Valve Brushes Off Steam For Linux Rumors, Says It Ain't Happening
![Valve Brushes Off Steam For Linux Rumors, Says It Ain't Happening [Valve Says They Aren't Currently Working On a Linux Version of Steam]](http://tftscdn2.nexus404.com/Blog/thumbnailimages/alt/steam_2TFTSThumb220153.jpg)
Long gone are the days of only being able to buy digital content at a brick and mortar retailer and upon us are the days of digital distribution. When the words of digital distribution are spoken one premiere service that comes to mind is iTunes. This service pushed out by Apple offers things like mobile applications, movies, TV shows and of course songs.
However, on the computer game side of things the reigning champ when it comes to digital distribution is none other than Valve’s Steam platform. Provided on Steam is a large library of video games including ones from Valve such as Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 in addition to titles from a wide array of third party publishers. It’s gotten to a point where if a hard hitting title hits the streets it’s almost unheard of if it’s not on Steam – other than Blizzard’s titles but they have Battle.net to do their biddings.
Steam had long been available only for Microsoft Windows but Valve made strides when they released the Mac OS X version compete with several ports of their most popular titles. This not only gave game developers an entirely new market to saturate, it also made Mac OS X a viable gaming platform. Sure, it’s not up to par with Windows just yet, but Steam is definitely a step in the right direction.
Around the time that Steam had made its way out for Mac OS X, rumors began circulating that Valve would also release a Linux version of the digital distribution platform. In fact, we even had what we thought was official confirmation back in June that Steam would be coming to Linux, but today we have contrasting reports.
In a statement to GI.biz, Valve’s Doug Lombardi said the following:
“There’s no Linux version that we’re working on right now.”
Short and sweet, but to the point. Keep in mind that companies have been known to keep quiet about their projects but for the mean time, we’re just going to assume that Linux won’t be getting Steam anytime soon.
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Perhaps MS leaned a little on the Steam guys?
This will be Steam’s loss as WebGL takes hold to deliver games to the web browser and other gaming companies will be tempted to change course to support GNU/Linux in the very near future.
Choice in operating system makes for more competition, which in turn advances technology. In continuing the spirit Richard Stallmand and Linus Torvalds of enabling humans with technology, GNU/Linux is the most lucrative vehicle for taking humans to the future with technology.
Choose freedom in technology! Choose GNU/Linux!
This comes as no surprise to me, as Microsoft seems to have its finger in every pie/company that creates software.
I’m willing to bet it would be a breach of contract for using Microsoft’s DirectX to create the program using their software for any other platform (Hence why it took so long to create a Mac client: Valve had to hash it out with MS.)
In addition, Valve will probably use the same BS: That ENTERPRISE Linux (Red hat for example) creates less than 1% of the market, even though it’s impossible to discern, due to Linux not having any restrictions such as activation keys that help keep track of who buys what.
All in all, the only way is to run Windows, which, as we all know, besides 7, is useless!
But, microsoft bashing aside, I do believe that Valve is more than a little influenced by the big cheese. Mac client proves it. Now, before you go about saying that it’s difficult to port things over to Mac, I would like to point out that, in 1991, Cyan Worlds, a little-known company, created Myst both for Mac and Windows. Granted, it’s not as complex as most games now, but the fundamental is still the same.
Nobody in their right mind would depend on DirectX, especially if they knew how easily exploitable it is. Stick with the OpenGL and OpenAL.