Hacker News Reader

Comment by vannevar | Hacker News Reader

Maybe Steam-for-Linux is really a stalking horse for Steam-for-Android, and Steam-for-Android has a lot more leverage if you don't have to get your apps somewhere else but can just get them through the same channel you're already getting your games through.

View on HN

For me the killer feature of Steam for Android would be if they offered Android versions of games I already own the same way I can play all games with Mac builds on Mac.

Although the list of games that exist both on Android and Windows is small I can think of enough games on Steam (GTA3, Max Payne, World of Goo, Osmos, Anomaly, Popcap games, etc.) to make it an attractive feature.

Steam for Android would certainly solve the current discovery problem that exists in finding quality apps.

This is the biggest issue I have with the playstore. Outside of the top 100, which are really mostly rather crap apps in my opinion, there seems to be no logical categorization. It's a huge pain to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Steam for Android has seemed like an obvious target for me for a good while now - I would literally bet money on it happening in the next 12 months.

Er... It already exists. My friend is in the beta.

That's just a mobile app for Steam. You can't play Steam games on Android yet, but that may be the real objective for the Steam-on-Linux project.

Or, maybe Steam itself will be the stalking horse for Steam for Linux. It makes absolute sense to me that Steam will push Linux hard, planting a flag on the OS in the eyes of gamers, while simultaneously trying to turn this spike in adoption into good will with the Linux community.

They may be concerned about fragmenting their ecosystem since virtually no apps will be "cross-platform" between Android and the desktop without a significant rewrite.

I would venture that a good number of games on Steam target DirectX rather than OpenGL, which means they would also need a rewrite for Linux.

Another option for Valve to explore would be to check the current state of the DX games in Wine and work with interested publishers on improved compatibility. Then throw money and developers at Wine. When they're happy, wrap it up in the Steam client somehow so its seamless for the user and problem solved. The only real issue would be the spector that MS might figure out some way to sue if it gets too popular.

Isn't WINE just an implementation of Win32 APIs? From that respect, wouldn't the recent Google-Oracle case preclude that from being an avenue for lawsuit?

That would exempt them from copyright but their's still the question of can MS dig through their patent trove and contrive some kind of violation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com