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Valve: SteamOS native support bigger priority than streaming

A

ashecitism

Member
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/09/valve-steamos-native-support/

"All [Valve's] content partners are so interested in extending their reach by having native support on Linux," says Coomer. "That's really the picture we're working towards."

Coomer calls the ability to stream games from a Windows PC to a SteamOS PC—which is currently in closed beta—a "transitional feature," though one which is still "super meaningful."
Click to expand...

Coomer also says that "lower-spec boxes that are cheap, streaming-only devices" would be an "awesome" addition to the current lineup of Steam Machines. "There isn't a desire to delay that kind of device...it's kind of just development bandwidth that has kept us from doing that sooner. The ones that have been unveiled this week really are supposed to be, and are, devices that are quite powerful to run games natively under your TV."

"Ultimately, native support is more important [than streaming]," concludes Coomer, which explains the high-end machines unveiled this week. A SteamOS streaming box might currently make a better addition to your living room, but Valve's priority is to change that. When we find out who Valve's "content partners" are and how many new games are coming to Linux in 2014, we'll understand better whether or not it makes sense to put SteamOS on a $600+ system.
Click to expand...

I know a lot of people were anticipating these cheap streaming devices at CES, so this is a bit of a bummer for those. Hell, the streaming feature itself can be considered one of the (if not the) main attractions in this whole initiative, but it makes sense they're prioritizing native support if they want SteamOS to get rolling. But then they should better deliver on it, because when it comes to this, they've been rather all talk and no action. I mean when they said "look out for all those AAA announcements" when they announced SteamOS 3 months ago I was expecting more than 3 games, lol.
 
N

Netherscourge

Banned
I still don't see the point in any of this.

Why not just push for native Linux support and stick with Steam on Windows/Mac/Linux?

Especially since Windows/Mac/Linux are pretty much in the living room now anyway.
 
Wiz

Wiz

Member
Crimsonclaw111 said:
With how hard Valve is pushing SteamOS, how are all of their games not available on Linux yet?
Click to expand...
A lot of them are I believe.

I think it'll take a while for Linux to build a respectable library. What is it now, like 300 games compared to Windows 3000?
 
U

UltraRascal

Banned
Wiz said:
A lot of them are I believe.

I think it'll take a while for Linux to build a respectable library. What is it now, like 300 games compared to Windows 3000?
Click to expand...

To me Linux is one of those tech things that a company with a silly agenda is trying to shove down everyones throat. People love to bitch about PC, but when it comes to gaming it is still the best method in most peoples eyes. I am sure I will get ripped apart for saying that too by the people saying "it is the only option" but if it were massively inferior it would have gone away long ago.
 
S

Sephiroth_VII

Member
Crimsonclaw111 said:
With how hard Valve is pushing SteamOS, how are all of their games not available on Linux yet?
Click to expand...
Porting takes time.
UltraRascal said:
To me Linux is one of those tech things that a company with a silly agenda is trying to shove down everyones throat. People love to bitch about PC, but when it comes to gaming it is still the best method in most peoples eyes. I am sure I will get ripped apart for saying that too by the people saying "it is the only option" but if it were massively inferior it would have gone away long ago.
Click to expand...
Windows is massively inferior when it comes to performance and stability, but has the massive advantage of being pre-installed on EVERYTHING. With Steamboxes having Linux pre-installed, that hurdle is gone.
 
A

Arkanius

Member
I think Valve actually does a bad job setting an example.
DOTA2 is subpar on Linux, TF2 is okayish and CSGO isn't even ported.

Same as Portal 2
 
T

tokkun

Member
Crimsonclaw111 said:
With how hard Valve is pushing SteamOS, how are all of their games not available on Linux yet?
Click to expand...

Well, if you believe the claims about Valve's lack of management structure, they can't just assign people to getting the work done. And their compensation is dependent on appearing important in the company, and porting some old game to Linux may not be the most exciting thing you could be doing in the company.
 
C

Canis lupus

Member
Good, have no interest in streaming if I'm building a high end machine, I rather have native support and things I dont have on SteamOS I'll get through dualbooting Windows.
 
S

Sephiroth_VII

Member
Crimsonclaw111 said:
Portal 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are notably missing. Their prequels are on Linux, but not the current titles.

CSGO is barely a year or so old, and Portal 2 is almost 3 years old. If they want people to adopt Linux they gotta do it faster themselves.
Click to expand...
It's all about the engine. The games that aren't on Linux yet run on the new source engine. Once that is ported, they will come easy.
 
V

Vyse The Legend

Member
Crimsonclaw111 said:
Portal 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are notably missing. Their prequels are on Linux, but not the current titles.

CSGO is barely a year or so old, and Portal 2 is almost 3 years old. If they want people to adopt Linux they gotta do it faster themselves.
Click to expand...

Bingo. That's pretty unacceptable.

I really want them to succeed, because the concept is great, but so far, Valve has really disappointed me with the handling of this initiative.
 
J

JoseJX

Member
Crimsonclaw111 said:
Portal 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are notably missing. Their prequels are on Linux, but not the current titles.

CSGO is barely a year or so old, and Portal 2 is almost 3 years old. If they want people to adopt Linux they gotta do it faster themselves.
Click to expand...

Those are really the only two exceptions now, even stuff like Ricochet, Blue Shift and HL2 Multiplayer have been ported. Most of their catalog wasn't ported to Mac until the Linux builds started appearing. I'm sure we'll see CS:GO and Portal2 sooner rather than later.

I'm still really impressed with what they've accomplished so far. I've got about 40% of my Steam library (about 180 games, but admittedly a large portion of those are indie) ported in a little more than a year. That's huge progress.

Also, Valve's work on improving SDL2, pushing driver developers to improve their hardware support, encouraging a standard for building games against (SteamSDK), and providing packaging that works across all distros has vastly improved the state of gaming on the Linux desktop. Porting games to Linux is MUCH easier now than it was a year ago. It will only get easier in the future.
 
T

Tobor

Member
Netherscourge said:
I still don't see the point in any of this.

Why not just push for native Linux support and stick with Steam on Windows/Mac/Linux?

Especially since Windows/Mac/Linux are pretty much in the living room now anyway.
Click to expand...

Native Linux support solves nothing. This is all about moving gaming PC's into the living room, and no, they aren't as ready as they need to be.
 
T

Tacitus_

Member
showmethereceipts.gif

Obviously getting native ports is the goal, but so far all they've got is promises. I want to see announcements from these partners about support.
 
J

jim-jam bongs

Member
UltraRascal said:
To me Linux is one of those tech things that a company with a silly agenda is trying to shove down everyones throat. People love to bitch about PC, but when it comes to gaming it is still the best method in most peoples eyes. I am sure I will get ripped apart for saying that too by the people saying "it is the only option" but if it were massively inferior it would have gone away long ago.
Click to expand...

GNU Linux is free. Windows doesn't need to be massively inferior for that to represent a huge advantage to companies attempting to create powerful systems to stick under the telly without having to make them too expensive for the average consumer.
 
C

ChaosDent

Member
Netherscourge said:
I still don't see the point in any of this.

Why not just push for native Linux support and stick with Steam on Windows/Mac/Linux?

Especially since Windows/Mac/Linux are pretty much in the living room now anyway.
Click to expand...

Linux alone makes no sense to devote resources to. There's no audience there, and it can only possibly attract the most technical Windows gamers over with high profile games, which also don't exist. Linux does make sense as the foundation for a new living-room focused platform, since the potential audience, console gamers, is much larger. A first wave of high profile titles can be justified on hype and a new audience can be targeted that doesn't have hundreds of legacy titles in their accounts. Compatibility with Desktop Linux is a nice add for those users and irrelevant to the audience Valve wants to grow into.
 
D

Dolor

Member
ChaosDent said:
Linux alone makes no sense to devote resources to. There's no audience there, and it can only possibly attract the most technical Windows gamers over with high profile games, which also don't exist. Linux does make sense as the foundation for a new living-room focused platform, since the potential audience, console gamers, is much larger. A first wave of high profile titles can be justified on hype and a new audience can be targeted that doesn't have hundreds of legacy titles in their accounts. Compatibility with Desktop Linux is a nice add for those users and irrelevant to the audience Valve wants to grow into.
Click to expand...

I think the real play is that they gradually increase the number of SteamOS supported titles over time so that with each passing month/year, there is a more valid question of "Do I build my own box with Windows for $100 extra or do I go with SteamOS and get most of the games I want for less money?" Maybe there are even features of SteamOS like controller integration that make the proposition even better. If Linux support happens and increases, especially if they get most strategy games on it, I could see myself starting to put SteamOS on my machines exclusively.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
Valve: SteamOS native support bigger priority than streaming

ChosenWisely.jpg
 
D

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
I'm more interested in the home streaming. I don't really want to build another PC that only works with half the games I own when I could get a little streaming box thing.
 
D

d0g_bear

Member
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. The streaming seems like a temporary stop gap measure until they have broader linux support.
 
K

KojiKnight

Member
Netherscourge said:
I still don't see the point in any of this.

Why not just push for native Linux support and stick with Steam on Windows/Mac/Linux?

Especially since Windows/Mac/Linux are pretty much in the living room now anyway.
Click to expand...

Because Linux is a super hot mess unless you are willing to dedicate a lot of time and effort learning the system.

It's the same reason why Android isn't just a native linux client...
 
T

TouchMyBox

Member
Crimsonclaw111 said:
With how hard Valve is pushing SteamOS, how are all of their games not available on Linux yet?
Click to expand...

They were releasing them at a constant rate until they announced SteamOS in which case I assume all of the Linux cabal started crunching on that instead of porting CS GO, Portal 2, and Left 4 Dead 1.

CS:GO is one of the few games making me boot into windows fairly regularly at the moment. :(

Netherscourge said:
I still don't see the point in any of this.

Why not just push for native Linux support and stick with Steam on Windows/Mac/Linux?

Especially since Windows/Mac/Linux are pretty much in the living room now anyway.
Click to expand...

Is your question "Why are they making steamos instead of just pushing for ubuntu support?"?

Because the other OSes don't act as appliances. BPM on windows is great until it crashes to desktop, or you have windows or other apps auto-update or prompt for updates. You can't update your video card drivers with a controller, etc.

Durante said:
I don't see why streaming would need to be a priority anyway. The development effort is comparatively tiny and then it "just works" (as well as streaming can be expected to).
Click to expand...

I think they mean making streaming a priority when it comes to the initial batch of steam machines since there is a lack of a streaming-only option at launch. They'd rather have people focus on SteamOS as a platform rather than just a streaming portal to play your windows games.
 
U

U-R

Member
Translation: we won't prioritize on a feature that undermines our efforts to free the pc gaming market from the windows monopoly, we'll deal with it when we will be sure that publishers won't think of SteamOS in a "run on windows, stream on linux" kind of way.
 
D

Durante

Member
I don't see why streaming would need to be a priority anyway. The development effort is comparatively tiny and then it "just works" (as well as streaming can be expected to).
 
F

Future PhaZe

Member
I don't think Steam OS is about today necessarily. It's about tomorrow. Linux support isn't there right now but I'd be shocked if we didn't see Valves software team coming out with a bevy of first party content along with partnerships with other developers to bring quality titles to Linux moving forward.

It doesn't change the minds of current pc gamers to transition to steam box, but it serves as a future proofing foundation against putting all their eggs in Microsoft's increasingly iffy basket.
 
eot

eot

Banned
Valve have to do a lot more if they want the rest of the industry to get behind linux. Like, "we only take half of our usual cut if you support linux". Put up or shut up.
 
A

angular graphics

Banned
eot said:
Valve have to do a lot more if they want the rest of the industry to get behind linux. Like, "we only take half of our usual cut if you support linux". Put up or shut up.
Click to expand...

I don't think they will do this.

Making better debugging tools and stuff, like they've been doing, is their way of showing to developers it's worth giving Linux a try.
 
T

TheD

The Detective
Netherscourge said:
I still don't see the point in any of this.

Why not just push for native Linux support and stick with Steam on Windows/Mac/Linux?

Especially since Windows/Mac/Linux are pretty much in the living room now anyway.
Click to expand...


Tobor said:
Native Linux support solves nothing. This is all about moving gaming PC's into the living room, and no, they aren't as ready as they need to be.
Click to expand...

Steam OS is a a version of Debian GNU/Linux that boots to Big Picture mode, when a game works in Steam OS it also works on GNU/Linux Distros that support Steam!
Having Steam OS and the Steam Machine is a way to get more support for games on all the versions of GNU/Linux that Steam works on!

KojiKnight said:
Because Linux is a super hot mess unless you are willing to dedicate a lot of time and effort learning the system.

It's the same reason why Android isn't just a native linux client...
Click to expand...

Linux is not "a super hot mess"!, Linux is just the damn Kernel!
If you are talking about how different Distros have different programs and libraries, that is just something you get with having lots of Distros and Steam provides a runtime so that programs can link against that and thus can run no matter what the native libraries are like (and thus avoids compatibility problems).

Not only does Android use the Linux kernel (nothing says they have to use the common GNU/Freedesktop ect. userland), but the fact that it uses tons of java is not a good thing!
Why do you think Chrome OS is not like Android and is far more like a standard distro?
 
F

fallagin

Member
Durante said:
I don't see why streaming would need to be a priority anyway. The development effort is comparatively tiny and then it "just works" (as well as streaming can be expected to).
Click to expand...

Yeah pretty much. Compared to game porting, streaming should be cake.
 
V

Vintage

Member
I only see steam machines as a streaming boxes. I want a small, cheap and nice box to sit quietly under my tv and transfer all my gaming pc's power to my living room. If I wanted a big powerful noisy machine sitting in my living room I can pretty much do that now.
 
J

Javaman

Member
MutonCommander said:
That's disappointing, I was looking forward to buying a streaming box for my living room.
Click to expand...

Same here. Being limited to a small fraction of my library doesn't appeal to me at all. It's good that they're trying to break ties with a licensed OS but I just don't see point of having a limited access box right now.
 
Sentenza

Sentenza

Member
MutonCommander said:
That's disappointing, I was looking forward to buying a streaming box for my living room.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure where the disappointment comes from, here.
They didn't claim they are going to abandon any plan to support streaming; they just said that they don't consider streaming from Windows the end game, but a stepping stone.
Which frankly is quite relieving, because it was starting to sound the opposite, and that was quite concerning for everyone who can see that much more is needed to popularize Linux and OGL.

I mean, they did a lot of disappointing and confusing things with those "Steam Machines" so far, but that's the first encouraging statement I'm hearing from them in a while.
 
H

Hasney

Member
I really need this streaming thing to become real soon. I'm holding off on playing so many great games as my sofas in this house are way too comfy and my laptop can't handle most of them.

Streeaming from desktop to laptop with HDMI to TV will be bliss.
 
M

mclem

Member
Netherscourge said:
I still don't see the point in any of this.

Why not just push for native Linux support and stick with Steam on Windows/Mac/Linux?

Especially since Windows/Mac/Linux are pretty much in the living room now anyway.
Click to expand...

Well, in my case, I have my (comparatively) powerful desktop PC in my bedroom, and frequently use my laptop for things that I can play on the large shared TV. Moving my main PC out of the bedroom is not an option - playing WoW for four hours a night on raid nights would not go down well - but being able to stream to a system downstairs would allow me to have the power of the upstairs system available.
 
Glass Rebel

Glass Rebel

Member
Understandable, even though I will probably get much more use of the streaming feature. I will probably go for a entry-level Steam Machine.
 
A

alexandros

Banned
TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
I'm not sure where the disappointment comes from, here.
They didn't claim they are going to abandon any plan to support streaming; they just said that they don't consider streaming from Windows the end game, but a stepping stone.
Which frankly is quite relieving, because it was starting to sound the opposite, and that was quite concerning for everyone who can see that much more is needed to popularize Linux and OGL.

I mean, they did a lot of disappointing and confusing things with those "Steam Machines" so far, but that's the first encouraging statement I'm hearing from them in a while.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%. It is good to know that Valve are committed to pushing Linux.
 
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