advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

Gabe Newell says Linux is the future of PC gaming

Valve Software founder and Freeman-in-Chief Gabe Newell has been out and  about pleasing penguin-heads this week. Following the firm’s release of its Steam distribution platform for Linux in February there have been a lot of online rumours about a Linux-powered games system appearing from the company, probably called the SteamBox. Newell took to the stage at LinuxCon in New Orleans and all but confirmed the existence of this mythical piece of hardware and explicitly stated that in his opinion, “Linux and open source are the future of gaming”.

Newell admitted that at present, Linux-powered PCs make up a tiny proportion of gaming rigs – less than 1% of all Steam installs, according to the latest hardware survey – he pointed out that “people always overestimate the effect of these things in the short run and underestimate their effect in the long run”.

Many of Valve’s successes – Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike and so on – have been largely down to the company’s encouragement of open models for modders to get involved with their games, and the firm’s own internal structure is famously flat too.

“Games are going to be nodes of an economy in which the vast majority of goods and services are user created,” he explained, saying that the flexibility and freedom of Linux absolutely fits this business model. “We love the performance and reliability [of Linux]” he continued.

This is a subject very close to my heart. As a long time employee (in-house and freelance) of PC Gamer in the UK, my colours are firmly nailed to the big box of ridiculous power for gaming. I’m not especially partisan, it’s just that I’ve never really got on with consoles all that well – I like PC games and I like PC games people when I play online. However, I’m also a Linux fanatic, committed to the ideal of free software and I use Linux exclusively for work. Having to boot into Windows 7 to play PlanetSide 2 at home irks me enormously.

Newell also said that the experience of Steam for Linux has given Valve useful insights into the best way to support the platform and tackle the problems of fragmentation around the OS. He and reiterated his “genuine concern” about the direction the PC industry was taking with Windows 8 and closed platforms like iOS, while confirming Valve’s business is growing fast against a background of market decline. Openness, he says, gives the company a competitive advantage.

“The distinction between a content creator and a content consumer will get blurrier,” he said, “You don’t want to compete with your own customers.”

He rounded off by saying there will be more announcements about Linux next week.

Why do I think this is important for htxt.africa? Because I think it gives up-and-coming African games developers a chance to develop their games for lower costs while targetting a massive potential audience and compete against the big US publishers – most of whom are struggling.

The full video of Newell’s talk is embedded below. Watch and cheer:

(Via Phoronix and Ars Technica)

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement