Quoting: lavei cannot believe they paid 2 billion for a little studio and a game that has passed its zenith long ago.

Well, Minecraft still sells a lot. It just got ported to XBox One and PS4, there's no reason the sales will drop anytime soon.

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Well, first, this is a rumour, nothing has been confirmed so far (not saying it's false but maybe the first thing to do would be to ask Mojang/Notch).
Second, they can become a Microsoft company but keeping the creative decisions on games and platforms supported. It might not change anything for the development of Minecraft, Scrolls and other current games. What would probably change is that future games yet unannounced could be XBox exclusive or something like that.
Third, the fact that Notch dislikes Windows 8 doesn't mean that he dislikes Microsoft as a company (the same goes for Gabe Newell, mind you).

On the other side, I find it odd that Mojang woul be sold to another company (no specifically Microsoft), as Minecraft sales have secured the financing of Mojang for some time. So maybe they're thinking that they need to expand the company for some reason or are thinking about a distant future when they'll stop earning money with Minecraft and don't think their other games can assure their existence.

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The point is not about what you think of their games or if you feel that 12 000 $ is enough money. The point is that they expected a boost in sales from Linux gamers when Steam was made available on our OS of choice. Yet, one year and a half later, they see that Linux sales are only around 1% of their sales on Steam.

There are some factors that might explain this, as I pointed out on Twitter (@boblaloutre):
- most (if not all) of their games were available before Steam was available on Linux, so all the people that bought them at that time and play them on Linux now are not counted as Linux sales
- their games have appeared in bundles (especially Revenge of the Titans) and most of the Linux players probably bought them there rather than on Steam
- there are some people (I'm one of them) that prefer to buy games on the Humble Store when possible for some reasons (DRM-free build + Steam key, or the fact that for Europe it is cheaper to buy on the Humble Store than on Steam), even if they then play on Steam

On the other side, their main problem is that while a lot of gamers already own their games for a long time, they continue to sell on Steam for Windows and logically they should sell at the same rate (proportions-wise) on Linux. Yet, it seems that almost every new buyer is on Windows, so it's understandable that they're asking why.

Anyway, it would be more logical to see how much they sold on Linux in every store, not only Steam (but i guess Steam is the only one that can give them proper statistics per platform).
Also, I think they would have a more precise overview of the market when they release a new game, so that Linux players won't be accounted as Windows players. Maybe it'll still be 1%, maybe it'll be better. They'll also want to see if the figures evolve when the Steambox begin to sell.

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Quoting: muntdefemsI'd bet most of those $12k come from a Humble Weekly Sale featuring all their games to date. I got that bundle and so I haven't felt the need to toss any more money to them.

No, that's their point: they're apparently counting only the sales on Steam. They said that with the Humble bundles they made more.

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Quoting: Segata SanshiroWe should really hold a "delete your windows partition month" or something on here considering these next these next few months are going to be pretty intense in terms of Linux releases.

The only reason I sometimes reboot on Windows is to play (whatever version of) Street Fighter 4. I really doubt it'll be ported to Linux some day, I don't see Capcom (or other Japanese publishers) porting games to Linux. :/

Linux begins to have a serious bunch of good games but there'll always be a few ones that will require some of us to keep a Windows partition.

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Quoting: nllaAre there any gameplay caveats for the enchanted edition in comparison to the original one? If not then it's no big deal I guess.

Trine EE is basically Trine 2 modded to replace its levels by the ones from Trine. So there are a few changes like the characters skills being the ones from Trine 2 (a few of theme were different from the first episode) and some small gameplay modifications. Not a big deal in any case.

I guess this was a bit more detailed on a previous article here, or maybe I saw that on the Steam forums.

EDIT : I've found a pretty complete post there: http://steamcommunity.com/app/35700/discussions/0/35221584417695911/ (see Daemonologist's post)

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There's also "Sword of the Stars: The Pit" that is now available for Linux and was in a Humble Bundle (the roguelike one, I think).

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Quoting: SnevI wonder if the new Hammer of Source2 supports linux!

Nope. Not yet, in fact. I guess it will in the future as Valve made Source 2 in OpenGl with the goal to be Linux-friendly, so I guess the dev tools will come to Linux when there more stable. But now, they don't.

Quoting: stss

Quoting: abelthorneMaybe they won't need this because HL3 and L4D3 will be free2play? ;)

Please tell me there isn't any actual evidence of this

Well, there have been rumours. At some point, HL3 was supposed to be a single player game with elements of multiplayer and free to play with possibility to buy stuff. But it has probably been scratched, it was years ago. And it may have been a false rumour at the time.

Yet, I wouldn't be surprised if future Valve games (HL3, L4D3...) would be free2play, as it seems that they make more money with this kind of games, like TF2 and Dota 2. But maybe it wouldn't work for solo games like HL3.

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Quoting: laveinstead of an exclusive release they could bundle halflife3 with their first generation of steamboxes

Maybe they won't need this because HL3 and L4D3 will be free2play? ;)

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Newell has made it clear in interview that there won't be exclusivities on SteamOS from them. Their goal is to have as many players play their games as possible, whatever the OS they use. They don't really care about the Steam Machines: they want people to buy them if they want them, not force them to with exclusive stuff. Also, I don't think they'll delay anything to match a release date, like having HL3 or L4D3 done and releasing it only when the Steam Machine are ready (or, on the opposite, delaying the SM to when some games are ready).

As for the Dota 2 tools, it's indeed the first Source 2 SDK available (with a new version of Hammer and such), it even downloads a new version of the Dota 2 client. But so far, it's very unoptimized and it's in early alpha. I don't think we'll see it on Linux anytime soon.

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