Linux gaming is ready to rumble and Valve expects it to win.
Posted on 09/17/2013 6:15:59 AM PDT by ShadowAce
New Orleans: If you've heard it once, you've heard it a million times: The reason why desktop Linux hasn't made it is because of its lack of games. Thanks to Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve and its Steam game platform, that's not true anymore.
As a keynote speaker at the Linux Foundation's 2013 North American Linuxcon, Newell explained that the old proprietary ways are no longer working for gaming companies. In no small part, that's because the economics of games are changing. Newell said, "Games are becoming nodes in a linked economy where the majority of digital goods and services are user generated, rather than created by companies."
In fact, Newell said that the Team Fortress Community is already creating 10 times the content of Valve's Team Fortress developers. Newell has no doubt that in head-to-head competition, Valve could take on any of the other gaming companies. But there's no way that it can beat the content of its community and companies that don't realize it's the gamers, and not the developers, who are calling the shots.
While Newell wouldn't go so far as to repeat his claim from last year that "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space," he made it clear that he thought he disapproved of the current direction of the PC platform.
"How to be polite ... we think that has been some bad thinking. Platforms are becoming more controlled, the software developer market is controlled, the content is controlled, and [so is] the pricing." He believes that Microsoft and the PC vendors think that this is the right way, but they're wrong. "They should have leveraged the strength of open systems, rather than going to proprietary platforms."
As a consequence, "We have had significant year-over-year declines in PC units". And, "PC vendors and software programs have a deer-in-the-headlight look in their eyes." While PC sales decline, gaming sales have continued to increase, and Steam itself has seen a 76 percent year to date gain in usage.
At the same time, "The Linux desktop is painfully small for the gaming market. It's insignificant by pretty much any metrics — players, players minutes, revenue — it's typically less than 1 percent." So, if gaming continues to do well, despite Mac and Windows overall declining sales, why did Valve decide to go with Linux? Because Newell has seen the future and it's open.
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Newell pointed out Valve has actually been using Linux since 1999. "We use several hundred thousand game servers and use it internally as well for game servers. Internally, we have 20TB of content, we go a year between reboots, and we delivered over an exabyte of data on the internet in the year to date, which comes to 2 to 3 percent of the world's internet." He added, "In all game companies, you'll find more reliance on and higher percentages of Linux usage."
"Linux is the future of gaming for gamers on the client as well, because, besides Microsoft moving to a more locked-in style of computing, "Open systems were advancing much faster. The old console guys are not competitive, and there's huge tension in proprietary systems." For example, Newell said, "It took us six months to get one update through the Apple store. Closed systems are at odds with the evolution of gaming."
So, Valve has been bringing its Steam games to Linux. There are now 198 Steam games running on Linux. The issues of bringing the games to Linux have been solved.
The next step, from where Newell sits, isn't so much bringing games to Linux, but rather working on the hardware side to create a living room gaming device based on Linux. This device, which we'll find out more about next week, is designed to span the gap from the desktop to the living room TV.
In Valve's future, players will run their games on Linux systems. They may not know they are running Linux — any more than nine out of 10 Android users know they're running Linux — but it will be Linux under the hood. These devices, whether PCs, tablets, or dedicated game consoles, will all play the same while running the same Steam-based games on top of Linux.
That is most definitely NOT the reason Linux hasn’t made it to desk tops. The reason is that Linux is absolutely user-hostile: “if you’re not part of the guild, you are an ignorant fool, who we wouldn’t even want to use our product.” Any given program has dependencies upon dependencies upon dependencies, each of which is maddening for the non-CS-major to install. WHAT? You don’t know how to sed your recursive grep of the root directory?
“But there are more user-friendly GUIs that run on Linux that are expanding all the time!” Yeah: like MacOS, which has been around how many years, and had how many of billions of dollars behind it? Like Ubuntu (which *is* a nice program) is going to make it where MacOS couldn’t?
I cannot make Steam work on my Ubuntu computer
The new OpenOS 4 looks very Windows-like
I can install major pieces of software--even if no dependencies are already installed--much easier on Linux than I can on Windows.
Interesting. I’m running Steam without any issues.
I know. Maybe my low-end laptop is missing something?
What are the symptoms?
Give me access to my entire PC game library and I will never look at Windows on my gaming PC again!
OK—What are your games?
Let me try it again, I’ll get back to you
Ya. Unless they plan to run Linux on a console. Consoles have beat out desktops for games.
Games are still a lot better on a desktop, though. By far. But a >cheap< console (in comparison to a desktop) is adequate for most.
right now it just will not start Team Fortress. I’ll download something else, something small and see what happens.
The problem Newell does not see is that the future of gaming is across multiple devices, not just one.
Microsoft understands this and is way ahead in converging XBox with PC, Tablet and Phone. Write a game once and it can work across all those devices.
Linux is highly fragmented and not available across multiple types of hardware unless you do it yourself.
Today’s gamers are far different from the gamers yesterday.
It’s not real worth the hassle since I’m not really into it. I don’t have enough RAM or a graphics accelerator, so there are few games like that I can play any ways.
There are tons more games one can play on Windows, because so many use it that is what game makers make them for. It is that simple.
Team Fortress Classic, or Team Fortress 2?
You're joking, right?
I think its 2
been a while since I tried, it never worked, I noticed at Ubuntu forums back then I wasn’t the only one and I gave up
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