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This is quite interesting, it seems Valve are actually doing some more curating on their store now ahead of the SteamOS launch.
A user on reddit posted about ~35 titles having their SteamOS icons vanish. To quote the user:
I've checked myself, and I can see that Ticket to Ride, Anodyne, Lume, WAKFU, Starbound, Evoland, Oniken, StarMade and Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten have had their icons removed. I'm not sure what other games have seen the change, as that's a lot of games to go through to find out.
I spoke with the developer of StarMade who said this:
I spoke with other developers, but some are still looking into why, and some asked me not to mention them here.
It makes perfect sense, you wouldn't want a new SteamOS user to find out a game that advertised SteamOS support needed some outside launcher/installer for something like adobe air, or flash or anything else that needs a fair bit of manual interaction not directly possible in the SteamOS interface.
I guess the minor issue for us here, is that people on desktop Linux can't get these games on Steam now, but they do still show in my library, and are installable. It's probably a good thing though, as it means any game with a SteamOS icon should install on desktop Linux without the hassle of hunting down extra's. I wonder how far this will go though? Will they remove all games that have a launcher that doesn't work in fullscreen? It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
They aren't removing the games from your library, so let's not go ringing alarm bells. However, I did say a long time ago I was worried about SteamOS becoming separated from Linux and people thought Valve wouldn't do it, I thought they wouldn't, but this could be the start for all we know.
A user on reddit posted about ~35 titles having their SteamOS icons vanish. To quote the user:
QuoteMy last three data points are:
25/09/15 - 1521 games
09/10/15 - 1555 games
16/10/15 - 1535 games
I've checked myself, and I can see that Ticket to Ride, Anodyne, Lume, WAKFU, Starbound, Evoland, Oniken, StarMade and Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten have had their icons removed. I'm not sure what other games have seen the change, as that's a lot of games to go through to find out.
I spoke with the developer of StarMade who said this:
@gamingonlinux It is because the game requires Java. When the new launcher comes out this should be resolved!
— StarMade (@star_made) October 17, 2015
I spoke with other developers, but some are still looking into why, and some asked me not to mention them here.
It makes perfect sense, you wouldn't want a new SteamOS user to find out a game that advertised SteamOS support needed some outside launcher/installer for something like adobe air, or flash or anything else that needs a fair bit of manual interaction not directly possible in the SteamOS interface.
I guess the minor issue for us here, is that people on desktop Linux can't get these games on Steam now, but they do still show in my library, and are installable. It's probably a good thing though, as it means any game with a SteamOS icon should install on desktop Linux without the hassle of hunting down extra's. I wonder how far this will go though? Will they remove all games that have a launcher that doesn't work in fullscreen? It's going to be interesting to see what happens.
They aren't removing the games from your library, so let's not go ringing alarm bells. However, I did say a long time ago I was worried about SteamOS becoming separated from Linux and people thought Valve wouldn't do it, I thought they wouldn't, but this could be the start for all we know.
I'm afraid I disagree, even on Ubuntu I've been annoyed by a few titles not including things I have to end up getting myself, can't remember any right off the top of my head, but it's a nuisance.
Did they remove it because it requires Java? Java is required by a lot of things, I don't really see how this is an issue.
Also, the Steam client automatically installs required frameworks on Windows. They should bring that to SteamOS too (but not to other desktop distros - or at least not by default)
Last edited by Hori at 16 October 2015 at 5:18 pm UTC
I don't think so. Puppy Games and Orangepixel's games all run on Java, as far as I can recall, and they still have the SteamOS icon.
Last edited by edve98 at 16 October 2015 at 5:36 pm UTC