Valve Corporation's Steam is coming to Linux in 2012

[vexorian]

I really doubt we would see many games at first.

Porting steam and source only for L4D2 is not actually that much work. In comparison to porting also a lot of games.

You really shouldn't expect to have a lot of games in steam this first year. And things will get better only if L4D2 for Linux sells well.

[davidvandoren]

Assuming that this accurately reflects current usage, Mac OSX is on approximately 7.5% of all desktops, while Linux is on approximately 1.5%. It is neither "probable" that Steam would provide more support to Linux than it does to OSX, nor would it be "common sense" for them to do so.

Windows has the biggest share but there are more competitors trying to sell software. This doesn't apply for games only.

7.5% percent for mac doesn't mean that 7.5% will run their games. Only one out of 10 of those macs belong to gamers, same applies for windows. Not every window machine is a play-station. Besides you'll have more competitors on the windows & Mac platform,

1.5% for Linux could mean that every second person who likes to play a more advanced game once in a while will buy their product since they are the only one providing this product.

What matters are the potential customers not the market share of the OS.

1.5% of all pc is a hell of a market and I hope other companies realise this as well.

For example, lightworks video editor is pushing the Linux version faster than the mac version. They probably know that it is much more difficult gaining customers on mac than on Linux. Because they will be the only one offering a really professional video editing suit on Linux there is a great potential for making money .

[Lucradia]

1.5% of all pc is a hell of a market and I hope other companies realise this as well.

Linux counts for a lot of the smartphone market though, via Android. As for Lightworks, you can do a lot with just PiTiVi already. What we really need is post-processing video editing like After Effects. But, as for this "1.5%" you talk about, this mainly is Online-Only systems.

[Grenage]

THIS
Even if Valve supports Linux 110%, porting all Source games with better performance, it still doesn't mean Steam as a whole will have anywhere near the library of available titles as the Windows version.

Of course it doesn't, and of course it won't; what it does provide is a viable platform from which to jump.

[sirchmeister]

Like I said, don't forget about Steam Greenlight.

http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/

[graabein]

Never played it but have you ever given 0 A.D. a spin. Just wondering what people think of it. Seems to have potential from what I've read.

Never tried 0 A.D., but as someone said, I think it's a real time strategy game, like Age Of Empires etc. I remember seeing it and getting excited though. Looks like alpha 10 is the latest version, from May. Don't know how playable it is yet, but I'll see if I can find anything on yotub or vimeo.

[Sophont]

It's important to realize that porting a game is not the same effort as writing it in the fist place.

The graphical and audio assets only have to be delevoped once - regardles of the number of platforms. And these assets are a major cost for a AAA game.

A lot of the code is engine and in-house code. There will be some compiler and dependency issues porting this – but a lot of this will be platform neutral already - especially if the game is already supported on PC, Consoles and Mac.

If a game is based on OpenGL, uses a fairly portable engine and has already been ported to several platforms - then bringing it to Linux will be relatively cheap.

So even with the small percentage that Liux has and though it wouldn't be worthwhile to develop a costly AAA game primarily for Linux - it might be financially worthwhile to port it to Linux. The target market is small - but so is the cost of bringing it to that platform.

And as has been said above - there's much less competition compared to Windows.

Still this will take a while to play out.

[Zeven]

Windows 8 tells Microsoft every time you install a program. Perhaps this is something else Valve didn't like about Windows 8, hm?

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

Windows 8 tells Microsoft every time you install a program. Perhaps this is something else Valve didn't like about Windows 8, hm?

if there objective was security and not spying they would use a local database that is updated via windows update
this would prevent dns hacks from replying saying a program is clean when it is malware
would a game installed inside of steam even count? isn't that like installing a app in wine

[Lucradia]

Windows 8 tells Microsoft every time you install a program. Perhaps this is something else Valve didn't like about Windows 8, hm?

No, Gabe doesn't like Windows 8 due to the fact Microsoft can block installation forcefully if they wanted to. (IE: Disallow the installer to run at all, even with admin rights or as the Administrator account.) This is because of the Windows Marketplace, which is a competitor of Steam, Origin, etc.