Valve going to officially support Linux?

[ivanovic]

Hiho!
Just found a nice link at holarse.de:
http://www.valvesoftware.com/job-SenSoftEngineer.html

In short: It is a job offer for a senior software engineer that would be responsible for "Port Windows-based games to the Linux platform." and "Manage the operation of large clusters of machines running both Windows and Linux in a highly available system.". So is Valve finally gonna admire that there is a gaming market on Linux? Or are they only trying to get their server work natively on Linux, too?

Looks like time for some speculation has come...

[yoshi314]

well maybe there will be some use of my steam accounts after all.

they're laying around useless recently.

[R3MF]

ID have always been the champion of linux gaming, and i have always bought their products regardless of my ambivalence towards mindless shooters..

now that ID have decided that linux is not important for their gaming future (tech5), I will be delighted to support Valve if they choose to take up the position of figurehead of linux gaming.

[MNKyDeth]

If Valve starts to port that would be nice. My only issue with that is though that we have plenty of shooters. I was hoping for a company with a game selection more like timegatestudios that do RTS style.
We don't have many native RTS games that are commercial. Kohan: Immortal Soverigns by timegate is one but support was dropped rather early and none of there sequals came to linux.

I will buy any game valve ports none the less. As I collect linux games. Only 10 left to go unless more come out this year like I am expecting, like Savage: A Tortured Soul, UT3 and I think if I recall 1 or 2 others, I'd have to look them up but am feeling lazy right now.

So Valve...
Bring the games to linux and we will buy them. If not for the fact they came out for linux but because it seems people actually like your games.

[Svartalf]

now that ID have decided that linux is not important for their gaming future (tech5), I will be delighted to support Valve if they choose to take up the position of figurehead of linux gaming.

Have they? They never once indicated that Linux was officially supported until the official betas started for ANY of their previous games. I am not going to suppose either way, but it bothers me a bit to see people assuming that they're NOT because they're not saying anything, using all kinds of circular logic to justify the statements made.

You don't know WHAT any studio is going to do/not do until they make OFFICAL statements to that line of action.

That's not to say it's not fun trying to second guess them- just don't be making blanket statements like "They've given
up on us" when you have NOTHING in hand to actually PROVE it. It's noise we all don't need- and it'll add to any considerations that they might have to actually NOT doing things.

[niniendowarrior]

Have they? They never once indicated that Linux was officially supported until the official betas started for ANY of their previous games. I am not going to suppose either way, but it bothers me a bit to see people assuming that they're NOT because they're not saying anything, using all kinds of circular logic to justify the statements made.

You don't know WHAT any studio is going to do/not do until they make OFFICAL statements to that line of action.

That's not to say it's not fun trying to second guess them- just don't be making blanket statements like "They've given
up on us" when you have NOTHING in hand to actually PROVE it. It's noise we all don't need- and it'll add to any considerations that they might have to actually NOT doing things.

Somehow, in all of this... I find a rare tone of hope from Svartalf.

Let's see if Valve has anything interesting to announce in the future.

[Svartalf]

Somehow, in all of this... I find a rare tone of hope from Svartalf.

Let's see if Valve has anything interesting to announce in the future.

Being on the front lines for trying to get Linux Gaming going can make you VERY cynical. I'm fairly sure I'd have caught wind of the rumor from my own contacts in the game development space if it were a dead certainty in the case of the Id rumors. In the end, AMD's changing things, they just didn't change 'em fast enough as I suspected they wouldn't- you don't do a 5% global RIF when you're actually needing to HIRE a half dozen or so developers to accelerate the glacial pace of Linux OpenGL driver development. Id's never told us anything in the early stages of the development of a new engine or game whether or not a Linux version was done- all the brouhaha is over a statement allegedly from John Carmack stating he didn't view Linux as being all that important any more and everybody and his dog took it up and ran with it as if he'd sold out to Windows and Windows alone (sorry, bad, bad business move with Vista NOT doing at all well...). Valve asking for a Linux developer to "port games" very probably means they're doing Steam and possibly HL2 or similar and maybe porting their engine over to make it properly cross-platform.

Heh... There's very likely to be some very nice things on the horizon for Linux Gaming within the next 6 months or so. I can't say what (NDAs...always fun with what you can/can't say...) but if the deals close, there should be at least a few happy campers.

[d2kx]

If it's true, this will allow to make the Linux (gamimg) community much, much bigger. It would be the bomb of a news. I could play my favourite HL2Mod, finally. fglrx 8.41.7 and under don't even support DX8 or DX9 using Wine with Source Engine-based games.

[mvpittman]

Anyone remember those competitive trade-ins where they'd just take whatever competing product you had in trade for what a company might be selling...

Then they'd smash what you traded in, just to keep it off of the market?

Maybe they just want to keep all the people willing and able to do Linux game programming from working on linux game programming, by hiring them.

[Huenengrab]

Carmack himself said, Linux wasn't that important to him anymore. According to a german IT-site he was one of the major driving forces in porting to Linux. But that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

I'd consider buying HL2 and the extensions, if they decide to take that giant step towards Linux-Gaming.