

Is 2013, the year of Linux gaming?  - rainmaker23
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/332124,is-2013-the-year-of-linux-gaming.aspx

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testimoney2
There is a "Is 20xx, the year of Linux gaming" thread somewhere every year.

<http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2021249>

~~~
ramayac
And there is someone who always beat me to post this answer :)

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darxius
I'm not sure I like the position of the comma in the title.

~~~
bernardom
The NYT grammar blog had an excellent entry on this:
[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/the-most-
com...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/the-most-comma-
mistakes/)

The author, a college professor, lamented how many students still come to his
class making this mistake.

------
SlipperySlope
Because android has the Linux, We already have dominating Linux games - right?

Microsoft has been crushed in the mobile game space by Android/Linux.

~~~
cbeach
crushed in the mobile space by Android/Linux?

Apple completely dominate mobile gaming. 84% of all mobile gaming revenue is
on iOS as per [http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/06/mobile-gaming-revenue-
appl...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/06/mobile-gaming-revenue-apple/)

~~~
jiggy2011
Interesting that the article claims that Apple dominates mobile gaming but
then shows a graph that does not include any of the dedicated mobile gaming
platforms such as the Nintendo DS.

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DigitalSea
I doubt 2013 is the year of Linux gaming because lets be honest everyone has
been saying 20xx is the year of Linux is some aspect. However, the support
behind Linux appears to be stronger compared to 2007. I don't want to
speculate Windows 8 was behind it, but it kind of is (Gabe from Valve
expressed his disdain for Windows and their new app store model a while back).

Linux is as good if not better than Windows. It has come a long way and gaming
will definitely be just another feature of Linux in 2 to 3 years time. I'm
predicting 2014/2015 is when Linux gaming becomes really hot and everyone
releases games on it.

~~~
testimoney2
As a developer I find Linux very annoying to use. I have tried Ubuntu on
different boxes, even on powerful gaming computers, but it doesn't seem as
stable as Windows 8 does. Launching programs, or switching between windows has
sometimes a little bit of lag (and I'm on an i7, 8gb of ram etc...) I hate
having the slightest bit of lag. For me it would be easier to work on linux,
but its just not as nice to use as Windows 8 is.

~~~
pimeys
Or then you have a super fast, super productive desktop with no distractions.
Depends how you configure it. Here's mine. (the configs can be stored to
github, of course)

[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/Screenshot%20from%202013-02...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/Screenshot%20from%202013-02-15%2016%3A21%3A49.png)

It's not doable on OSX or on Windows. It's damn fast on my own macbook (2008
edition) and on my work desktop (i5, 16 GB, SSD)

~~~
glogla
Don't you want to make blog post about your setup or something?

I love Linux, but I don't like Gnome Shell or Unity (or KDE or something), and
on Desktop it's easy, you just install awesome and run with it. But for a few
years I had only laptop, and I was always afraid that things like sleep, or
volume and brightness control keys woudn't work, because they seem to be tied
with Gnome for some reason.

If you could share some more about your setup, that would be great.

~~~
pimeys
Oh, you can start the gnome-settings-daemon with your WM and you get the
sleep, the keys, the nice fonts etc. from Ubuntu.

------
charlesju
As a mobile game developer it's strange that no one has brought up the obvious
conclusion that Linux will win because Android will win.

Android has a good shot at being the platform for all things in the future,
ie. Ouya and Green Throttle.

As the cell phone doubles in power every year, in the near future we will
realize that our cell phone has way more than enough power to run our main
stations and gaming needs. The graphics chips on normal phones today are
already astounding.

------
rrreese
I don't see anything in this space attracting Windows gamers to Linux, but if
you are already a Linux user, things are getting better.

No one can really claim "year of Linux gaming" until we start seeing a wide
variety of publishers releasing AAA titles. And until that happens, windows
gamers will like it or not remain with Windows.

~~~
jiggy2011
It is early days yet, proving any market for Linux games _at all_ is big at
this point.

Linux has always had a hurdle in the (probably mostly wrong) assumption that
Linux users will pathologically not pay for software.

~~~
spacelizard
Why would GNU/Linux users pay to use proprietary software? As long as these
games are proprietary, they will only see adoption among recent Windows
converts who want the same experience. What's the point? I mean I get it that
Windows 8 is bad, but I've seen the same share of gripes about Unity.

Plus a lot of these companies offer low quality ports and little to no
customer support for Linux users, and if you don't use a supported distro then
too bad for you. So again, what's the point? It's the same bad experience as
using Wine.

~~~
jiggy2011
Why would you not pay for proprietary software? It seems like asking "why
would windows users use free software?".

Of course there are some who will only use 100% free/open source software for
ideological reasons but these people are a small minority of Linux users in
practise.

Most of the new indie game Linux ports work quite well in my experience though
YMMV I guess. It would be unrealistic to expect support for every distro.

~~~
spacelizard
It wouldn't be unrealistic to expect distro support if these were free
software packages that distros could patch and package up for their own needs.
But they aren't, they are proprietary blobs distributed through a proprietary
app store that is only supported on Ubuntu. And that's the thing with
proprietary software: you DON'T get what you pay for. Personally, I refuse to
play proprietary games, they offer nothing to me and the experience is always
negative. I think it is a farce to say that the technical benefits of
GNU/Linux are not owed to the fact that it is an entire ecosystem of free
software. If you believe this is a question of ideology, and you willingly
disregard it, then what is the problem with Windows?

~~~
jiggy2011
You probably aren't the target market for Steam in that case.

If there was a compelling collection of open source games I would certainly
play them but that has never really been the case.

There are tangible advantages in having open source tools and components such
as compilers,kernels and desktop environments even without every program on
the system being open source.

~~~
spacelizard
I would not consider GNU/Linux users the target market either. I would
consider the target market to be Windows users that don't want to use Windows
for whatever reason. These people don't care what they use as long as it isn't
Windows, they aren't loyal to any one system for any particular reason.

Personally I do not derive pleasure from just playing games, I need to be able
to study their source code and modify them. So I see no advantages in having
proprietary games on my system. I hope that other GNU/Linux users acknowledge
this as well. The one true value of the system is that it is GPL-ed.

~~~
jiggy2011
I'm not sure what the difference is between a GNU/Linux user and a person who
is using GNU/Linux because they don't want to use Windows.

If you look at places like /r/linux on reddit the Linux fanboys there are
practically wetting themselves over steam.

I agree that more open source games would be a good thing, but I don't see it
as necessarily more important than having access to the unedited recordings of
a piece of music.

~~~
spacelizard
Is someone really a GNU/Linux user if they have no respect for the core values
of the system? I personally don't understand the exuberance on reddit. It's
just another package manager in the already large sea of them, and a
proprietary DRMed one at that; it doesn't really seem to provide any practical
advantages to anybody. I believe it did on Windows, where even developers
didn't have any reasonable package management system until a few years ago.
But I see no real business strategy here. Also funny that you mention that
because as a hobbyist musician I think it would be pretty cool to have CC-
SA'ed masters of some of my favorite songs.

------
AUmrysh
I think there is a real possibility that Linux will be a legitimate gaming
platform from this point on thanks to steam and html5 games, it will still
take a few years to knock MS off their throne due to the proprietary nature of
DirectX and the perceived ease of development using it. When almost every game
is supported on Windows, it will take a serious effort (like the steam box) to
change that paradigm. The only reason I still use windows is because of the
gaming. Wine helps a lot here as well, but it's not perfect. Developers will
have to see the benefit of targeting linux before it becomes the platform for
gaming.

~~~
Shorel
The point is not 'the perceived ease of development' or something technical
like that.

The issue is commercial. The mere existence of PS3 games proves that, as the
PS3 was very hard to develop for, but it was worth it because the games would
sell.

Steam makes possible for developers to target Linux and sell the games there,
in an easy convenient way that is easier to use than pirating games via
torrents, but with some DRM to prevent uploading the purchased game to
torrents just after the purchase. Ubuntu also has a store that sells games, I
can see at the very least: Bastion, World of Goo, Amnesia, Braid, Space
Pirates and Zombies. I don't know if they use any DRM, I guess the answer is
no.

The final success of this endeavor is also of commercial nature. The number of
games sold in Linux will determine the future of Linux gaming, and nothing
else will, no matter what the technical merits of Steam in Ubuntu are.

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lost_name
This might be a little naive, but I'll ask.

I'm completely unaware of games, or any software, that is sold specifically
for Linux (sold, being the keyword here). I've never installed Linux and
purchased software for it.

So, my question, does the Open Source ecosystem for Linux simply eclipse the
for-profit software, or are there special licensing requirements that are
difficult to comply with?

~~~
pekk
Neither. <http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/> is currently
showing off their Linux sale, you can page through the games they are selling
and become less naive/unaware of what is out there. It's no Windows, but there
are some games.

~~~
brudgers
One of them is Half-Life. It's fifteen years old.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/70/?snr=1_614_615_linuxrel...](http://store.steampowered.com/app/70/?snr=1_614_615_linuxrelease_linuxrelease)

------
qompiler
There used to be these articles with the title "The year of the Linux mobile
phone" around 2006. If anything we will see something like Android /using/
Linux. Linux is, after all, just a kernel. Having said that, the gaming
platform (The Android OS if you will) of 2013 will probably be HTML5.

~~~
pekk
Steam has now officially launched its Linux client, rounded up a surprising
number of Linux games, and is selling all of them at a decent discount for a
week. It's do or die time for games on Linux. There is currently no such
effort for HTML5 games and I can't see what the advantage would be in making
yet another incompatible platform on top of the Linux kernel.

------
brudgers
No. SteamBox is vapor. There is no EA FIFA. And there are no significant Linux
only titles.

~~~
pekk
If Steam can get viable business out of selling indie and smaller-publisher
games then that is self-sustaining even if Linux does not take over the entire
industry (FIFA, Deer Hunter, etc.)

~~~
brudgers
They may be able to make a business out of it. For it to be the Year of Linux
gaming, publishers need to be doing so. I can still run Solitaire on my
Windows 2000 laptop, but that doesn't make it a gaming platform in the sense
implied by the article. Few people are going on eBay to pick up a Windows 2000
laptop for gaming, likewise, few people are going to install Linux in order to
run games.

~~~
AdrianRossouw
why install it when it could be a live cd that boots straight into steam?

~~~
brudgers
Maybe Steam could send these CD's in the mail and offer like ten free hours of
use.

------
AdrianRossouw
I could see this happening, but more in the sense that 2013 is where linux
gaming becomes a reality. Not that 2013 is going to be the year that linux
gaming becomes dominant.

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smogzer
The two games i enjoyed the most in 2012 were played in linux: FTL Faster Than
light, Redrogue. I don't care much about fancy graphics, i prefer a good story
and gameplay.

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evck
The real question is: "Is 2007 the year of the Linux Desktop?"

~~~
pekk
It wasn't, largely because of games. PC clones sold for years under the
thinnest pretense that they were business machines, with games being one of
the biggest reasons people bought them.

------
W4RH4WK
probably not this year.. but 'soon'. from my point of view, linux is a great
choice for gaming, not only that this 'platform' is much more open than
windows/mac, it's also extremely lightweight compared to windows. we have
already seen that great games can be created using opengl (Rage for example).

looking forward to the day i'll finally purge windows from my hard drive.
installing linux and playing some recently released AAA titles^^

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dasloop
The year of Linux gaming? no. Will Valve use Linux for a gaming console? Yes.
Similar but not the same.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not sure if I see the distinction. Whenever a linux based system becomes
popular for some use people always seem to make the claim "but that's not
_really_ Linux". I'm not really sure what the definition of _real_ Linux is.

Besides, it would seem that whatever games are made available for steambox
would be binary compatible with other Linux distributions anyway (and software
for other Linux distros should run on steambox) unless they do something
really crazy with it.

~~~
dagw
_Not sure if I see the distinction._

For me the distinction is, can I play the game on my computer running my
distro of choice, or can I only play it on the Steambox, which happens to be
running Linux.

 _it would seem that whatever games are made available for steambox would be
binary compatible with other Linux distributions_

I have seen nothing that would indicate this one way or the other.

~~~
jiggy2011
It would seem odd for them to launch the Linux client with the fanfare that
they did and then pull the rug out from under everyone once the Steambox is
launched, though I suppose it _could_ happen. Besides making Steambox
fundamentally incompatible would actually be more work than using standard
parts.

Regards distros, they don't seem to mind people repackaging for other distros
though it would be unrealistic to expect support for running the games under
every conceivable distro of which there are thousands.

------
programminggeek
OUYA and Steam Box are going to make a dent, but it's going to be because of
the economics of it more than anything else. Both Steam and OUYA are software
that rely on companies like Apple, Samsung, nVidia, AMD, and Intel to spend
billions of dollars on hardware R&D and they can just run their software
stores on top of them. That makes the economics of putting out a box that
hooks up to a TV and plays games a lot better.

For instance, with OUYA they can spend say $20-50 in parts to build the latest
ARM box and turn around and sell it for $100. The total cost of R&D to design
and build the OUYA is probably less than $10 million. There is already an
existing pool of Android software with an average selling price of less than
$5 a unit. It will probably launch with hundreds or thousands of games on day
one. Compare that to the PS4 which will launch with probably 5-10 games and
have maybe 100 games year one, and each game will cost $60 (or more).

OUYA - $100 + < $5 per game. PS4 - probably $400 + $60 per game.

OUYA - say $10 million to develop/produce PS4 - say > $1 billion to develop
(PS3 CPU alone cost $2 billion to develop)

In short, the economics for both development of hardware and selling of
software have shifted down so dramatically that it is going to hurt the PS4,
XBox 3, and Wii U substantially. It already had a huge impact on the mobile
space.

SteamBox is going to be basically the same story only at a $200-300 price
point and with $5-20 games.

Why on earth would people (especially parents) pay $400 for a console and $60
for a game when they could pay $100 for a console and $5 for a game. You can
buy a lot of OUYA games for the price of a next gen (or even current gen)
console.

The market for $60 games won't go away, but it will shrink fast.

Linux is a big contributor obviously, but it's as much about the hardware
economics as it is the software.

~~~
jiggy2011
There's a qualitative difference between the games you can economically
produce for a $5 launch price vs what you can produce for a $60 launch price.

That's not to say that more expensive games are necessarily better, just that
there are no shortage of people willing to pay $60 on launch day for games
like COD or Skyrim.

