Steam Thread

[MusicallyInspired]

For Steam/Steam Title news, rumours, and whatnot. (for people who actually like Steam or are interested in it)

Seeing as Steam is getting (has gotten already?) a Mac OSX port (and are going to treat the Mac as a "tier 1" gaming platform for Steam releases) and all of Valve's Source Engine games are ported to OpenGL it seems like a no-brainer that Linux won't be long to join the supported OS's list. Especially with some of the new features of the new Steam UI coming out soon (currently in beta that you can freely take part in). Like this feature:

General improvements:

* Now using a WebKit based rendering engine for the client and in-game overlay web browsing components (replacing Internet Explorer)

Not requiring Internet Explorer certainly opens up the realm of possibility for Linux operation. Obviously it was needed for Mac operation. Add that to the many rumours that have been circulating over the years of people being hired at Valve to port Valve's games to Linux makes the future of gaming for Linux users very bright indeed.

By the way, they also said that there won't be any extra charge for playing Steam games on either the PC or Mac. And they're synced together so if you acquire any achievements or scores on MP games or whatnot it will all be reflected on your account regardless of what platform you play on. Neat.

[Rather Dashing]

Very bright, or just somewhat brighter than eye-strainingly dim? Remember, Steam coming to a platform only means that there's a store that sells games there, it doesn't by any means guarantee that many people outside of Valve will then make games for that platform. It seems a bit premature to celebrate, especially based on the nebulous rumor nature of it all.

[patters]

All I know is that Steam is both a terrible thing and an amazing thing. Entirely due to their sales.

[MusicallyInspired]

Of course. But truth be told, I only care about Valve's games when it comes to Steam. But, there are already a great number of games on Steam that already have official Linux clients. Here's a list:

EDIT: List removed. Apparently those were OSX games. My bad. But a lot of games do have Linux clients like id Software games, Epic games, Croteam games, and such.

I think it's reasonable to assume that if Steam does come to Linux that at least a few game developers would be more willing to make clients for Linux seeing as there are already so many games that support it. Steam would be like the entryway to the Linux gaming world that everyone was afraid to walk through, but with Steam it's a bit more of a safer opportunity.

Of course, maybe not. But at least all those games I listed + Source engine games would be there immediately.

EDIT 2: ChemBro brought up in the TMI forums that there is a linux Steam client already in existence but it doesn't connect to the Steam server yet. Some links:

phoronix.com
Checksums for Steam-Linux-client on Steam-website
Links to Linux-Binaries (they work, somehow)

[Hassat Hunter]

Eh, I just wish Steam would learn the conversion rates already.

1 Dollar != 1 Euro

So pretty much 80% of the cases it's cheaper to find it in a store... and you get a box and stuff!

[Harald B]

Originally Posted by Hassat Hunter

Eh, I just wish Steam would learn the conversion rates already.

1 Dollar != 1 Euro

So pretty much 80% of the cases it's cheaper to find it in a store... and you get a box and stuff!

Amen to that. This is why the only things I buy from Steam are exclusives and things on sale.

[Kibs]

This thread makes me curious as to how many gamers are running Linux.

[MusicallyInspired]

I've tried going all-Linux more than once. But I just can't when I play so many Windows-only games. If Steam went Linux I might just finally be able to migrate to Linux permanently.

So I think it's more of a "If games were on Linux, I'd be a Linux gamer" type of thing.

[JedExodus]

If we're talking Steam I may mention the Deus Ex deal, picked both of them up for a tasty £3