Valve — Get yourself into linux already

I’ll start out with the simple — Valve had an awesome sale this week on L4D + L4D2 as a combo bundle ringing in nicely at $10.19, what a steal right? I should have snagged this deal because it was really too awesome to pass up. I didn’t because of not being able to play it on my linux box (my primary and secondary boxes now) and would have had to only play while at my parents. But at this price it should have been worth it.

The real kicker in all of this — my xbox360. I feel that the platform is far superior to that offered on the ps3 or wii (especially true as far as multiplayer gaming goes) and am generally happy with the exclusives that end up released for the system. I gripe a lot that the system is locked down hard and that accessories are a bundle and a half and end up not doing everything they say they will (stupid chatpad) but after all of it the actual gameplay is solid, and it works well. Xbox live is an excellent service (at a reasonable cost) and although there are a lot of people not worth dealing with on there it works very well for playing with a group of friends. But I can’t get this awesome deal for my xbox because the digital distribution for that platform is ramped up so high that it’s a joke to even consider. Deals on xbox live can save you about 1/3 the cost of a game, but never ever something in the ballpark of what Valve is offering here. In fact to buy a copy of L4D2 from Gamestop for my xbox360 (new) will set me back $30. That’s $20 more than buying both games, and getting all the DLC for free on steam. Valve understands how much word of mouth and friends playing sells games. Gifting and being able to play with a bunch of friends for a fraction of the price of buying it for just you continues to astound.

So why are people still even gaming on systems? First is barrier to enter — you have to have a pretty decent rig sinking a good chunk of change up front to build it. Ars September guides show that if you’ve got a monitor and peripherals you can build a nice rig for somewhere near the $4-500 range while in comparison a brand new Xbox 360 S will be ~$300 (cheaper if you go with older models). If you could custom build software to fit your hardware needs it might be possible to lower the cost to entry to PC building but that sort of development doesn’t exist for end users of widely available software (including games) whereas highly specialized systems and software can gain massive performance by being specifically designed to take advantage of the hardware. Still around $400 it would still seem the winner is the PC. Here is where it really all falls apart for me because I absolutely loved PC gaming as a kid and now end up only playing exclusives occasionally on it, moreso now that I’ve moved to linux for my daily computing.

Why can’t companies just understand that there is a market for the linux gamer? Hell there are already distros out there designed for linux gaming — and the ability to pare away a distro and free up everything unnecessary for play should make this even more enticing. Sony realizes that linux should be a part of it’s platform and (until recently) had an option to install it. I really think that a software platform like Steam should get some love in the linux space. Valve could go as far as to push it’s own linux variant custom designed to be run as a standalone game console with complete access to steam’s store. I can see a serious position for a distribution of this kind as many hobbyists would build a box and sit it behind their TVs, use their own preferred control systems, and generally have all the benefits of a living room console. Additionally add in a more traditional steam system and having access to the same games on all the computers as well as having dedicated hardware for gaming could see a huge surge in the number of people interested in this. Valve may not want to deal with the open source community and everything it comes with but opening up the actual software that powers the games could have great benefits as certain hardware architectures could get more customized builds to run on the hardware — this could then be moved to the games themselves becoming better equipped and written for the specific hardware that runs it. Add this in with the drag-and-drop respins that are available for a few mainstream linux operators and you have an extremely solid platform going on here. The thing about all of this is Valve already pushes for large community input and values those who create mods, going so far as to let them sell their work on the market. There are more than a few games that have solid popularity on Steam that began as simple mods for games, Killing Floor is just one example. Help out devs, help out the community, and kick down the door to why so many “can’t” or “won’t” try out linux. Imagine what could be possible if installing linux meant that you could migrate your digital game library with you, how many people would be much more willing to try this out?