Well, Valve has a page in
their wiki on running Steam under WinE,
so I really expected them to simply
release scripts for
PlayOnLinux. Mind you, releasing stuff to run natively
under
Linux is much better.
In fact, I expect them to (eventually)
provide this "dual
support". Those games that can run native will do so, and
those games that do not, but play well with WinE will have
their bundled WinE
install, transparently from the user.
It's a win-win situation, and in an ideal
world, would allow
them to slowly move to pure native code, while hiding the
complexity away. I hope that legal matters don't make this
impossible, but I
fear that that would be an issue.
Again, I expect indie games to come out
first (many
already haave Linux versions on Desura), and then have the
same
situation as we currently have with mac games, where
some games are available
on windows only, and some are
available on both Mac and Windows. Major studios
will
probably wait to see what the reception of Steam on Linux
is, and the
bugs are well ironed before moving in. I expect
those that provide Mac versions
will be the first to move,
as the ports will be easier than those that are well
entrenched in the monopoly's camp, and absolutely need
DirectX/Xinput/dotNet.
Personally, I feel that both Desura and the
Humble Bundle
opened the floodgates, and Steam is in to enjoy the ride,
and
position themselves as a dominant entity in the scene,
after others did most of
the hard work. I still think that
they are important in that they can put
pressure on the GPU
manufacturers, something no indie dev can.
By the
way, they already said that in most cases, those
owning the Windows versions of
the games will also be able
to use them in Linux, as per Steamplay. Way to
instantly
build an user base! [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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