Quote Originally Posted by synaptix View Post
Do you know how many times Valve has said this? I've lost count how many times.
For an explantion, you need to understand how Valve works.

They have no management. They have no-one deciding what the company should do. When you join Valve, no-one will tell you what you should be working on. All devs have desks with wheels, and the procedure for moving to a different group working on a different project inside the company is: "Unplug computer from wall. Disengage wheel brakes. Move your desk to the group you want to work with. Engage wheel brakes. Plug computer to wall. Done!"

The business plan of Valve is "Get a lot of smart people with proven track records for making things under one roof, let them work on whatever they want, only release something if and when all agree it's great."

They are probably the most successful gaming company of all time. So there's a lot of advantages on this approach. The big disadvantage is that they have no focus at all. Valve time is legendary. Even if every rumor about Steam for Linux release was true, it wouldn't even make it the most delayed product in Valve history. They really could have the project running for the past decade with little progress and it wouldn't be out-of-place for them. It just never was good enough.

The newest rumor is that Gaben himself is working with the Steam for Linux group -- this is the closest the company has for "this is our number one priority". And it meshes well with the rumors (As an artifact of the company structure, Valve is really, really awful at keeping secrets.) of a Valve branded console software implementation coming. (Valve is not getting into the console business, they are going to ship software packages that any OEM can use to build "consoles").