4 ms·

I get it that he's uneasy about Steam's dominance; but there's not a whole lot of reasoning behind it. There is competition, every publisher is trying to push t

I get it that he's uneasy about Steam's dominance; but there's not a whole lot of reasoning behind it. There is competition, every publisher is trying to push their own marketplace. The problem is that they're all complete crap, look no further than Ubisoft's UPlay rootkit incident. The last bit honestly left me reeling. As a Linux user, I feel like we're very close to turning a huge corner if Valve gets Steam/Source running well on Linux. This could be the nudge that starts an avalanche, and it's really disheartening to see such an influential figure dismissing it as though it's nothing; especially considering he's released his own game on Linux. Not to mention his reasoning makes no sense to boot - If anyone is capable of dealing with getting their hands dirty, it will be gamers who are accustomed to fixing buggy console ports and editing configuration files. For most others (Families and Corporations as he mentions), a browser and OpenOffice is already more than enough.

jeffool 14y ago
I think you're right; publishers are finally starting to realize that Steam is just as much a danger to them as it is (well, was) to brick and mortar retailers. And you're also right in how unbelievably horrible they are in trying to fight this battle. I haven't tried EA's latest venture, Origin, but damn have the others been bad. I can't see what requires them all be so clunky. Even Steam could stand to have a lighter approach, I often feel. Insofar as worrying about dominance, I think that's a legit worry. One asshole move Valve doesn't like, or your typing cousin just guys wild on your pc while you're not looking, and all of your games are gone. It really sucks to think I may have paid Steam hundreds of dollars to "borrow" games.
danieldk 14y ago
But what's the difference with ca. 1999-2002 when Loki ported popular games to Linux, Corel released Wordperfect for Linux and their own Linux distribution, Red Hat was the darling of the Linux world, and VA Systems IPOed? That window of opportunity is gone. Home users are moving to tablets for most of their computing. For businesses there is little incentive to move to Linux, Windows licenses are relatively cheap and come with hardware. Retraining personel is more expensive. The traditional Linux desktop provides a fine UNIX workstation and if the crazy desktop experiments stop, it could compete with OS X. Linux for the average home user has already succeeded as Android.
- Gravityloss 14y ago
  I tried red hat in 2002. The experience was very uncomfortable and I quickly went back to windows. I tried linux again in 2008 and everything was great and i moved onto it immediately. Also installed it for my mom... What happened? Debian apt-get and Ubuntu.
  - danieldk 14y ago
    Some user-friendly distributions at the time had apt-get, such as Corel Linux. Some other distributions, such as Caldera OpenLinux and SUSE were of a very good quality. At that time, you could install Linux on most computers without much effort. During that hype, I helped installing Linux a lot on friend and family's machines. The primary problem were Winmodems and some printers. These days we have Wifi, fan control, and such instead ;).
- officemonkey 14y ago
  >Home users are moving to tablets for most of their computing. Gamers are not the typical home users. Sure, there are games on tablets (and some of them are very good) but you're not going to get your typical hardcore MMO or FPS gamer to give up her big rig with giant monitor, bluetooth stereo headset, and pro-gamer mouse for a iPad game.
ajanuary 14y ago
The way I read it his point was that Steam is the only one that isn't complete crap, and so Steam is in a very powerful position. You want at least a viable alternative to make "don't screw us around or we'll move somewhere else" a credible threat. It's not a fault of Valve's, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be at least a little cautious.

jeffool 14y ago

I think you're right; publishers are finally starting to realize that Steam is just as much a danger to them as it is (well, was) to brick and mortar retailers. And you're also right in how unbelievably horrible they are in trying to fight this battle. I haven't tried EA's latest venture, Origin, but damn have the others been bad. I can't see what requires them all be so clunky. Even Steam could stand to have a lighter approach, I often feel. Insofar as worrying about dominance, I think that's a legit worry. One asshole move Valve doesn't like, or your typing cousin just guys wild on your pc while you're not looking, and all of your games are gone. It really sucks to think I may have paid Steam hundreds of dollars to "borrow" games.

danieldk 14y ago

But what's the difference with ca. 1999-2002 when Loki ported popular games to Linux, Corel released Wordperfect for Linux and their own Linux distribution, Red Hat was the darling of the Linux world, and VA Systems IPOed? That window of opportunity is gone. Home users are moving to tablets for most of their computing. For businesses there is little incentive to move to Linux, Windows licenses are relatively cheap and come with hardware. Retraining personel is more expensive. The traditional Linux desktop provides a fine UNIX workstation and if the crazy desktop experiments stop, it could compete with OS X. Linux for the average home user has already succeeded as Android.

Gravityloss 14y ago
I tried red hat in 2002. The experience was very uncomfortable and I quickly went back to windows. I tried linux again in 2008 and everything was great and i moved onto it immediately. Also installed it for my mom... What happened? Debian apt-get and Ubuntu.
- danieldk 14y ago
  Some user-friendly distributions at the time had apt-get, such as Corel Linux. Some other distributions, such as Caldera OpenLinux and SUSE were of a very good quality. At that time, you could install Linux on most computers without much effort. During that hype, I helped installing Linux a lot on friend and family's machines. The primary problem were Winmodems and some printers. These days we have Wifi, fan control, and such instead ;).
officemonkey 14y ago
>Home users are moving to tablets for most of their computing. Gamers are not the typical home users. Sure, there are games on tablets (and some of them are very good) but you're not going to get your typical hardcore MMO or FPS gamer to give up her big rig with giant monitor, bluetooth stereo headset, and pro-gamer mouse for a iPad game.

ajanuary 14y ago

The way I read it his point was that Steam is the only one that isn't complete crap, and so Steam is in a very powerful position. You want at least a viable alternative to make "don't screw us around or we'll move somewhere else" a credible threat. It's not a fault of Valve's, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be at least a little cautious.