It’s no secret that Valve co-founder Gabe Newell loves Linux, once calling it a get-out-of-jail free pass for the gaming industry.
He echoed those feelings again today during his keynote at LinuxCon, saying that it’s going to be all about Linux as the gaming world evolves.
“It feels a little bit funny coming here and telling you guys that Linux and open source are the future of gaming, sort of like going to Rome and teaching Catholicism to the pope,” Newell said to open his talk.
Newell, who also acts as managing director at Valve, spent a little more than 20 minutes talking about Valve and how he thinks game development will move away from traditional big game businesses and more into the hands of the users themselves.
“The conclusion we reached was that games are going to be nodes in a connected economy where a vast majority of digital goods and services will be user created, rather than created by companies,” he said.
Newell also hinted at an announcement coming next week from Valve regarding “what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room.” That could very well be the Valve’s first console —also known as the Steam Box — which is a Linux-based device that runs Steam-based games on your TV. Newell said earlier that the console’s controller could even measure your heart rate.
In February, Valve debuted its Steam for Linux store with more than 50 games. There are now nearly 200 titles.
You can watch the entire keynote below, which also touches on Valve developing a debugger for Linux and Newell’s thoughts on the PC industry:
Hat tip to Arstechnica
