aNewDomain — Valve just did a 180. I told you earlier this week that Valve is on a new product announcement tear. Well they keep on coming — and the latest dirt is that the new tech coming has everything to do with Linux and gaming.
Nice trick!
Told you. Back in April, I reported based on this evidence from Linux pro and writer Michael Larabel of Phoronix.com.
He did a good job of convincing me that Valve is in the process of developing its products to run natively in Linux — but Valve wouldn’t cop to it. It only admitted it was playing around with Linux. Nothing was official.
Interestingly, after the notorious Michael Larabel interview and visit, Valve reps actually insisted in that there was no serious Linux project at all with GamesIndustry.biz, anyway.
It turns out that Valve has been doing far more than just playing with the operating system as a new home for native game play for their products and the Steam community as well.
If you recall, Michael Larabel was able to capture some screen shots of Left 4 Dead 2 in action without the use of WINE or any other Linux tools.
I told you hardcore Linux gamers back in April. However, you might have missed out on this short, yet to the point video that shows just what Valve is working on:
Okay, so we showed you screen shots, we even showed you a video, but how do we know this is the real deal? Simple, Valve has stepped up and announced a new forum that is 100% dedicated to Linux development of their products. Everything from what their developers are working on, to solicited input from the existing Steam community and Linux users alike can be found here: Steamd Penguins.
As previously stated, this is a big deal to Linux gamers as very few game developers have invested in the Linux operating system as a home for their products. However, it seems clear that Valve is going to take the community to task and bring them not only their Source Engine-based products, but eventually everything and anything in the Steam content distribution system.
Game on Linux fans, game on.
I’m Chris Poirier and you’re reading aNewDomain.
