I would like to have a unique question along the lines of 'Do you buy exlusively DRM-free games?'. Would be interesting to look at correlations between GPUs, open/closed drivers and DRM-free games.
Also, in this data, it would be nice to see if there is a correlation between whether people would switch GPUs and what GPU drivers they use. Similarly, drivers and buying habits.

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Looks like they removed the SteamOS logo. Hope they get that fixed soon.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: AuleWhat about "Best Overall Port" from a technical point of view (performance, stability, controller/hardware support) - discounting story, fanbase, etc. ?

How about "Technical Quality" or some such so we don't rule out games that are not actual ports but native releases.

Maybe make 2 separate categories for this, if that's not too many categories. They're quite different things after all, both are important, so I think we may as well show appreciation for both.

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Quoting: TcheyBe careful, there is a mistake, the Linux version is not live yet. It will be "soon", but it's not playable yet. When you try to install it now, you have the "Invalid platform" message, and it's confirmed by developper : http://steamcommunity.com/app/393610/discussions/0/496881136921245664/ [External Link]

Thanks for the heads-up, was about to buy this. Disappointing that they added the SteamOS logo even though it's not yet supported.

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According to Venturebeat [External Link], Falcon Northwest has also decided not to ship Steam Machines

Quoting: VenturebeatThe computer maker had originally planned on shipping a version of its high-end Tiki game computer with the SteamOS this year. But because of some limitations of the SteamOS, it has decided not to ship this year.
[...]
“We met with Valve about our reservations concerning the limitations of SteamOS with high-end PC builds, and they agreed they were not issues that could be overcome in time for us to launch a Steam Machine this year,” said Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest in Medford, Oregon. “But they were genuinely interested in working to address them in future SteamOS builds. So the option for us to produce a Steam Machine is still open, and our Tiki PCs have been in production for years as Windows systems and are always ready. But for now, we’ve put our plans to offer a Steam Machine on hold.”

Looking at their Steam page [External Link] prices were $2000-$5000. Somehow, I don't think they would've sold much anyway. Still, always a bit sad to see companies jump ship. I understand their concerns, but on the other hand, the more companies are on board, the faster those concerns are likely to get addressed.

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Quoting: Mountain ManYes, there does seem to be a pattern in the broader gaming press of protecting Windows from the unsavory horde of competition, from gleeful reports about Steam Survey results to disparaging comments about the lack of games compared to Windows to the recent articles about performance disparity. We can't deny the facts, of course, but so many of these articles seem to be written with a condescending smirk and a wink to the Microsoft faithful, and that really bothers me. It's like they're trying to kill SteamOS before it even has a chance.

Quoting: Mountain ManThis is exactly what I mean. There's no attempt by these sites to look at things objectively or put the data into its proper context. It just comes across as cheerleading for Microsoft.

I don't see how you see this article as deliberately disparaging Linux or cheerleading for Microsoft. Apart from the one sentence about Valve improving Linux performance, most of it seems quite balanced. Maybe there's some subtext here I'm missing, but the article pretty much starts with

Quoting: ArsTechnicaOn the other hand, developers I talked to about SteamOS development earlier this year told me that the state of Linux's drivers, OpenGL tools, and game engines often made it hard to get Windows-level performance on SteamOS, especially if a game was built with DirectX in mind in the first place.

which is basically what people here are saying: the problem is the drivers and games built on DirectX.
They then more of less dismiss the Geekbench results as 'close enough'. And even after the SoM benchmark, the comment is

Quoting: ArsTechnicaWhile these are two AAA games ported to Linux by respected publishers, it's possible the developers simply weren't able to extract the best performance from the less familiar OpenGL and Linux environment.

Not blaming Linux, but developers' familiarity with OpenGL, which is a fair point, I've read similar comments here several times.
When most of the Source engine games showed weaker performance on Linux, the comment is

Quoting: ArsTechnicaSince the Source engine games we tested were on the older side, the frame rate performance wasn't the difference between "playable" and "unplayable" in any case, even on maxed-out settings. For games like these, which don't push the upper limits of our hardware, most gamers wouldn't even notice the difference between the frame rates listed here.

which is basically the exact same thing you said a few hours ago. And then they reiterate that games built for Linux will perform better on Linux:

Quoting: ArsTechnicaGames built from the ground up with OpenGL and Linux in mind might be able to best their Windows counterparts; similar benchmarking by Phoronix showed Unbuntu [sic] 15.04 outclassing Windows 10 when running open source Quake clone OpenArena, for instance.

The article's conclusion that it is hard to recommend SteamOS to someone looking for maximum performance is, at this point, unfortunately true. I think most of us here have other reasons why we prefer Linux.

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Quoting: Mountain ManThe other thing to keep in mind is that even with the reduced performance, performance in Linux is still more than acceptable and won't negatively affect anybody's gaming experience. That's the problem with looking at benchmark numbers, because you'll see Windows getting 200FPS and Linux getting 100FPS, and everybody says, "Oh my gosh! Linux has 50% of the performance of Windows!" but does it really matter when everybody locks their refresh rate to 60Hz?

This may be valid for Portal, but if you want to run Shadow of Mordor on the Alienware SteamMachine, you'll have to make some serious compromises in the graphics settings to run it at 60Hz. I don't have the data, but the point remains that if you got the Alienware Alpha with the same hardware but running Windows, you'd get better graphics. And while that might not matter to you, it does matter to a lot of people, just look at any discussion comparing PS4 and XB1 performance.
Also, not everybody locks their games at 60Hz, I have a 144 Hz monitor (running at 120 Hz) and I like to put it to good use. Of course, I also have a better PC than an Alienware SteamMachine, so I'm good :D

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Quoting: mulletdeathI'll also add that I'm really disappointed in Valve's marketing, or complete lack thereof, of SteamOS. Over in /r/linux_gaming the meme going around is that "Valve is playing the long game, just like the launch of Steam itself, there's nothing to worry about guys!" The launch of Steam and SteamOS are two totally different situations, so I do wonder how well this strategy is going to work out. It really seems like Valve doesn't care if SteamOS totally flops because they're still rolling in dough either way.

It's in line with what Valve themselves stated as their plans for SteamOS and Steam hardware.
From an IGN interview [External Link]:

Quoting: Valve on IGN"Usually, when a platform like this gets brought out, it’s a very different working method and proposition to customers,” he continued. “It looks more like a team that’s much larger than us has worked at perfecting something and finishing it, and then reducing risk as much possible and locking down that design, making it ready for a massive initial manufacturing push, spending billions of dollars on marketing. Very different from what we’re trying to do. We don’t have to be so risk-averse. We intentionally are operating this way because we think it will result in a much better product, in the short term and the long term, to be public about this, and to have it iterated with us and with partners and with users. But it lets us start small and grow over time.”

From a Guardian interview [External Link]:

Quoting: Valve on The Guardian“We built Steam for the same reasons we did all this: it didn’t exist, a bunch of people wanted it to exist, no one was building it, so we built it. There was this post-rationalisation of Steam after it was launched; like ‘of course you’d build that, it’s obvious’ – but, at the time, when we were building it, no one else was,” says Valve’s business development specialist Erik Johnson.

“Who knows if it’ll be the same this time, but if you ask customers, ‘do you want to be able to play all your Steam games in your living room with a controller?’, they’re like: ‘yeah, that sounds cool.’ That’s good enough for us to move forward. We’re not obsessed with what market we’re creating or what users we’re cannibalising from other platforms. No one ever makes good decisions based off that kind of data.”

And as you say, they can afford it, they have the money for this kind of approach.

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Quoting: NyamiouThe fact is that benchmark is badly done, with a very old rig that no hardcore gamer who care about performance would have, with nonsense resolutions since SteamOS is dedicated to run on TVs and without giving much informations about the actual SteamOS version used or the methodology. I don't contest the fact that some game, especially AAA games have not as good performances as they have on Windows, I only contest those exaggerated results coming from an (intentionally) unprofessionally done benchmark, the wording and the conclusion obviously.

Steam Machines aren't high-end machines aimed at hardcore gamers, using weaker hardware is appropriate. I also usually like to point out to Windows users how much leaner and less resource-hogging Linux is. So on weaker hardware Linux should have an advantage because less of the limited resources is taken up by the OS.

I don't know what made them choose that particular resolution they used for Shadow of Mordor, but I highly doubt that would suddenly completely change the results. Maybe they just tried to use the highest resolution that was still somewhat playable at highest settings. And from what I remember, the 50% lower framerate is in line with results I've seen before. So any tweaking they might have done would make a few % difference at most, which really doesn't matter all that much once you're at -50%.

They don't mention the exact kernel and driver, I agree they should have, but they mention that they updated the system. So I guess what they have installed is whatever is in the current (or last week, after the launch) SteamOS repositories. If updating SteamOS didn't result in an up-to-date system, then yes, that would be unfair if they used an ancient driver, but it would also point to a different problem: SteamOS is supposed to be as easy to use as a console, you're not supposed to have to know that you even have a driver (of course, someone working for Ars should know). If using the automatic updating doesn't update the system properly, this needs to be fixed. So either they're on current drivers, or there's a problem with SteamOS.

Where I do agree is that using Shadow of Mordor as an example makes it look like Linux performs worse than it does on average. But they state that the selection criterion was a graphically intensive 3D game from 2014, which limits the selection Linux. SoM having an inbuilt benchmarking tool probably helped the choice as well. And we (the Linux community) can't on the one hand use SoM as an example of how we have recent 'AAA' games because it makes Linux look good, and on the other demand it isn't used for benchmarks because it makes Linux look bad.
The article did go on to test Valve's own games, so you could argue that they were actually trying to find games where Linux has a comparable performance. And they mention that games built from the ground up for Linux+OpenGL perform better on Linux.

I agree that the article's conclusion that Valve should improve the performance is completely wrong, we all know it's not up to Valve to fix nvidia's drivers. And that makes it all the more frustrating, since there's nothing anyone can do other than wait and hope for nvidia/amd to get their act together. But for nvidia/amd this likely has a low priority, since the user base is small. And the user base will remain small, because people will point to the poor performance on Linux, so Linux will remain low-priority... Catch-22.

This got longer than expected, I just wanted to write a quick comment...

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Quoting: reaVerI didn't even read into the article, but if he's a target of gamergate you can pretty much stop taking him seriously right there. I said on the first page that it seemed fishy and now you got 5 pages with people thinking the same. And most of the arguments aren't even gamergate related at that.

I had been meaning to stay out of this, but since you seem to think everyone here shares your opinion, I feel I have to comment.
You want to dismiss the whole article because the author is being targeted by a harassment campaign? I'm more inclined to support anyone targeted by that idiocy. Either way, you should argue the facts, not the character of the author.

Quoting: reaVerNow about the developer who has been hit hard by gamergate, that would be Zoe Quinn. She's known for sleeping with game journalists for promotion of her products or to change their narrative. Just read into the gamergate debacle and you can pretty much leave that to rest. The other integrity lacking person in this debacle would be Anita Sarkeesian who is known for being a manipulative liar.

That stuff about Zoe Quinn was basically made up by her boyfriend and he later redacted it. Even if it were true, it wouldn't justify the harassment and death threads against her.
I don't know what Anita Sarkeesian is supposed to be lying about. She talks about stuff she things is problematic in games. Lots of people do that about lots of media. Take it or leave it. You can discuss the academic merit of her work, but again, no need for death and rape threads or even calling her a liar.

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