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What games can we expect for SteamOS / Linux with Unreal? Tomb Raider?

I don't want to sound picky, but Unreal supports exporting to Linux. In my world that does not equal to supporting Linux. The way they have their build system integrated with Visual Studio, I doubt we will see a true Linux support in the short or middle term. This happens quite often, Unity is another popular example.

One day people will wake up and see that they are paying a lot of money for something which is available free (not necessarily as in beer) and far superior. This will be the day when we will see true Linux support from game engines.

I don't want to sound picky, but Unreal supports exporting to Linux. In my world that does not equal to supporting Linux. The way they have their build system integrated with Visual Studio, I doubt we will see a true Linux support in the short or middle term. This happens quite often, Unity is another popular example.

One day people will wake up and see that they are paying a lot of money for something which is available free (not necessarily as in beer) and far superior. This will be the day when we will see true Linux support from game engines.

+1 for the first paragraph, -1 for the second. Net score: 0

In all seriousness, I also find the common dependencies of libraries on Visual Studio a nuisance (albeit a small one - most things that are truly cross-platform already support MinGW on Windows).

There's no commercial pressure for most engine companies to support developers on Linux.

Users on linux - yes, but not devs.

Every company I've worked for has used Windows for development, and most of the engines and development platforms have too. One company even had their own Linux-based hardware platform, but still wrote games for it under Windows / MSVC... Even the console manufacturers pretty much only support windows with their SDKs/devkits. One of the consoles even had half their toolchain running through Cygwin, but only supported WinXP & Win7!

-1 for the second

Well it's a highly emotional theme ^^.

To Hodgman:

Developing on Windows is the only sane thing to do when 95% of your costumers use that OS. I'm not sure exactly what your point is.

Anyway, to stay on topic and not get into the usual OS circlejerk:

I hope this means that we will see some AAA titles for Linux. So far it seems that especially indies try to benefit from the larger audience. Unfortunately I am not sure this will happen. One of the problems is that the Linux community is quite scattered, so it's not even clear what exporting to Linux will mean. Another issue is that it might just not be worth the additional bug fixing for the small extra audience especially considering that every flavour of Linux might introduce some different bugs.

SteamOS on the other hand might be a more realistic target for the big companies, as it is more unified and tangible.

That's what I'm expecting.

Developing on Windows is the only sane thing to do when 95% of your costumers use that OS. I'm not sure exactly what your point is.

I was just sharing my experience with you, offering an explanation as to why companies like Epic don't bother with Linux tools: Every console developer I've worked for has used Windows development environments -- even when they're making games for PlayStation or Linux.
Then, because all the big commercial game developers use Windows, Epic has no pressure on them to provide a Linux version.

It's catch-22 - everyone develops on Windows, so no one is asking for Linux development tools, so no-one develops on linux, so no one asks for linux tools, so...
[[and by 'everyone', I mean console game developers -- obviously yes Linux has many developer-users in other fields]]
The thing is, it's not just Epic either -- even if they started providing Linux support (which indies would use), the console guys are still stuck on Windows until Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Adobe, Autodesk, etc, etc, etc all also make the change.
Unfortunately, the Windows environment has a damn lot of momentum.

On the gaming consumer side:
Hopefully SteamOS isn't really that different from other Linux distros, so that SteamOS-compatible games would run on Ubuntu, etc.

I don't want to sound picky, but Unreal supports exporting to Linux. In my world that does not equal to supporting Linux.

The UDK 'supported' Mac in the same way for the past few years (export to Mac, but no Mac-based tools). However, UE4 includes a full Mac development environment.

I think that bodes somewhat well for full Linux support in the (distant) future. There are clearly no real technical barriers to such a port, given that they have already ported the editor to OpenGL/Mac and can compile with Apple's compiler toolchain.

There is however a serious lack of availability of major DCC toolkits on Linux, which is an area where the Mac really shines (a lot of 3D artists use Mac to start with).

That's how gamedevs roll yo:

Work with the engine in Windows.

Create art content on Mac.

Deploy on Linux.

Because reasons.

EDIT: Oh and the tool programmers are like 2 guys using a single PC to code.

Work with the engine in Windows.
Create art content on Mac.
Deploy on Linux.

This is pretty off topic now, but I've only ever seen macs used in studios making iOS games, because they have to... and at a large corporate non-games gig because they hired classical oil painters with no tech skills :/
Have others worked in games studios where the artists (or anyone) use Mac (and not just as a compiler for iOS)?

Developing on Windows is the only sane thing to do when 95% of your costumers use that OS. I'm not sure exactly what your point is.

I was just sharing my experience with you, offering an explanation as to why companies like Epic don't bother with Linux tools: Every console developer I've worked for has used Windows development environments -- even when they're making games for PlayStation or Linux.
Then, because all the big commercial game developers use Windows, Epic has no pressure on them to provide a Linux version.

It's catch-22 - everyone develops on Windows, so no one is asking for Linux development tools, so no-one develops on linux, so no one asks for linux tools, so...
[[and by 'everyone', I mean console game developers -- obviously yes Linux has many developer-users in other fields]]
The thing is, it's not just Epic either -- even if they started providing Linux support (which indies would use), the console guys are still stuck on Windows until Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Adobe, Autodesk, etc, etc, etc all also make the change.
Unfortunately, the Windows environment has a damn lot of momentum.

On the gaming consumer side:
Hopefully SteamOS isn't really that different from other Linux distros, so that SteamOS-compatible games would run on Ubuntu, etc.

I agree. And part of the reason is that even though you may end up doing some work on linux you are almost certainly going to be doing a lot of work on windows too. You are not going to want to have retool for each project you do. I think it is similar to the whole 'why do people keep making games with c++?!?!?!!' Well, it makes sense when most of the toolchain and libraries being used support that technology. Can it change? Of course, and it is. I think it is similar with linux.

Over the years I have moved to exclusively working on linux. I would love to get some lovin from the game industry :) And it is nice to see things moving in that direction, but I do not expect it to happen rapidly for all of the reason Hodgman mentions above.

And, somewhat tangentially, I was blown away by the open sourcing that microsoft has been doing recently. Kudos. Who knows, maybe I will move back to windows one day :)

-Josh