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Valve open sourced Steam Audio including the SDK and Plugins

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Steam Audio is a full-featured audio solution for game developers, and now anyone can pretty much do anything with it as Valve has made it entirely open source. Valve continues to show to others how it's done, with lots of their developers and contracts with others (like CodeWeavers for Proton) working on various open source projects.

Writing in an announcement on Steam, Valve said "With this release, our goal is to provide more control to developers, which will lead to better experiences for their users, and hopefully valuable contributions back to the wider community of developers using Steam Audio". It's available under the Apache 2.0 license, as Valve say it allows "developers to use Steam Audio in commercial products, and to modify or redistribute it under their own licensing terms without having to include source code". Obviously though they hope people contribute back to it.

Part of why they've open sourced it is because development is driven by their own internal projects, which might not line up with what external developers need so they did this to remove roadblocks for developers to pick it up and do what they want.

Steam Audio works on Linux, macOS, Windows, Android with integrations for Unity, Unreal Engine 4, a C API and FMOD Studio.

See more on the official site and GitHub.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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7 comments

M@GOid Feb 20
Too bad 5.1 surround sound is broken on the Linux port of L4D2 since launch. It works well in other Valve games, tough.
Yay for Valve! Maybe with another development hurdle out of the way they can put the extra developers to work writing Portal code for Source 2.
Pyretic Feb 20
Quoting: NathanaelKStottlemyerthey can put the extra developers to work writing Portal code for Source 2.
Out of curiosity, why do you think they're porting any of the Portal games to Source 2?
This seems like a Good Thing. Well done Valve.
Quoting: Pyretic
Quoting: NathanaelKStottlemyerthey can put the extra developers to work writing Portal code for Source 2.
Out of curiosity, why do you think they're porting any of the Portal games to Source 2?

It's mostly wishful thinking. However, if you notice, recently Valve has been really rolling out updates for their games. I think/ I'm hoping that it's in a way cleaning stock before working on a new game.
I am trying to remember: Wasn't Ethan Lee doing work for Valve on Linux audio? Is this connected?

(Obligatory: Ethan Lee is awesome)
I'm glad for the move. Now if only they would open soruce the Steam client and their game engine.
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