Protest Valve

[Ryoushi19]

It seems Windows has little left save for its gaming, and it also seems they've noted it, and in all likely hood, told Valve forums to keep their mouths shut about the idea of Cross Platform Steam, considering their admin's behavior. (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6510144#post6510144) What kind of company puts its wallets before human beings, and even if that's not the case, banning a user for mentioning an idea is NOT a way to treat a paying customer. Make our discontent with Valve's customer policy known, and contact them any way you can.

[splintercellguy]

While a potential topic of discussion, this thread would be better suited in one of the general discussion forums down below.

[cmat]

Well they are a bunch of jerks treating you guys like that. Why bother supporting them? We got plenty of good games on Linux and more and more commercial ones coming soon. Who needs to play CS:S and other generic FPS games of the sort.

[cogadh]

Valve doesn't make Linux software, we really need to get over this and move on. No amount of "protest" is going to change that. They have stated their position very clearly numerous times yet people continue to post "Wouldn't a Linux client be neat" threads on the Steam forums. I'm really not surprised that the moderators are getting fed up with it.

As if the client really makes a difference. Even if they make Steam Linux compatible, it won't matter since all the games sold and accessed through it are separate pieces of software and are Windows only. Even if we somehow managed to convince Valve to make a Linux client, I don't think you are going to get Eidos, 2K, Pop Cap, THQ, Strategy First, Activision and Majesco to also make Linux versions of all the games they sell on Steam to go along with that client. Its just not worth the time and expense involved.

[frodon]

I agree that the way valve is considering linux users is really disappointing, you can't indeed start any discussions about linux and steam on the steam forum without it being closed.

Anyway i found my way to protest :
I won't buy again any valve games ;)

The only to protest in a constructive way with such companies is to protest with our money, this is the only language they understand unfortunately.

[buttons]

Perhaps no one remembers that the two founders of Valve software left Microsoft to do so?

[Snyper64]

Well you can't tell that by looking at their actions, you would think that they would atleast support alternate OS's like ID Software does.

[Dimitriid]

They're a complete joke, the fact that they get away with threating their paying customers like that is a perfect example of a failure of the free market.

[fatfranko]

I agree that the way valve is considering linux users is really disappointing, you can't indeed start any discussions about linux and steam on the steam forum without it being closed.

Anyway i found my way to protest :
I won't buy again any valve games ;)

The only to protest in a constructive way with such companies is to protest with our money, this is the only language they understand unfortunately.

i agree, but, unfortunately, i think they would write it off as a hippie boycott. i think the best way to protest with our money is if we can organize enough people to register and we all, at the same set time, post a new thread called "I would pay money for a Steam for Linux" or something like that. it would give them an idea of our numbers and hopefully make them salivate to the idea of potential money. im not one for theatrics, but it seems the biggest hurdle for os switching users is game compatibility, and that if we could set a precedent than other game developers would follow. just an idea.


Click here to register for Steam (http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/acct_new.php?p_sid=xuT-6hIi&p_lva=&p_sp=&p_li=&p_next_page=myovr.php)

[fatfranko]

scratch that, it looks like that link doesn't work for the forums. i guess you have to be a paying member? if so, bad idea.

[fatfranko]

we could still do something like that for a company who allows anyone to join their forums. i think i remember station.sony.com having free forums...

[splintercellguy]

I think the best way to get something done is to rectify this bug in Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

[fatfranko]

I think the best way to get something done is to rectify this bug in Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

yeah, exactly. we should work to make it more convenient for people to make the switch so as to take those users from microsoft.

[PandaGoat]

The point of it all is that they have the choice. Sure, we cannot like it, and possibly post on their forums about it, but it is still their choice. If they want to use their powers to ban you, find a better way to protest them. The free market has not failed. It was targeted towards windows users for a reason. It is easier to not make it cross platform and cheaper; and, the windows gaming community is much larger than linux; thus, it is better for them to write it for windows. Try asking them on a new game release. HL2's engine is unpractical to make cross platform as of now.

The actions of their moderators is logical. They have stated their position on it, so do not post trying to coerce them into to randomly making a linux client for you.

[RedNikon]

Is there any Linux only video game companies out there? Has anyone looked into turning to the power of the Linux community to raise funds to create a company like this? The way I see it is the best way to pull Window's Gamers to Linux is to create a game excluse to Linux that the would like to try, and market it, make money off of it. Hopefully others will see that Linux in deed has the power to make money, and with time they will follow. Anyway that's my two cents.

[DoktorSeven]

Their forum post sounded like they were tired of moderating "cross platform Steam" posts, which they've probably got thousands of times already. With many forums, even ones representing companies, there are a lot of immature people posting to them and actions such as threatening a ban is their way of dealing with it. I don't see the forum post as any sort of threat or being antagonistic toward Linux users; it's just something to keep people from posting about something thousands of times.

Sure, it'd be nice if they actually supported Linux, but what are you going to do? They made a business decision to stick to Windows, which is the dominant PC gaming platform, and the only way to change their mind is to actually increase the presence of Linux in the marketplace, not make vague threats towards the company.

[darksidedude]

havoc has a point about all the games, plus they wont do anything since there is the wine project, maybe with enough boycott and wine not existing it "might" work, but they don't have to do anything, just let the wine people deal with this mess

I however dont believe that this is the best course of action, but as long as windows is king, they go where the money is unfortunately

[chronusdark]

a steam linux client would be nice but the thing is that most of the steam software isint made by valve (ie Civ 4, Defcon, Psychonauts) also lots of the ones i tried worked fine under wine

if what you want is half-life linux, or counter-strike linux then thats what you need to ask for, steam is just a program for downloading and running what amounts to mostly 3rd party software a porting job like that would take years

[fatfranko]

my idea wasn't to coerce or threaten them, but to let our presence known. there is nothing vindictive about that. anyway, for something like that to work, there would have to be a mutual want among enough linux users. without that it is just an idea and it appears that that is all it was. i just wanted to throw the "idea" out there and see if there were any takers. sorry if i came across as an over-zealous revolutionary, that was not my intention.

[houstonbofh]

Want to make a real difference? Wait until the Linux binary of Quake Wars:ET is released then buy two copies of Quake Wars:ET. But do not buy it before the Linux version is out! If other companies seen the money to be made on Linux, they will come.

[JG6_oddball]

Is there any Linux only video game companies out there? Has anyone looked into turning to the power of the Linux community to raise funds to create a company like this? The way I see it is the best way to pull Window's Gamers to Linux is to create a game excluse to Linux that the would like to try, and market it, make money off of it. Hopefully others will see that Linux in deed has the power to make money, and with time they will follow. Anyway that's my two cents.

have you been here? they also have a lot of demo,s
http://www.tuxgames.com/browse.cgi?

S!

[RedNikon]

have you been here? they also have a lot of demo,s
http://www.tuxgames.com/browse.cgi?

S!

No I have not, and they ofcourse have it blocked out here in Iraq.

[Swarms]

Want to make a real difference? Wait until the Linux binary of Quake Wars:ET is released then buy two copies of Quake Wars:ET. But do not buy it before the Linux version is out! If other companies seen the money to be made on Linux, they will come.

And when they launch games we should buy two copies each of those too? They should only come if they are not tricked into believing that they can live on the Linux market.

[dmn_clown]

It seems Windows has little left save for its gaming, and it also seems they've noted it, and in all likely hood, told Valve forums to keep their mouths shut about the idea of Cross Platform Steam, considering their admin's behavior. (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6510144#post6510144) What kind of company puts its wallets before human beings, and even if that's not the case, banning a user for mentioning an idea is NOT a way to treat a paying customer. Make our discontent with Valve's customer policy known, and contact them any way you can.

Heh... for any protest to be effective it must be massive. The numbers that you would need to have Valve port steam to gnu/linux simply do not exist.

Now, you could always start a new project and reverse engineer the steam client, if/when Valve decides to stop breaking the GPL you should be able to use the source from their version of DOSBox to learn how programs interact with the client, however this project would need to be hosted outside of the United States and in a country that isn't likely to listen to any US legal requests.

Direct action will always be heard while passive protests are easy to ignore.