Valve Puts An End To The Steam On Linux Rumors

By on August 22nd, 2010     

Steam LogoAn article from Phoronix started a rumors that Valve is working on a Linux version of Steam. The rumor has been going around for about four months now and had a lot of people in the Linux community very excited. Today Valve have officially killed the rumor. And it is not what people wants to hear - there is no Linux version of Steam in development.

Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute games and related media online, from small independent developers to larger software houses. Steam also has community features, automated game updates, and in-game voice and chat functionality. [Wikipedia]

GameIndustry.biz did an interview with Doug Lombardi, the Marketing VP of Valve Corporation. In that interview Lombardi has put an end to all the rumors by saying that they are not working on Steam for Linux right now.

Excerpt from the interview:

Question: Final question, and one I'm sure you're not super-keen to answer, but I promised one of our tech guys I'd ask it. What truth is there to rumours that you're also working on a Linux version of Steam?

Doug Lombardi: There's no Linux version that we're working on right now.

So, there you have it. Steam is not coming to Linux anytime soon, although games like Counter-Strike & Half Life are coming to Apple!

Phoronix did have some very compelling evidence. So, this flat out denial from Valve is slightly puzzling. What do you think? Discuss in the comments.

[via: TFTS]




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  • http://twitter.com/Mutiny32 Kyle Jones

    So I guess Phoronix just pulled that dev build of the Linux Steam client out of their ass then, huh? Oh, it was actually the official Mac client that had Linux binaries and shared libraries buried within it?

    • Anonymous

      Phoronix did have some very compelling evidence. So, this flat out denial from Valve is slightly puzzling.

    • http://pumpkinpat.ch pumpkin

      It seems quite plausible that they tried a few builds for linux, realized it was a pain or didn’t work well, or simply wasn’t worth it, and left traces of those builds around by mistake. Who knows, though :)

      • SheeEttin

        Your reply is reasonable–except for the fact that the Linux builds were being ACTIVELY UPDATED quite recently. As recently as March, but I think more recently too. (I don’t want to dig through the hundred pages of “Steam on Linux” Phoronix forum threads.)

        • jp

          Well, if it’s not coming, I’d like to know what this was meant to be then:
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTgqdlA_jE8

          I never got the client running that far myself but only up to the first window which is the “login/create account” window. However, the window style that I got to see was exactly as is shown in that video.

    • Coppertop

      Exactly. Additionally, It’s worth noting that the Mac Steam Client was kept secret until the very last moments before it’s release. In fact, the Steam support site said “there are currently *no plans* for native Mac support” even *after* the client was actually released. Thus, I wouldn’t take those declarations from Valve as something definitive based on history.

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  • Lollerpop

    I waited with purchasing some games ‘cos I thought I’ll buy it when a linux client arrives – some kind of a proof that the linux client is worth the development etc. now I won’t buy these games… I know valve won’t go bankrupt because of me, but anyway.

    • Anonymous

      Yeah, even we are disappointed a lot. And it is official that many geeks stay away from Linux because it does not support good gaming.

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  • Hooty

    I don’t blame Steam. With all of the myriad of Distro’s and the shoddy video card driver’s that are out there, who would want to create a new gaming platform for Linux?

    • Anonymous

      But how long do you think will this continue? Plus a lot of graphics cards are nowadays supported on Linux thanks to the community drivers in some cases.

    • knome

      The myriad of distro’s argument is silly. If steam stepped in behind ubuntu ( being the most popular desktop variant at the moment ) linux gamers would switch distros to support steam, and the other distros would work their ass off to be steam compatible.

      • Diggandir

        or heck, create a steam distro.

        • http://www.dotnetzombie.net dotNet Zombie

          that would be cool

          • http://twitter.com/nutid Carit Benike

            This is actually not the stupidest idea. Though I have only few references, it apperas to me, that Steam-players play mostly steam-enabled games.
            Remember back in the DOS days? Games held their own drivers. Todays OS’es on gaming pc do the trick: handle drivers for networking, graphic acceleration, video and sound. If that is all it takes, I could very well see my pc dual booting into a Steam-UX. There are several good arguments why this is a good idea:
            0. Full control over all layers of the PC, opportunity to fine tune every bit of the system
            1. Full utilization of your expensive hardware – no CPU powers wasted on AV, malware etc.
            2. Steam is popular, a potential large number of users helps putting pressure on hw-vendors to write fast drivers
            3. If the OS takes up only little space, you might have one bootable OS-partition per game.

            PLease gimme your thoughts
            3.

      • Deanjo

        lol very doubtful. Linux users will continue to use what they are most familiar with. I couldn’t imagine for example swapping my distro for the crudeness of Ubuntu. The penalties are just not worth the privilege of running a game.

    • Kilzzz

      Sounds like someone that is parroting FUD. While there are a lot of distro’s, the differences between them are not that significant. Secondly, the video drivers for ATI and Nvidia cards are available from ATI and Nvidia. Granted there are less than stellar open source ones, but the proprietary drivers work just fine.

      • John

        Apparently you don’t have an ATI card, otherwise you wouldn’t be saying this.

        And not only video drivers are a problem, audio drivers can also still be a problem.

        • Vertigo

          Not sure about you, but my ATI card works perfectly under Ubuntu.

          • Rosko

            mine too

          • http://twitter.com/Heimpjuh Heimen Stoffels

            Mine not. On Ubuntu it works good, but not perfect. On Kubuntu it works perfect unless you upgrade to KDE 4.5 and a newer kernel. Than the driver is useless. Even the newest driver from Ati’s site doesn’t work well on a newer kernel. While nVidia works very hard to support the newer kernels as wel. And don’t even get me started about 10.04 They had 6 months to prepare a 10.04-compatible driver, but they released it only a week before 10.04 final. They were lucky that it got picked up by 10.04, but they had more than enough time to create a compatible driver. So Ati needs to work on their Linux-drivers and make it more compatible with newer kernels and distro’s.

        • Anon

          …which is precisely why I abandoned Linux and returned to Windows.

          • Anonymous

            You mean to say you returned to Windows as Linux was not able to provide you with a solid platform for gaming?

        • http://twitter.com/Heimpjuh Heimen Stoffels

          I have an Ati-card and I can confirm that their drivers are crap. But most gamers use nVidia anyway, so what’s the problem then?

          And what the heck do you even start about audio drivers? Most audio works out-of-the-box these days.

    • http://twitter.com/Heimpjuh Heimen Stoffels

      Wat knome says, plus they can even support other distro’s; they need to prepare one .deb, one .rpm and one .run or .bin and then you have most distro’s covered. That’s not hard at all. Or just one launcher that covers them all (refers to Nexuiz).

      And what the heck are you talking about “shoddy video card drivers”? Yeah, Ati doesn’t have the best drivers, but nVidia have superb Linux-drivers, and most gamers use nVidia anyway so that argument is weak.

      • Guest

        Right. Keep telling to yourselves that is not a problem. Business such as Valve know better.

        • Anonymous

          Not really … businesses are very prone to making mistakes when assessing new markets (most enterprises devote large sums to this and still mess up sometimes).I own a bussines and it took me a whole year to decide to use Ubuntu servers for my multimedia lab … In the end I made the right choice with linux (we tried apple servers but my engineers and my wallet hated them for some reason)

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  • yossarianuk

    I think that Linux users should support companies that actually give a damn about Linux gaming like

    http://www.primalcarnage.com/website/

    Steam will NOT be getting our money…

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  • Scott Dunn

    The probably don’t want to access their value developer licensing agreement with Microsoft.

    • http://digitizor.com/ Ricky Laishram

      I don’t get you. Mind elaborating a bit?

  • Greygeek

    Just where did those “rumors” come from?

    It’s a common practice these days for has-been journalists to attempt to boost their page hits by using inflammatory article titles or leads to mundane or ridiculous articles that may only vaguely refer to Linux. You’ve seen them – “Is Debian Yesterday’s distribution?” is but one recent example.

    It appears to me that the Valve corporation salted the rumor mine in order to gain FREE publicity about their Steam product. Letting “leak” a Mac Os X launcher script that contains references:

    elif [ "$UNAME" == "Linux" ]; then
    PLATFORM=linux32
    # prepend our lib path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=”${STEAMROOT}”/${PLATFORM}:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    fi

    served nicely as the “Fool’s Gold” for the rumor mine.

    That Valve did not IMMEDIATELY SQUELCH the rumor, but let it play for FOUR MONTHS, is prima facia evidence that they were exploiting its news value to advertize Steam. They could have refuted the rumor within a few days of the Phoronix article, or they could have simply kept silent for ever about it. The first option would have reduced the news buzz considerable. The second option would have looked even more like blatant exploitation of the Linux phenomena. Four months is just right to maximize the Steam buzz, plus they get an additional buzz kick with their refutation comment.

    Just another example of what is becoming classic and all to frequent corporate sleaze behavior.

    • http://zombieskittles.com/ Zombie_Plan

      Did anyone ask though? They’re well knowing for trolling, but it may of taken 4 months before anyone even asked. Are there any other recorded interviews in which someone asks about it? And what was Valve’s response?

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  • Alan Krause

    I have been waiting on buying any more Steam games, as I’ve recently switched my home systems over to Ubuntu since I’m tired of dealing with Windows problems. I’m saddened to hear that it doesn’t look like Steam for Linux is in the cards for the near future. :<

  • Connor

    FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

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    :( (((

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  • Goodolandy

    No one can really believe what Valve staff say. Look at how many times Valve will state they will do this or do that with such and such a game only to not follow through.

    I personally am remaining positive that they are working on a Linux version but do not want to mention it until closer to completion or until they have some games ported to Linux.

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  • DingDong

    Well screw you valve! I will be taking my purchases elsewhere.
    seriously what do you expect from an egg head like Doug. he probably doesn’t know shit about what the coders at valve are doing. he’s too busy giving interviews and being a Doug.

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  • Riociq

    Time to sell my steam games collection (some of them worked on wine).

  • Alex Sagel7587

    A true disappointment. I have used Linux in the past and have realized the potential of the operating system. I’m sure they will release the client in the next year though. Will await the day when Windows, Mac and Linux users can play Counter-Strike Source together!

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  • sisto

    Stupid Valve… I’d prefer they had kept us in the dark instead of denying the rumour.

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  • Jimmy H

    Who cares? Steam already runs in Wine if you want it for running windoze games in Linux. So unless Steam followed in Loki’s footsteps and offered some Linux conversion installer (which I suppose they could if they wanted if I understand how Steam works in OSX – essentially a *nix) we would still need Wine and only the Steam interface layer would be native. Big Deal. It is games that need to be native, not distribution.

  • heh

    look here: http://www.valvesoftware.com/job-SenSoftEngineer.html

    it says: Port Windows-based games to the Linux platform.

    • Ricky

      AFAIK that listing is more than 3 years old. SO it does not mean much now IMO.

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  • Bobop

    no they are working on it they have been for 3 years or more
    http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam_client_linux

  • http://blog.virusmoney.com bisnis online

    I don’t blame Steam. With all of the myriad of Distro’s and the shoddy
    video card driver’s that are out there, who would want to create a new
    gaming platform for Linux?

  • Anonymous

    Fuck Valve. They never liked Linux they never will.  they even once had the rule that if you  brought up linux support for valve on their forums they’d ban your account. –so in return, I say we just ban valve’s games.– or anyone else using their service.

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  • I

    EFFING BRILLIANT!!!!



Valve Puts An End To The Steam On Linux Rumors was originally published on Digitizor.com on August 22, 2010 - 10:38 pm (Indian Standard Time)