Steam

Gabe Newell: Linux and Open Source are the future of gaming

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Gabe Newell made an appearance at LinuxCon in New Orleans:

In the video he makes an interesting point about today’s users being more like developers. Thanks to Valve people can make their own games with the Source Engine, game modes, game content for their favorite Steam Workshop games and of course videos with Source Filmmaker. Valve is an open minded company, and open minded companies benefit from Open Source programs. This is where Linux comes into play. At this point it has more of a future than Windows. Hell, even the Playstation 4 will be using a modified FreeBSD Linux distro. This could leave Microsoft at a bit of a disadvantage. If they’re not careful there is a large possibility that more developers will pull their focus towards OpenGL over Direct X. However, only time can tell us how that will pan out.

Back on topic, Gabe Newell also announced how Linux will be making it into our living rooms. Won’t that be kewl. :3

A family that slays together stays together.

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This is pretty cool.

Steam Family Sharing is designed for close friends and family members to play one another’s Steam games while each earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves and application data to the Steam cloud. It’s all enabled by authorizing a shared computer.

Now playing the community market

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I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’m in the Steam Trading Card Beta. Which introduces a new profile layout and different features. It’s been a bit gimmicky, but otherwise it’s alright. I’ve been getting card drops from various games. You have the option of crafting them into badges (if you buy the ones that didn’t drop for you) or just selling them outright on the community market. I’ve done the latter, and as a result I’ve been getting some nice hats, background pictures for my new profile and a emoticon. Stuff I would never use my own money on for myself. I even got my father some Brocks Locks for fathers day. 🙂

Steam opens up early access program

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This looks kinda cool.

We like to think of games and game development as services that grow and evolve with the involvement of customers and the community. There have been a number of prominent titles that have embraced this model of development recently and found a lot of value in the process. We like to support and encourage developers who want to ship early, involve customers, and build lasting relationships that help everyone make better games.

Kerbal Space Program is one of the games on the list. :o

Beware of unofficial steam boxes.

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There is one being made called the Xi3 Piston, starting at a low price of $1,000 or $1,750. Which come equipped with 8GB of RAM, a 3.2 Ghz Quad Core processor.

Not a pretty price. Hell even a $600 gaming laptop has better equipment. :evil: Fuck, people buy consoles because they’re cheap, No sense in turning them off at the price tag.

I hope people don’t confuse these unofficial ones with Valve’s Steambox.

TF2 continues to get more awesome.

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Awhile back Valve and Adult Swim started a colab during “Pyromania”. If you signed up for Adult Swim’s newsletter you would get a genuine Robot Chicken hat. Then later on there was a TF2 sketch on Robot Chicken:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qdu_ZXHS-c

But it doesn’t end there. Today at the TF2 blog and Adult Swim it’s been announced that some Adult Swim items will be making an appearance in a future update.

I’ve never purchased anything from the Mannco store, but this is tempting. 😀 It would also be nice to see the scouts as Hank and Dean, Dr Weird for the Engie, Harvey Birdman for the spy, Black Dynamite for the Demo and… I could take an entire day naming them off!