Valve are paying hackers for finding security flaws, plus a website refresh teased top secret games

I really hope they will finally release a 64 bit Steam client including Wayland support.

What do we gain from that?

Proper modern support?

Erm really because Wayland is still really shit for gaming dont try to pretend its not, Nvidia still havent embraced wayland and show signs of doing so.

I didn't intend to start any arguments about how good or bad wayland is...

However, I'd like to set one thing straight: While wayland isn't ready for mass use yet, it's absolutely fine for gaming (with xwayland for now, of course).

How do I know? We've ran both X and wayland on pretty similar systems. The one running wayland had much, much smoother performance and rendering, less microstuttering and overall a better experience than what X could offer. The only reason we are currently sticking to X is that WoW in Wine + Wayland didn't work out too well. Somehow the mouse capture wasn't happy. Note that this is the only issue we found after ~3 months of constant use.

EDIT: I just realized I didn't touch on your point about nvidia. That is factual - but you cannot blame wayland for nvidias decision. It will, of course, decide what you chose to use but it does not change how it works with other vendors :)

TLDR: Wayland isn't perfect yet, but it's getting close. Don't spread misinformation.


Last edited by nox on 14 May 2018 at 11:19 am UTC

This seems really, really weird. Valve have ignored anything regarding the client at least, on github. NVIDIA of all people are more active on Github then Valve, and that is outright sad.

Maybe different groups within Valve or they outsourced it?

Regarding the 32 vs 64 bit thing, I don't think people understand there are a lot of games compiled to use 32bit. You can't just drop support. The runtime within steam itself has come a long way with lib pinning but it's far from perfect.

Fun fact, the 64bit steam client does exist. If you can get it running the login should show a 64bit icon... at least it did.

tldr - the steam client has serious bugs that have existed for _years_. Valve ignores them for reasons I can only imagine are their being completely out of touch.

Who the f*ck is talking about dropping 32-bit support?
We f*cking demand, that we have finally a x64 client.

If it has a x64 client, then why the f*ck it does not run on a 64bit-only systems…

* The F*cks are intentional.

I've got no idea what you expect from a 64 bit Steam client. It's not like it would make anything faster or better. "Proper"? "Modern"? So what? There's still many games running on 32 bits, you'll need a 32 bit layer for a long time to go.

This is why selling stuff with buzzwords works so great, I guess. :)

32-bit processes can spawn 64-bit processes, or in other words - the 32-bit Steam client can launch 64-bit titles - so there is no limitation in that.

Not having native Wayland support is not something I consider an issue.
There are still lots of users on X and those applications run great via XWayland.

If the client feels sluggish or whatever than it's just because it has some design issues.
And certainly *not* because it's 32-bit or native X application.

You really must be living under a rock.
For your information there are systems that do not have 32bit layer at all (and they don't need one, to begin with).
I for one, use one of thouse.

Don't really see why are you people even showing up here and arguing that we do not need this.
How the f*ck is that affecting you at all??? I will repeat for the last time: we do not want Valve to drop 32bit, what we want from Valve is to properly support 64bit!
As in: give us 64bit client, so we can play our 64bit games, on a 64bit-only OS.

Seriously dude, The swearing is not called for on a public forum! we all have the occasional rants and do it, but it's not needed all the time whether it's starred out or not

I really hope they will finally release a 64 bit Steam client including Wayland support.

ironically despite keeping their client 32 bit they block the steam browser on 32 bit hardware, come on guys! whats the point of that...

I hope the updated user interface uses qt5, and not gtk3. That is, assuming they use a different toolkit to gtk2.

I hope the updated user interface uses qt5, and not gtk3. That is, assuming they use a different toolkit to gtk2.

They use VGUI.

I hope the updated user interface uses qt5, and not gtk3. That is, assuming they use a different toolkit to gtk2.

They use VGUI.

Are you sure?

That rather looks like the in-game UI framework delivered with the Source SDK and nothing like the Steam client.

[quote=sub]

Are you sure?

That rather looks like the in-game UI framework delivered with the Source SDK and nothing like the Steam client.

I'm not 100% sure, but it very much sounds like it. They say "Source and Steam applications" are using it. That's worded a little bit wonky, but sounds to me like Steam is using it. It also looks visually quite a bit like it.

It seems people still get hackers and computer crackers mixed up.

I gave up that fight in the mid-00s. I instead switched to a somewhat more pedantic pointing out that while, yes, system breaking would be a specialty under 'hacker' in a proper taxonomy it's neither ubiquitous of hackers nor even all that common and there is a much wider and more utilized array of skills and activities one is ignoring when applying that term merely to those who system break. Part of my reason for doing so was someone pointing out that the "cracker vs hacker" argument comes across to everyone not part of the subculture as either a "no true X" or else as a "not every X" argument, both of which are problematic when trying to sway usage of the term. Another part was simply the weight of history, where it's impossible to not acknowledge while being intellectually honest that system breaking, FOSS, hardware hacking, phreaking, et al originated or else found a safe place to grow in a reasonably unified, culturally speaking, community surrounding the TMRC, MIT AIL, Homebrew Computer Club, et al during the '60s through '80s and only began to break away from each other once the internet became generally publicly available and used in the mid to late '90s.

Funny how some people are saying why do we need Wayland on a topic about hackers working on security. X11 is a security nightmare. Every time your game connects to a server your computer can easily be pwned if that server is malicous, and face it, anyone who does MP connects to random game servers all the time. X11 pretty much allows anything to do anything. Wayland + snap/flatpack is required to solve this nightmare (and potentially the app can still be X11).

Yes Wayland is not quite there but it very nearly is and now is the time for Valve to start testing the water. The sooner they do the better Wayland will be for all of us. They certainly should be getting involved with the specs on streaming so that it does what they need for Steam's stream system (I like my Steam Link).

As for why people want a 64bit client, it does seem a little backwards to have a 32bit client launching 64bit apps in a 64bit world. It should be the other way round. With a few specialized exceptions all distros are beginning to drop 32bit builds. I would love to be able to purge the need for all but the most essential 32bit packages (e.g. Mesa) but I think that should be way down on priorities right now.

Great to see Valve working with quality hackers to keep their ship tight. And really hope we are getting a new quality single player game from them.


Last edited by MagicMyth on 15 May 2018 at 8:33 am UTC

It seems people still get hackers and computer crackers mixed up.

I gave up that fight in the mid-00s.

I still maintain that "hacker" is simply what programmers/developers/coders now call themselves to sound cool. I can't help but feel embarrassed whenever someone uses the term to describe me. I might have come up with a dirty hack or two over the years, but that does not make me a hacker. :P

"Hacker" was a common term for people breaking into systems back in the eighties and nineties, whereas "cracker" referred to people specifically breaking software protections. (DRM in modern terms.) But I guess language evolves.

I still maintain that "hacker" is simply what programmers/developers/coders now call themselves to sound cool. I can't help but feel embarrassed whenever someone uses the term to describe me. I might have come up with a dirty hack or two over the years, but that does not make me a hacker. :P

"Hacker" was a common term for people breaking into systems back in the eighties and nineties, whereas "cracker" referred to people specifically breaking software protections. (DRM in modern terms.) But I guess language evolves.

The first time I ever heard “hacker”, it was in the non-cracker sense, back in the early '80s. I think it might have been in the late, great, Personal Computer News. What I do remember is that whatever magazine it was used it pretty freely to refer to its readers and staff. It was just the word that was used. Trainspotters spot trains, hackers mess around with computers. “Hackers will prefer machine 'X' over machine 'Y' because it has a built-in debugger and monitor, while 'Y' only has a rudimentary BASIC in ROM,” that kind of thing. I don't recall anyone using it in a pejorative, borderline criminal, sense at all until maybe '87-'88.

I agree that “cracker” tended to refer specifically to people breaking what passed for DRM back then, but that might just be something to do with the circles we frequented. :)