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Romanick: The zombies cometh...Romanick: The zombies cometh...Posted Jul 25, 2012 10:40 UTC (Wed) by boniek (guest, #45061)In reply to: Romanick: The zombies cometh... by Lovechild Parent article: Romanick: The zombies cometh...
I bought L4D2 on summer sale specifically because it is going ported to linux - free market voting (with my vallet) ;)
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Romanick: The zombies cometh... Posted Jul 25, 2012 16:02 UTC (Wed) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
L4D2 is an extraordinarily good game, and Valve is an amazing company - the closest cultural fit I can imagine to Linux, for a company that (of course) sells proprietary software and uses DRM. Most of Valve's other games are recognised leaders too (e.g. Half-Life reinvented the first person shooter) and they already support Mac to some degree.
See http://boingboing.net/2012/04/22/valve-employee-manual-de... for their employee handbook - essentially there are no managers, for a start.
Not sure whether this will mean Linux getting a lot of Windows games, but it's a good start, and a Linux-based Steam console would be great.
PC games (i.e. Windows/Mac currently) are much more open to modding (extensions, new maps, etc) than console games, so there's hope that a Steam console would be more open and PC-like (above the Linux core) than the Xbox/PS3/Wii.
Romanick: The zombies cometh... Posted Jul 26, 2012 2:53 UTC (Thu) by wesmo (guest, #50706) [Link]
Recent Gabe Newell interview... (from http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/25/valves-gabe-newell-talks/)
"When you look at the other questions: Why are we looking at wearable computers? Why did we hire Jerry Ellsworth? Why do we have people working on Linux? That’s the second part of the problem. In order for this innovation to happen, a bunch of things that haven’t been happening on closed platforms have to occur and continue to occur. Valve wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the PC. Id Software, Epic, Zynga, Facebook, and Google wouldn’t have existed without the openness of the platform. I think there’s a strong temptation to close the platform. If people look at what they can accomplish when they can limit competitors’ access to their platform, they say, “Wow, that’s really exciting.” Even some of the people who have open platforms, like Microsoft, get really excited by the idea that Netflix has to pay them rent in order to be on the Internet.
That’s not how we got here, and I don’t think that’s a very attractive future. So we’re looking at the platform, and up until now we’ve been a free rider. We’ve been able to benefit from everything that’s gone into the PC and the Internet. Now we have to start finding ways that we can continue to make sure there are open platforms. So that involves a couple of different things.
One, we’re trying to make sure that Linux thrives. Our perception is that one of the big problems holding Linux back is the absence of games. I think that a lot of people — in their thinking about platforms — don’t realize how critical games are as a consumer driver of purchases and usage. So we’re going to continue working with the Linux distribution guys, shipping Steam, shipping our games, and making it as easy as possible for anybody who’s engaged with us — putting their games on Steam and getting those running on Linux, as well. It’s a hedging strategy.
I think that Windows 8 is kind of a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space. I think that we’re going to lose some of the top-tier PC [original equipment manufacturers]. They’ll exit the market. I think margins are going to be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, it’s going to be a good idea to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality. "
Romanick: The zombies cometh... Posted Jul 27, 2012 7:53 UTC (Fri) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]
> One, we’re trying to make sure that Linux thrives.
I think this is an extremely exciting statement. Yes, they may be a proprietary software company, but they're a powerful ally. And maybe one day they'll see the light of open development as well ;)
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