Indies On SteamOS, Pt 1: ‘Openness,’ Potential Pitfalls
By Nathan Grayson on September 30th, 2013 at 12:00 pm.
You probably haven’t heard, but Valve’s officially going forward with its plan to launch its own Steam-centric OS, living room hardware, and a crazy, touch-pad-based controller to back it all up. I know, right? It’s weird that no one has been talking about it incessantly. But while Valve preaches openness and hackability, it’s downplayed an ugly reality of the situation: smaller developers still face a multitude of struggles in the treacherous green jungles of its ecosystem. SteamOS and various Steam Boxes, however, stand to bring brilliantly inventive indie games to an audience that doesn’t even have a clue that they exist, so I got in touch with developers behind Gone Home, Race The Sun, Eldritch, Mark of the Ninja, Incredipede, Project Eternity, and more for their thoughts on SteamOS, who it’s even for, Valve’s rocky relationship with indies, and what it’ll take for Steam to actually be an “open” platform.
2K just put money into Twitch
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You might not be able to put a name to the company - a Kotick, a Houser, or even a Riccitiello - but 2K are there, just beneath the surface of some of our favourite things. They are the force that funded BioShock; the real Rockstar Games. And now they’re pouring their cash into Twitch, the de facto home page of streamed PC gaming.
Warhammer: Total War mod finally reaches End Times after half a decade's work
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Creative Assembly struck a deal with Games Workshop for “multiple titles” in the swords ‘n’ skaven Warhammer universe last year. But modder Jubal Barca began work on his own adaptation long before that - shortly after the release of the now-sequelised Rome: Total War. And in clear contravention of the modder’s code section 13*, he released the final version of Warhammer: Total War this weekend.
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