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A comment on Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux.

Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by aspensmonster on Friday May 10, 2013 @12:03AM (#5684548)
I loved Half-Life 2. I loved Counter-Strike 1.5 (and 1.6 too). I loved Portal. Valve has done a good job of making games. But I reeeeally wish some other developers would step up to the plate and port as well. I'm thinking Borderlands, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and others. Those two already have Mac ports so I doubt it's unfeasible to move things over. Wine typically works well enough --assuming you're willing to either fiddle with it for hours or else pay for an out-of-the-box solution like Crossover-- but nothing beats native :)

Edit: Been playing the Portal Beta. The horizontal tearing without vertical sync is annoying. Mainly because, with vertical sync, there is substantial input lag. But hey, it's called "beta" for a reason.

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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by ShawnBird on Friday May 10, 2013 @04:44AM (#5685231)
Doublefine just ported their entire catalog: https://www.humblebundle.com/
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by Shorel on Friday May 10, 2013 @10:33AM (#5686390)
Wait, Brutal Legend runs on Linux???
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by PlaneSploit on Friday May 10, 2013 @10:57AM (#5686503)
It runs pretty well, too.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by Shorel on Friday May 10, 2013 @12:11PM (#5686989)
The other reason I had to buy a PS3, besides GT5, has just vanished forever.

Now buying a console for just one game seems like a waste of money.

Great news!!!

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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by kayoone on Friday May 10, 2013 @02:35AM (#5684922)
Many developers dont even port their console titles to the PC, or do so much later. Porting to Linux does not make any sense financially (yet), so its more or less good-will. You also need to have the resources to do it and many Devs are under heavy time pressure from publishers.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by mtgx on Friday May 10, 2013 @03:32AM (#5685073)
Porting from consoles to PC's is much harder, though, not to mention that they'll also have to upgrade the graphics in a major way to make it a "competitive" PC game. By contrast, porting to Linux should be much easier.

Also porting old games is one thing, but these days most 3rd party game engines support Linux, too, and it should be even easier to support Linux at launch with new games.

Considering Linux users buy about the same amount of games (in revenue) as Mac users right now (from the surveys/research I've seen), it should be a no-brainer to support Linux if you're already going to support Mac. I could see some not wanting to bother with Mac either, though, but for those who choose Mac, they should also choose Linux.

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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by jeltz on Friday May 10, 2013 @04:15AM (#5685157)
If you look at the list of games with Linux support at Steam you will notice that virtually all of them has Mac support, which supports your idea about Linux and Mac support.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by kayoone on Friday May 10, 2013 @04:29AM (#5685199)
Most developers use 3rd Party Engines anyway, so they are also limited by the fact that many game engines dont support Linux/Mac yet. But that number is definately growing!
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by workbench on Friday May 10, 2013 @12:53PM (#5687283)
Not worth the effort required to please entitled PC users when the platform is also drowning in piracy.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by shardling on Friday May 10, 2013 @12:38AM (#5684664)
I don't know about Borderlands, but the Deus Ex mac port was not done by the main devs; it was a separate company that specializes in that sort of thing.

The catch is that the mac version isn't available on Steam.

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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by ekianjo on Friday May 10, 2013 @12:14AM (#5684589)
Yeah, surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, depending on your POV) there have been very few major players stepping in to convert their historical or recent titles for Linux. They are probably waiting and wondering if there's any good reason to do it... If the Steambox ever sees a release based on a Linux environment, I would expect things to change, though.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by jiggy2011 on Friday May 10, 2013 @12:40AM (#5684674)
Most games make most of their money very shortly after launch so the ROI to do a port probably isn't there unless there is a very compelling display of demand. There are some AAA games that don't make it onto the PC at all, let alone Linux.

The best hope here would be that valve could take some of the games that are known to work flawlessly with WINE and package them up with Steam handling all of the WINE config so it becomes transparent.

It will be interesting to see if a popular AAA franchise (elder scrolls, COD etc) announces a Linux release alongside the Windows release. As game devs have to think more about crossplatform I guess this might become more likely.

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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by MattDL on Friday May 10, 2013 @07:49AM (#5685683)
I think the weirdest thing is that id Software have all their games ported for Linux (Excluding Rage) but haven't released them yet.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by BuddhaSource on Friday May 10, 2013 @02:10AM (#5684867)
Sorry little off topic : Is anybody working on HALF-Life 3 ?

I was really looking forward for this, I am old now but not old enough for HL3.

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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by gcr on Friday May 10, 2013 @10:28AM (#5686353)
Between the Steam Box, porting everything in their catalog to Linux, Dota 2, and scrambling like madmen to make the ten thousanth TF2 hat, I assume Valve has a lot on their plate right now.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by hack_edu on Friday May 10, 2013 @10:51AM (#5686474)
Roll out a new revamped set of TF2 Unusuals and, boom!, cash enough to hire another entire product team.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by prawks on Friday May 10, 2013 @09:06AM (#5685932)
It's presumed (and pretty much a given) that it's being worked on. However there has never been a full confirmation from Valve/Gabe Newell on anything specific.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by pingvinus on Friday May 10, 2013 @05:40AM (#5685363)
Half-Life Forever
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by barbs on Friday May 10, 2013 @12:17AM (#5684597)
Valve indeed has done a good job so far, though I'm hoping they do the same with DotA 2 soon...
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by akama on Friday May 10, 2013 @07:22AM (#5685593)
Dota 2 seems like it's something that would be a flagship title for Steam for Linux. Dota 2 already uses the source engine though, so maybe it is coming soon. One can only hope.
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Re:Half-Life 2 released for Steam on Linux by mindstab on Friday May 10, 2013 @01:54AM (#5684844)
Serious Sam 3 from Croteam :)
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