The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

[Morgoth]

Why not make it individual games, Valve? Also "technically" not possible?

 

[Metro]

Newsflash: They don't want to turn it into a share your games with friends/random strangers program. It's limited for a reason.

 

[Spectacle]

Newsflash: They don't want to turn it into a share your games with friends/random strangers program. It's limited for a reason.

But what's it even for? Seems like it would only be useful for people who only play games on Steam rarely so that usage collisions don't happen often enough to be annoying. And such people usually don't have large Steam libraries to share in the first place.

 

[Metro]

Exactly. Like parents sharing games with kids. I'm sure it's just a test of the technology and if they expand it to non-family/less limited basis they'll charge for the service. It would make zero financial sense for them to let people share games with anyone else on a per game basis. People would simply stop buying stuff/enter into big 'purchase pools.'

 

[DwarvenFood]

hm,

Can a friend and I share a library and both play at the same time?
No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

This makes it all pretty useless, unless you live in different time-zones or something.

The way I share games with family inside the house, is put all machines except one in offline mode. That way, you can simultaneously play. With this Family Sharing thing, that would not even be possible.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

hm,

Can a friend and I share a library and both play at the same time?
No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

This makes it all pretty useless, unless you live in different time-zones or something.

That's only for two borrowers though. Owner can still launch whatever whenever.

 

[DwarvenFood]

hm,

Can a friend and I share a library and both play at the same time?
No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

This makes it all pretty useless, unless you live in different time-zones or something.

That's only for two borrowers though. Owner can still launch whatever whenever.

Huh confusing ?!

Let's say me and an other dude both share our libraries with each other, can we both play each others games at the same time ? Or would one of us be limited to playing a game from their own library ?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

hm,

Can a friend and I share a library and both play at the same time?
No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

This makes it all pretty useless, unless you live in different time-zones or something.

That's only for two borrowers though. Owner can still launch whatever whenever.

Huh confusing ?!

Let's say me and an other dude both share our libraries with each other, can we both play each others games at the same time ? Or would one of us be limited to playing a game from their own library ?

That one hasn't been cleared up by the FAQ yet and I haven't gotten my grubby hands on the beta so I can't test it. I wondered the exact same thing, and the way it's worded it sounds like it should work. Since it only gets pissy about multiple people on the same library at once. So if you and a bro share your libraries and each play a game from the other dude's library your should be fine.

I'm gonna be Bruticis' best friend when he D1P's Thiaf.

 

[Dexter]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/...he-future-of-gaming-new-hardware-coming-soon/

Gabe Newell, the co-founder and managing director of Valve, said today that Linux is the future of gaming despite the minuscule share of the market it has today.

That seems hard to believe, given that Newell acknowledged Linux gaming generally accounts for less than one percent of the market by any measure including players, player minutes, and revenue. But Valve is going to do its best to make sure Linux becomes the future of gaming by extending its Steam distribution platform to hardware designed for living rooms.

Newell made his comments while delivering a keynote at LinuxCon in New Orleans. "It feels a little bit funny coming here and telling you guys that Linux and open source are the future of gaming," Newell said. "It's sort of like going to Rome and teaching Catholicism to the pope."

Valve brought Steam to Linux in February, and the platform now has 198 games. Newell has previously promised to unveil a Linux-based "Steam box" to compete against living room gaming consoles sometime this year, and his company has updated the Steam software to work better on TVs. While he didn't specifically mention the Steam box today, Newell hinted at an announcement next week.

"Next week we're going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room," Newell said.

Getting games to work on Linux has its challenges. If not implemented right, "Just compile it yourself" could be the inconvenient solution to the problem of installing games and applying updates, he said. However, Valve worked through these problems in bringing Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux, hopefully showing the way to other developers, he said.

Bringing Steam to Linux "was a signal for our development partners that we really were serious about this Linux thing we were talking about," Newell said.

Besides just releasing Steam on Linux-based operating systems, Valve is contributing to the LLDB debugger project and is co-developing an additional debugger for Linux, Newell said.

"When we talk to developers and say, 'if you can pick one thing for Valve to work on the tools side to make Linux a better development target,' they always say we should build a debugger," he said.

Newell has previously complained about Windows 8 being a "catastrophe for everyone in the PC space," and he reiterated these concerns today. Closed platforms are going to lose to open ones that allow innovation, he said. But that won't stop Steam's rise: Despite year-over-year declines in the PC market, Steam has seen a 76 percent increase in its own sales according to Newell.

"I think we'll see either significant restructuring or market exits by top five PC players. It's looking pretty grim," he said. "Systems which are innovation-friendly and embrace openness are going to have a greater competitive advantage to closed or tightly regulated systems."

 

[Morgoth]

Yeah Gaben, yeah!

 

[IDtenT]

At some point Steam growth will become stunted.

 

[tuluse]

At some point Steam growth will become stunted.

Thanks for your brilliant insight.

I have it on good authority that the sun will some day run out of fuel too.

 

[IDtenT]

At some point Steam growth will become stunted.

Thanks for your brilliant insight.

I have it on good authority that the sun will some day run out of fuel too.

Hurp. I wouldn't mention it if the article wasn't contrasting steam sales with PC sales.

 

[Dexter]

I still can't avoid the irony of them talking about how bad proprietary closed platforms are when they created Steam and are mostly butthurt that a possibly bigger proprietary closed platform might eat their business, still can't see the downside in them popularizing Linux if they can manage.

 

[Infinitron]

WTF, a video of a video?

 

[DalekFlay]

I still can't avoid the irony of them talking about how bad proprietary closed platforms are when they created Steam and are mostly butthurt that a possibly bigger proprietary closed platform might eat their business, still can't see the downside in them popularizing Linux if they can manage.

Valve have always been about presenting their sales pitch in a way that makes gamers think they're benefiting.

Only issue I would have with make-believe future where Linux rules traditional PC gaming is that all the classics would suddenly become abandonware. I mean I guess that's good to some extent but... I don't want to dual boot Windows and Linux just to play fucking games.

 

[tuluse]

Valve have always been about presenting their sales pitch in a way that makes gamers think they're benefiting.

Only issue I would have with make-believe future where Linux rules traditional PC gaming is that all the classics would suddenly become abandonware. I mean I guess that's good to some extent but... I don't want to dual boot Windows and Linux just to play fucking games.

Wut? Wine is more compatible than Win7.

 

[DalekFlay]

Wut? Wine is more compatible than Win7.

First off, no it's not. Secondly, I mean modern shit too. Unless you think EA and the rest are going to go back and port their last 10 years of shit to Linux.

There is currently 0 games that require Linux. There are a bajillion that require Windows. Make one Linux only game and BOOM fucking hell on Earth.

 

[tuluse]

First you said "classics" by which I assumed you meant older games. With which, Wine is more compatible. Now you're talking about modern EA games, of which I couldn't give 2 shits.

Also there are Linux only games, they just all suck.

 

[Morgoth]

Valve won't make Linux only games. They still need to release their games on Windows PCs too if they want to make money.

 

[DalekFlay]

First you said "classics" by which I assumed you meant older games. With which, Wine is more compatible. Now you're talking about modern EA games, of which I couldn't give 2 shits.

By classics I meant games I will want to replay down the road because they are great. And yes, there have been quite a few of those the last decade.

And saying "old" games runs better in Wine than Win7 is still bullshit. Win7 does amazingly well with compatibility. I have had one whole game not run on the damn thing, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Fucking Lucasarts and their weird engines.

 

[tuluse]

all the classics would suddenly become abandonware.

This is clearly false.

 

[DalekFlay]

all the classics would suddenly become abandonware.

This is clearly false.

That don't have Linux versions, obviously. Don't be purposefully ignorant.

 

[tuluse]

*All* classics that don't have linux versions would still be false. Just about everything before DX9 works fine, and lots of games after do as well.

 

[DalekFlay]

*All* classics that don't have linux versions would still be false. Just about everything before DX9 works fine, and lots of games after do as well.

I meant every game which doesn't work on Linux would instantly become abandonware. You knew what I meant.

This is kind of a silly debate anyway since even Gaben can't change the industry to that scale.