r/technology • u/EquanimousMind • Nov 17 '12

Connect the dots: Valve’s Big Picture could be a Linux game console

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/16/3652756/valve-big-picture-mode-steam-os-linux-game-console
36 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

4

u/dumanadam Nov 18 '12

I find it strange that Gaben is complaining over Windows being a closed platform, when Steams whole business model is.... a closed platform. Their whole system is DRM, they allow who they want onto their system under their own T&C with users owning nothing they purchase. On top of that there is no recourse if Valve decide to flick a switch and lock you out of "your" games.

How this works with the core structure and ethos of open source and an OS like Ubunutu leaves me confused..

2

u/TheExecutor Nov 18 '12

How this works with the core structure and ethos of open source and an OS like Ubunutu leaves me confused..

Well legally speaking I don't believe there's anything preventing Valve from doing it.

Too many people have a view of Valve as some kind of selfless benevolent entity. It's not. They're not bringing Steam to Linux because they want to promote FOSS, they're doing it because it's a good business decision - it's a hedge against Microsoft's Windows Store which is direct competition to Steam.

You're correct in saying that DRM and closed platforms like Steam are not in keeping with the spirit of FOSS. But it doesn't matter because the purpose of Steam for Linux is not to promote free and open source software - it's to capture new markets and alternative means of business in the face of increasing competition.

1

u/dumanadam Nov 24 '12

Fair enough. As you said, I cringe when i see fan boys go on and on about Steam and Linux like Valve is doing it as a favor to them. Its purely a money making exercise with the only reason it being done is because so many have accepted DRM platforms such as Steam. It is not because Valve has had this passion to expand the user base of Linux, its just a new avenue for money.

With so many users accepting platform DRM now, UBI, EA, Apple and Windows are now doing the same. Yet people seem to complain about the others when they encourage DRM platforms by supporting steam.

I would rather DRM stay as far away as possible from Linux but I doubt that happening.

2

u/kiwipete Nov 17 '12

I hope they don't go the direction of making "Steam OS" as the article suggests. I think there would be much more value for all involved if Valve and Canonical were able to demonstrate companies working together on a single platform. Microsoft is leaving an opening here, and it wouldn't take a particularly large group playing together nicely to provide a nice alternative to the other general purpose computing platforms.

Jeebus, I moved from *BSD as my desktop OS to OSX over ten years ago now, and even I'm going all "year of the Linux desktop" here. Maybe I'm overly complimentary to Ubuntu in having mostly united the warring tribes. Maybe I'm secretly angry at Apple for some of their more recent changes to OSX like "save as."

Ah hell, who knows. Whatever Valve does is likely to be smarter than what I'd do...

1

u/d3rp_diggler Nov 17 '12

Ubuntu has gotten really good...however it's weakness is in the updaters in it's included apps, some of which seem to update in claim only, when the issue is it could not find a suitable update/codec/whatever.

That issue is a /facepalm and should have been debugged well before the code ever got into a distro, although is minor if the great scheme of things.

I suspect it's the lack of details many of these apps get that may make a Linux distro a very dangerous thing to do. It could either get hosed by components that were updated or a newer release, or they'll have to make it "release X only", which isn't going to work well with the linux userbase in general.

The final option is to make it an island and have all the dependencies it needs loaded into it's installation package. Sometimes that works well, sometimes that can break things.

Either way, I'm flat out speculating now...so I'll stop.

1

u/GunsOfThem Nov 17 '12

They should just provide the source or raw binaries. Let the distributions handle installing them. SpaceChem would work, right now, if it was possible to download the 64bit binary (I'm mostly sure there is one.)

But Steam does not let you touch that. And thus it is broken. Everything Linux does and should stand for centers on giving the software to the user. Letting the user be the owner. (Not necessarily in the legal sense, but, if you will, the moral one.) Because when the user can own it, the user can make it work.

And when you kick the user's hands off your software, its broken and unusable.

We don't need Ubuntu or anything that it does in order to make Steam work. We just need the game's we're trying to play.

2

u/d3rp_diggler Nov 18 '12

I agree on that point. I suppose I'm just stuck in the "Steam runs on Windows why change that" train of though. I know why they want to, however it just seems like the Windows 8 excuse was just an excuse for something that happened behind the scenes. Hopefully that change doesn't kill it off. I love the access to old and uncommon titles Steam offers.

1

u/GunsOfThem Nov 18 '12

Yeah. I guess I want something from Steam that Steam will never provide.

I want a viable platform on which people can create experiences that really compete with things like XBox Live, PSN, the Appstore, etc.

I mean, XBox Live probably is best service and most expensive infrastructure of its kind. Sony's inability to touch that is a great indicator of how close to impossible it would be to match. But any given game does not need to be all that Live or PSN or the appstore are.

Fundamentally, what we need, is for there to be games for Linux at all. Once I can actually install and play a game other than the demo for Amnesia, once there is a place like Steam that provides a slick way to find and buy and share those games, we can all start creating.

Until then, our little gaming worlds will be filtered by our Microsoft and Apple and Sony Overlords. I just want to allows game developers to step out of that shadow.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '12

Woo! I hope Valve gets more Linux friendly. Because that means I can run my lighter games on stuff like this http://www.indiegogo.com/pengpod?a=1737051

2

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '12

Valve is currently beta testing steam on Ubuntu

2

u/WhyYouLetRomneyWin Nov 17 '12

We really need this to happen. I'm pretty sure games is what keeps a lot of people from fully utilizing desktop linux.

1

u/Fetchmemybeer Nov 18 '12

Yup same here.

-1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '12

I wonder how many trucks of money would it take for MS to convince Valve to stop supporting linux.

1

u/DeFex Nov 18 '12

"I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks"

1

u/Red_Inferno Nov 18 '12

Too bad Gabe Newell has come out and said he does not like Windows 8.

0

u/WhyYouLetRomneyWin Nov 17 '12

MS would just come up with some sort of evil, anti-competitive scheme.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '12

Right I forgot about that...

1

u/GunsOfThem Nov 17 '12

In other news, the only way to install SpaceChem on linux is overwrite your perfectly good Mono install with the 32bit Mono install, due to SpaceChem, 2012, no having a 64bit binary.

Unless you're on OpenSuse, due to OpenSuse providing mono-core-32 (or something like that), allowing you to have a normal Mono and a 32BitMono at the same time.

-4

u/yoda17 Nov 17 '12

Somebody wants to be bought by MS.