Valve Pulls Its Unreleased Linux Client From Server

[barbarbaron]

And the only real way this cycle can be broken is by someone taking a risk.

I totally agree. Its a chicken egg problem. Maybe this type of revolutions can make amd/ati planners think "hmm, something is happening in the linux side, maybe we should change our policy and give linux users proper support not to lose potential customers in the future". This can change the scene

[barbarbaron]

OEMs (nVidia, AMD, etc.) claiming they need more users/active game devs/publishers before they invest more money.

I don't think that the investment on the driver side can be that much for a giant semiconductor company. Because I think patching an already "working" fglrx driver for a new kernel and X mustn't be a trivial job (and nvidia does it quite good). And because the risks and amount of care that must be taken is not on the driver side but on the hardware side. Afterall they can develop the drivers and make them better but if they make a faulty chip and produce it then.. holy cow!

So as an ex-R500 user, I think its rather a policy of amd/ati to give sorta linux support to linux user customers.

[barbarbaron]

ooops I said trivial for the drivers? its meant for the hardware..

[susikala]

I couldn't care less if Steam came to Linux. Last time I installed it on Windows, a few years ago, it was the most annoying buggy piece of bloat I ever came across.

To boot, Valve's games aren't all that spectacular. I'd rather vest my hopes in Indie developers with some touch to story line minutae and graphic details than some big corporation whose ultimate goal is to make more money.

So, Valve, go back to the abyss from whence you came!

[d2kx]

I couldn't care less if Steam came to Linux. Last time I installed it on Windows, a few years ago, it was the most annoying buggy piece of bloat I ever came across.

To boot, Valve's games aren't all that spectacular. I'd rather vest my hopes in Indie developers with some touch to story line minutae and graphic details than some big corporation whose ultimate goal is to make more money.

So, Valve, go back to the abyss from whence you came!

Team Fortress 2 is one of Valve's newer and most popular multiplayer titles. They sold it for 2,49€ for some time as a special deal. Look at what new content Valve released for free in the 116 updates released since the game's launch: http://store.steampowered.com/news/?...tes&appids=440

If there's one game company that is awesome and I buy all their games, it's Valve.

[barbarbaron]

If there's one game company that is awesome and I buy all their games, it's Valve.

OK maybe not that much for me but they really do some great games.

[MostAwesomeDude]

If you really want more games on Linux, then increase the market share of Linux. It's that simple. The more users there are, the more consideration it will receive from companies.

[energyman]

just look up AMD's finacial reports and size. Then think a moment about linux marketshare. And suddenly you must realize that AMD is pouring an almost insane amount of money into its linux user base.
And all they get back is bitching.

And for Valve: that is what you get for reporting stuff that isn't there yet. A little bit of constraint before touting the horns would have been better. For everybody.

[Joe Sixpack]

To boot, Valve's games aren't all that spectacular. I'd rather vest my hopes in Indie developers with some touch to story line minutae and graphic details than some big corporation whose ultimate goal is to make more money.

Steam is the biggest digital distribution method for games. They distribute quite a lot of indie games - having an entire "indie" section and featuring almost every indie game released on the front page. So without steam, those developers you speak of would lose a noticeable amount of their customers because no one would know they even exist.

Team Fortress 2 is one of Valve's newer and most popular multiplayer titles. They sold it for 2,49€ for some time as a special deal. Look at what new content Valve released for free in the 116 updates released since the game's launch: http://store.steampowered.com/news/?...tes&appids=440

If there's one game company that is awesome and I buy all their games, it's Valve.

That update list is frequently disputed on steam forums because the number of updates are greatly inflated.

1) They have a ton of updates because they have a ton of regressions. Every time they add something new they have 2-3 minor releases to fix something they broke.

2) The number of updates means absolutely dick if the game is still buggy as hell (and it is).

3) A large number of updates are features that annoyed the hell out of the original players and are things a lot of people feel it cheapened gameplay (hat crafting, random crits, the eyelander...)

Also - maybe for the reasons I named - Team Fortress is one of their least popular games. Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source, and Left 4 Dead 2 usually have more players than TF2. The only game that TF2 beats on the average day is LFD1 - and that ain't saying much seeing how it has a sequel out.

[srg_13]

For another thing, the graphics situation on Linux, although rapidly improving, is still relatively abysmal. If I were Valve, I probably wouldn't even consider releasing a Linux port for probably another year or so; who's going to buy games that, in 90% of cases, run like crap?

I think this is pretty dumb - so what if only Nvidia and ATI cards with the binary drivers would work - it's pretty much the exact same thing on WIndows.