites then picked up the news from them (some claiming it was originally reported by others—oh well, can't win them all) and so it ended up as a much bigger story.
We've had quite a lot of emails and notifications about this, including a Valve rep emailing us directly to link us to this post by Pierre-Loup Griffais, where they state that the removal of the Steam Machines link was part of a "routine cleanup" where it was removed based on "user traffic".
They go on to state rather clearly, that their plans haven't really changed. They're still committed to making Linux a great place for games and applications, including those not using Steam. The most important part of their post, to me at least, is this:
At the same time, we're continuing to invest significant resources in supporting the Vulkan ecosystem, tooling and driver efforts. We also have other Linux initiatives in the pipe that we're not quite ready to talk about yet; SteamOS will continue to be our medium to deliver these improvements to our customers, and we think they will ultimately benefit the Linux ecosystem at large.
It's going to be very interesting to find out what these initiatives are that they're not currently ready to talk about, quite exciting.
It's really good to see a public comment from Valve on this, as I said constantly in the past that SteamOS and Steam Machines would never be an overnight success. Valve is clearly in it for the long game and so are we.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Mohandevir Apr 5, 2018
More on that at E3 2018?
*Fingers crossed* :)
Edit: E3 instead of GDC...
Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 April 2018 at 12:59 pm UTC
Quoting: GuestApple's walled garden, no, but what about Valve's? Many games do rely on Steam itself, which of course locks users into using Steam, and ultimately gives Valve control of gaming.
I don't mind Valve making it easy to use their system of control, and ultimately this is less about Valve, more about developers not locking themselves in.
My own view is that a game (at least a single player game) should not rely on Steam, even if it's one of the best for end user game management. I personally hope that Valve steer towards helping developers allowing games to be run without Steam, but more features are there if you do.
Many games distributed on Steam do not depend on Steam, i.e. you can shutdown Steam, navigate to a folder and run the executable directly. Sure, if you want to use Steam DRM, achievements, workshop or in-game social functions, then it creates a dependency on Steam. Sure, it's nice if a game simply disables these functions if Steam is unavailable (apart from DRM obviously), but is still usable.
You proposed that single player games should not depend on Steam and Valve is doing something completely different, yet similar: opensourcing their networking sockets library and removing Steam dependency (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Valve-Network-Sockets-Lib, so you can use it without lock-in.
Quoting: skinnyrafAnd yet another discussion hijacked into a GNU/Linux, Free Software, purists vs pragmatists, DRM, GOG vs Steam flamewar.....also known as "a typical family gathering weekend in Gaming on Linux 'fan site'" :P. I love it people... except I'm notice this year becoming almost daily basis.
Quoting: tonRQuoting: skinnyrafAnd yet another discussion hijacked into a GNU/Linux, Free Software, purists vs pragmatists, DRM, GOG vs Steam flamewar.....also known as "a typical family gathering weekend in Gaming on Linux 'fan site'" :P. I love it people... except I'm notice this year becoming almost daily basis.
I'll take advise from a very wise user here recently and just get a beer :)
Last edited by jens on 5 April 2018 at 6:30 pm UTC
Quoting: liamdaweThe issue is how other sites reported it. I saw one such site say it was the "final nail in the coffin" and other such things.Sounds much like [users-only]ArseTechnica[/users-only].
Last edited by crt0mega on 5 April 2018 at 8:25 pm UTC
Quoting: jensI've had mine for the evening *thumbs up*Quoting: tonRQuoting: skinnyrafAnd yet another discussion hijacked into a GNU/Linux, Free Software, purists vs pragmatists, DRM, GOG vs Steam flamewar.....also known as "a typical family gathering weekend in Gaming on Linux 'fan site'" :P. I love it people... except I'm notice this year becoming almost daily basis.
I'll take advise from a very wise user here recently and just get a beer :)
Can't really go on any Linux-related site, especially a gaming one, without something like it coming up. Just take it with a pinch of salt and gloss over the comments you don't really care about :)
stretch611 Apr 6, 2018
Quoting: liamdaweCan't really go on any Linux-related site, especially a gaming one, without something like it coming up. Just take it with a pinch of salt and gloss over the comments you don't really care about :)
That is why I like Soylent News (which I previously mentioned.) It is a news aggregator for geeks. It is modeled after the Slashdot.org website of old. In fact many people there (including myself) used to frequent slashdot back in the day. However, many left after the much hated design changes, commercial takeover, and burying of stories. (Personally, I left slashdot after the Sourceforge controversy
Here are the links to the two relevant stories on SN:
Valve Removed the Steam Machine Section from Steam (which links back to the original GoL story.)
Valve Clears the Air on its Removal of the Steam Machine Section From its Store (which links back to the Steam Forum post.)
Soylent News is not a linux specific website, but a geek news website. It does have a few linux detractors but they are mostly ignored/modded down and the community as a whole has a respect for linux.
BlackBloodRum Apr 6, 2018
Do we Linux users really want to be associated with geeks? :P
It'd turn into "Linux is an OS for geeks" which is more food for the Windows trolls. :D
Quoting: BlackBloodRumDo we Linux users really want to be associated with geeks? :PBetter face it, captain. That ship has sailed.
Quoting: BlackBloodRumIt'd turn into "Linux is an OS for geeks" which is more food for the Windows trolls. :DThe real troll food is attention. They're perfectly capable of thinking up silly insults without our help.
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