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Steam on Linux
I’ve always avoided Wine, a Windows-compatibility layer for Linux, based upon the reported unreliability of applications run using it. By this I mean that if you read through the AppDB, which lists applications that work/don’t work with Wine, almost every application sort of partially works with some hacks.
Today I decided to test out running Steam, an application for downloading many popular games, under Wine to see for myself how it worked.
Installing Wine (I choose the beta version from Wine’s repositories) was no different from installing any other application. I quickly proceeded to install Steam. From some guides I learned that I had to move some fonts, but that was fairly simple.
While the installation went without any problems, the store part does not appear to work, meaning that you will have to buy games from a Windows computer.
Since I already had a couple of games waiting, I went ahead and installed Call of Duty 4. As has been pointed out, the PunkBuster anti-cheat system doesn’t work, so you can’t play on PunkBuster-enabled servers, but otherwise everything works just fine, though with some performance hit.
Next I tried to install Unreal Tournament 3 Black. This game didn’t work anywhere near as well as Call of Duty 4. I got as far as the EULA screen, before things got messed up. No text appeared where the EULA should have been and no matter what I did Steam froze up and had to be killed.
Just like the AppDB indicates, applications are very hit or miss with Wine, but I would still encourage you to try it. It is very possible that whatever application you want to install works just fine, and if it doesn’t you can just uninstall it.
EVO keeps quietly showing up in the news for their EVO Smart Console, a Linux-based game console. It sounds cool, but there is one issue:
A game console needs games for anyone to buy it and game developers need people to buy the console for them to develop games for it. If you’re Sony or Nintendo, that’s not a problem, but if your an unknown, it certainly is. How, then, can an unknown game console creator survive? Use Linux and let people hack it.
While I can’t claim just letting people hack your device means instant success, Sony’s PS3 has already shown that letting people mess with a game console and repurpose it to other tasks is a very good selling point. After all, a small, quiet PC in your living room can do a lot more than games. Since it can do more than games, it is valuble even without games, allowing EVO to get their foot in the door and grab some games.
Each year I pose the same question to you:
If you could have anything, change anything, or do anything to or about Linux, what would you do?
And each year, I get back the same answer: Games. Games. Games. It looks like 2D Boy may be answering your calls today.
One of the best selling and best reviewed games on the Wii’s WiiWare platform is a game called World of Goo, made by independent game developer 2D Boy. The game, which challenges you to build structures and solve puzzles using a finite number of “goo” pieces, has been available for Mac and Windows, in addition to the Wii, for some time. A Linux port of the game has also been promised, but, until today, not delivered. As of today, you can now purchase World of Goo for Linux from 2D Boy.
Big name games may still be quite some time coming for Linux, but it seems clear that indie games will be quite common on Linux in the next few years. As Wolfire Games, another independent game studio, figured out, porting your game to Linux gives it a huge amount of attention that it would not otherwise get. This alone leads to far higher sales, even if most of those are not sales for Linux.
We can’t necessarily expect all the top game developers to jump right in, but it looks like the indie game developers that have tested the water found it quite nice and invited the rest in. Surely it can only be so long until everyone hops in?