How about wine integration?

[rargh]

I just got ubuntu set up on my gaming pc, dual booted with windows 7. I tried booting up TF2 and cringed at the default settings. So instead of rebooting into windows and saving all my launcher options as a text file somewhere, I decided I'd try opening steam (for windows) with wine. It worked. While I was on, I tried launching dishonored from steam. It worked too. So my question is, would it be at all possible to add some sort of wine integration? It would allow all pretty much all games to be played on linux (yea yea performance bleh), and would probably be pretty straight forward to do.

[blackout24]

Not again...

[rargh]

yea now that I think about it I realise this has most likely been asked 10000 times before, I don't see how exactly it's a bad idea though, obviously not as a permanent sollution but for the meantime. I also understand it would give publishers slightly less incentive to put out a linux port but I doubt most will start any time soon anyway, since all of them don't even have a PC port for all games.

[matachi]

Steam cluttered with wine packages of games would be horrible, imo

[TheProphet[S]]

there are many treads about this issue, I am in favour, I want to play Bioshock and I can't. And to those who think that devs won't port games to Linux because of wine, that happens already, so stop crying about it, I want freedom.

[毕贤胜[Linux]]

" I don't see how exactly it's a bad idea though,"
the use of wine encourages laziness on the part of the developer/publisher, as opposed to making a proper port, as well as offers an excuse to NOT provide tech support for the software you purchased, since you aren't running said software in an approved fashion.

[rargh]

yup, + the giving valve the possibility to advertise that all games work on linux is definately a massive selling point. It won't impact publishers at all, since the ones that want to port to linux still will, and the others won't port for 1000 different and valid reasons already, and this won't sway them one way or the other, or even catch their attention.

[rargh]

that yup being for the alienware prophet not penguin tamer, I do see the concern, I just don't think it will have much of an impact on the matter. Devs need so much more incentive to make a linux port, other than just the lack of wine.

[ExperimentalCyborg]

so you don't mind losing 50%+ performance and not being able to play games that came out less than 3 years ago? not to mention the performance and technology potential on linux is way way way waaaaay higher than on windows or mac because there are virtually no restrictions regarding licencing since pretty much everything is open source & free to modify if shared anyways, and everything the os does is visible to the developer thus they're better capable of picking the best api/call/framework to use for their purpose.

as soon as linux drivers are just as - or less - buggy as windows, there are two ways to build your game: you either optimize the crap out of it for unix and port to windows which is framework overhead extravaganza deluxe nowadays anyways so windows gamers won't even notice, or build your game on a "cross platform layer" and get roughly the same performance on windows as on linux, wasting some linux potential but cutting development cost. think boost, QT, unity...

ah hell what am i talking about everything is going to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ console ports anyways if microsoft have their way.

</rant>

[muffin]

I'd rather have Steam for Linux be purely for native Linux games. If we get it in developers heads that they can just leave their Windows games on Windows because the Linux users are simply using Wine for everything, then what's their incentive to release native Linux games? Eve Online comes to mind where they had a Linux port but discontinued development for it because Wine was available.

[ExperimentalCyborg]

Цитата допису Muffinabus:

I'd rather have Steam for Linux be purely for native Linux games. If we get it in developers heads that they can just leave their Windows games on Windows because the Linux users are simply using Wine for everything, then what's their incentive to release native Linux games? Eve Online comes to mind where they had a Linux port but discontinued development for it because Wine was available.

if my rant was tl;dr: wine degrades performance dramatically, has crappy support, makes developers lazy, and native steam for linux is a HUGE boost for linux development.

trust me, if windows keeps turning to ♥♥♥♥ by locking down like they're doing now, you're going to be glad linux is mature enough as it will become the main native gaming platform.

also, custom consoles! prebuilt hardware + custom linux distro + steam big picture + XBMC media center + controller = everything ps3 and xbox360 should have been but never where in a $450 package. bonus points for having a choice of hardware and even the option to build it yourself and still run the exact same games at the exact same performance or better.

[Jenny of Worms]

The biggest reason why it is not a good idea (imho) is less experienced users. Wine prefixes break, and wine is not very stable (especially for directx stuff, i.e. games). Now the average user says "Oh, I can playz dis game on linux wit wine?", sometime later "Valve help meh plz dis game is b0rken""

[hello_world]

I think the wine is not the best solution. In Steam should only be high quality games. Valve must guarantee their performance. Wine is always running worse than native debugged code for a specific platform

[76561198074405258]

It not the same, the idea is to get the games working natively under linux.

[rargh]

all valid points sure, but the point is, developers do not care about linux one way or the other. Alot of them don't care about PCs alltogether, and the only reason ubisoft even makes games for windows anymore is because it's relatively straight forward to port (xbox is directx) and making an open GL version would take alot more work, and honestly I don't think ubisoft would be up to that, nvm making a package for every major distribution. Linux is still such a tiny platform gaming wise, the issue now is to get users, not publishers. One will attract the other and users are far more easy to persuade.
Though if the steam box is a hit and runs linux, publishers could possibly be 'forced' to port to linux. Still the thing linux needs is users, not publishers. Publishers will not easily switch to linux, especially without a big user base. Users might, especially system builders who might see linux as an opportunity to save 100$, if linux is a viable gaming platform, which the wine would help in.
Linux users are a minority, and the only way to fix that is simply by getting more users. And having our superior heads up our asses won't help in that.
Valve does not port games that are not valve games. Other publishers won't unless they have a reason to. At this moment they definately do not. If more users switch to linux, they will.

[d10sfan]

I'd rather personally see something similar to Playonlinux, if Wine is allowed at all.

I like wine, I use it a bunch for Windows games, but I wouldn't want to see developers posting wine ports of their games on Steam. It's not a good precedent to set that we are happy with sub-par ports that are made by something the consumer could do themselves.

Instead, maybe have it where Steam Linux users could upload scripts, similar to Playonlinux, and another user could use those scripts to easily install a Windows game on Linux.

There would have to be a way for wine to interface with the steam apis on the linux client, otherwise you'd have to login and logout multiple times.

That would have the benefit of being consumer driven, instead of developers being allowed to do that themselves.

I would like to see a policy of not accepting Wine-ported games on Steam for Linux. One main reason is that it will never run as well as a native port, no matter how great it may run.