Gabe Newell of Valve Software (Steam) recently spoke to 1 NEWS in New Zealand about everything that has been going on and teased a few fun details. For those who didn't know, Newell has been staying in New Zealand since early 2020 and decided to stay after a holiday when COVID-19 got much worse.
Newell continues to talk very highly of New Zealand, even somewhat jokingly mentioning that some Valve staffers appear to strongly want to move their work over there now too. Newell mentioned why there's no reason other game companies couldn't move to New Zealand, and joked how they're a producer of "not-stupidium" seemingly referring to how well New Zealand has dealt with COVID-19.
The real juicy details though come when, as expected, questions were asked about upcoming games. Newell said very clearly "We definitely have games in development that we're going to be announcing — it's fun to ship games," and that "Alyx was great — to be back doing single-player games, that created a lot of momentum inside of the company to do more of that.".
When asked about Half-Life 3 and the other usuals, joking about Valve being afraid of the number 3, Newell said directly "I've successfully not spoken about those things for a long time and I hope to continue to not talk about them until they are moot questions. Then we'll move on to a new set of questions," and that the "nice thing is, by not answering those questions, I avoid the community coming up with new, equally-difficult-to-answer questions.".
It's good to know that the game development fire has been lit under Valve once again. Nice to see they continue to keep Linux in their sights for games too with all their recent games (Artifact, Underlords and Half-Life: Alyx) all having Linux builds, although Alyx is not directly mentioned on the store page for Linux it is available.
What are you hoping their next game announcement will be?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: aokamiValve always came up with innovative gameplay [...] team fortress is a masterclass of creating classes in a multiplayer game, and so on and so forth.
Just to set things straight, Team Fortress was created in 1996 as a Quake 1 mod (https://www.moddb.com/mods/team-fortress).
THEN, and only then, Valve hired Cook and Walker to port the modification to their goldsrc engine.
Anyway, Valve is doing great things for the Linux community, so kudos to them.
Quoting: dorronHalf-life 3 incoming...nope, just jokingIt will not be half-life 3. Probably half-life 2.9999...
Well, for me half-life it's better than half-life 2 (it's still a good game, but I prefer the first one).
Hope that if they make a new half-life game it's great (and also it's for linux).
ps: It would be great if valve makes half-life 3 exclusive for linux. I'm sure many people will install linux.
Quoting: jordicomaQuoting: dorronHalf-life 3 incoming...nope, just jokingIt will not be half-life 3. Probably half-life 2.9999...
More likely: Half Life 2 episode 2 part 2
PlutonMaster Jan 22, 2021
I think that would be a good treat for Linux gamers.
Or is it a bad idea?
Philadelphus Jan 22, 2021
Quoting: jordicomaOoo, they could really double down on the "half-life" idea and call it Half-Life 2.718281828…Quoting: dorronHalf-life 3 incoming...nope, just jokingIt will not be half-life 3. Probably half-life 2.9999...
Sorry, math nerd jokes.
slaapliedje Jan 22, 2021
Quoting: PlutonMasterWhat if Valve does the "Linux only" exclusive game?They won't, Gabe has said time and again that doing exlusives is bad for the industry. On the other hand, their games are exclusive to Steam, so there is that. Even just a few initial months on Linux first would/could be a boost. Especially if they did something like what Liam was suggesting, selling a branded Valve USB stick (they already have a mold for the Steam controller dongles) with a LiveCD Linux distro and the game on it! Get bew customers using Steam, Linux and their new game all at once.
I think that would be a good treat for Linux gamers.
Or is it a bad idea?
Surprised more companies don't do this simple thing, they could package their all popular method of 'exclusive skins and blah' on the USB drive.
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: PlutonMasterWhat if Valve does the "Linux only" exclusive game?They won't, Gabe has said time and again that doing exlusives is bad for the industry. On the other hand, their games are exclusive to Steam, so there is that. Even just a few initial months on Linux first would/could be a boost. Especially if they did something like what Liam was suggesting, selling a branded Valve USB stick (they already have a mold for the Steam controller dongles) with a LiveCD Linux distro and the game on it! Get bew customers using Steam, Linux and their new game all at once.
I think that would be a good treat for Linux gamers.
Or is it a bad idea?
Surprised more companies don't do this simple thing, they could package their all popular method of 'exclusive skins and blah' on the USB drive.
I seem to remember general outcry because Valve offered this "exclusive" accessory for running TF2 on Linux, even just once, during a two week period. Windows fanboys (seriously, who are these people?) shouted very loudly in mostly outraged tones that this was unacceptable. Can you imagine if Valve launched a whole new game exclusively for Linux?
I mean, I'd be laughing, for sure. But it would probably genuinely drive a certain kind of muppet to use Epic instead and swear unholy vengeance on Valve for daring to disrespect their wonderful, proprietary, expensive, monopolistic, privacy-abusing operating system.
Last edited by scaine on 22 January 2021 at 6:00 pm UTC
Quoting: scaineI seem to remember general outcry because Valve offered this "exclusive" accessory for running TF2 on Linux, even just once, during a two week period. Windows fanboys (seriously, who are these people?) shouted very loudly in mostly outraged tones that this was unacceptable.So . . . the Windows fanboys wanted to proudly display Tux, too? (scratches head)
Philadelphus Jan 22, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: PlutonMasterWhat if Valve does the "Linux only" exclusive game?They won't, Gabe has said time and again that doing exlusives is bad for the industry. On the other hand, their games are exclusive to Steam, so there is that. Even just a few initial months on Linux first would/could be a boost. Especially if they did something like what Liam was suggesting, selling a branded Valve USB stick (they already have a mold for the Steam controller dongles) with a LiveCD Linux distro and the game on it! Get bew customers using Steam, Linux and their new game all at once.
I think that would be a good treat for Linux gamers.
Or is it a bad idea?
Surprised more companies don't do this simple thing, they could package their all popular method of 'exclusive skins and blah' on the USB drive.
There is one more posibility for future :-) WSL. Maybe Valve can make game exclusively for linux, but run it under windows in WSL.
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