It is time! I finally have a Valve Index with thanks to supporter Scaine and it has genuinely blown a few braincells away with just how incredible an experience it actually is.

Unlike some, I wasn't originally sold on VR — at all . Partly because of the price factor, which is a genuine issue to adoption, especially with the more limited VR options on Linux with just the HTC Vive and the Valve Index. The big point was the idea of having a weighty device strapped to my face did not appeal to me. I stayed mostly away from it and didn't follow much - oh how wrong I have been all this time. It's simply like nothing else.

The Setup

I was expecting to come across lots of issues getting it all setup. Being much more than pleasantly surprised, it was click and play. Seriously, it can't get any easier than this. Read the instructions, plug everything in correctly and load the VR settings to calibrate things. After that, headset on and away you go. Okay, that's a slight lie. I did have one issue, which is audio not auto-switching to the headset but adjusting that quickly with PulseAudio Volume Control that makes it really easy to switch things around. Now that's all sorted and no problem.

Updating firmware for the Headset and both Controllers also worked perfectly. It tells you when an update is available, you click a button and it just does it. No fuss at all. Honestly, on an up to date Linux distribution - the SteamVR setup is ridiculously easy. You don't even have to opt into any Beta, or resort to anything on the command line, everything is nicely in the Steam UI.

System Specifications

• Distribution: EndeavourOS (Arch Linux)
• Kernel : 5.11.16
• Desktop Environment: GNOME
• RAM: 16GB
• CPU Model: Intel i7 5960x
• GPU Model: NVIDIA 1080 (v465.24.02 driver)

Technically, according to Valve's GitHub SteamVR is still a development release for Linux. So even though they don't seem to consider it properly stable for Linux yet, the situation is still technically extremely impressive. Whoever has been working on the Linux side of SteamVR at Valve - keep it up, you're doing awesome. VR overall is still pretty much in its infancy really and to have Valve support it like this on Linux is again amazing - when you think about the small user share of the operating system for the desktop.

I only have quite a small space to do my VR in too, and even here it works very well. Initially trying out the room scale, where you need to map out your area by walking around while holding down a controller trigger, it only just gave me the okay with a few gentle area tweaks. You don't actually need a space that big which was something of a surprise. That said, I nearly punched out a window and walked into a wall and a door - so standing-only it is with not too much movement. Even so, the standing option still has quite a bit of leeway on foot movement.

Don't have much more to say on the setup, because there's really not much to it. Plug it in, install SteamVR and some games and that's pretty much it overall. No fancy steps needed, because Steam handles everything rather gracefully for you it's just so damn impressive.

Notes for streamers and video content creators

If you're going to capture footage with OBS Studio , ensure you have unchecked the option to capture your mouse cursor. I found that out the hard way with ruined footage due to a nice big cursor in the middle of it. See also: our first VR livestream VOD .

Additionally, it's better to capture the VR View, rather than the game window as you can set it to capture both eyes to give viewers a much wider angle and it just looks better. For both eyes it does give a slight transparency bar towards the centre where it merges the two but it's still fine.

To access it, open the menu from the SteamVR Status box and hit Display VR View. This window seems to have some weird non-standard behaviour and doesn't correctly fill the screen for capturing, so you can force it to adjust with a simple command like this (thanks Corben!):

WIN=$(wmctrl -lG | grep VR\ View | awk '{ print $1 }'); wmctrl -i -r $WIN -e 2,0,0,1920,1110

The Feels

As someone who doesn't have the best vision and has to wear glasses, that was something I was concerned about. As it turns out, not an issue. You really can wear glasses quite comfortably with the Index headset squeezed on tight. Valve clearly though about many types of people and faces when designing it which is quite a big relief. Thankfully it means playing for longer periods is possible without major eye-strain. Although, you can also get special lens cover inserts through VR Optician to match the strength of your glasses which is certainly interesting.

You're absolutely going to want some lens protection though! The Valve Index can be easily scratched, so get some covers on it. I went with the Valve Index Lens Protector from Prettygood3d on etsy, along with a simple silicone cover for the Face Gasket so it can be kept clean and fresh a little easier.

Something else that's been really freeing for me are the controllers. I have a permanent injury in my right wrist, which is painful often and using a mouse or a gamepad can really aggravate it. The Index controllers though? No problem, there's no pain at all. It's strapped to you and moves with you, it's been so freeing.

Game Selection

Right now, the selection of games is limited — for Linux especially. Currently there's around 2% of people on Steam that have a VR set hooked up ( Steam Hardware Survey ), so we're clearly talking about a niche within a niche here so it's not exactly surprising. Thankfully, Proton exists which saves the day here pretty much. Without it, there wouldn't be much VR at all on Linux and considering how it's a small market inside the clear niche, it's going to stay that way for a while to come.

Games tested and working well so far include:

• Half-Life: Alyx - native
• Groove Gunner - native
• Beat Saber - Proton
• Pavlov VR - Proton, although that I refunded because frankly it felt poor. Guns vanishing all the time made it a nuisance to play and so just wasn't fun. Seems to be by design too, quite a lot of complaints about it around.
• Spider-Man: Far From Home Virtual Reality - wonderful for kids.

Pictured - Groove Gunner

Initial Gaming Thoughts

Where to even begin on how it feels to play? I now understand why people suddenly started asking for VR versions of games. I have joined the ranks of people wanting more full VR experiences. VR is something you truly cannot appreciate unless you have actually tried it for a few hours - there's no really good way to describe it, it just transforms everything .

Movement is the worst part to get used to as a newer user. Thankfully, when you buy the Valve Index they kindly throw in a copy of Half-Life: Alyx, which has different movement modes built in. For new VR users, starting with the Blink movement mode is a must, allowing you to quickly teleport to a location. The first time I tried the traditional stick-based push to walk movement mode, I nearly puked everywhere, it was really quite horrible to see everything moving like that so close to my face without me actually doing the walking. Like most things though, you do eventually get used to it and quicker than expected but it still makes me feel a little dizzy when used too much. So, Blink is the best to avoid sickness.

It's such a convincing experience in fact, that I often get vertigo when looking down from a height in VR. The experience is certainly an impressive one. Overwhelmingly impressive when you first start that is. I've bumped into many things, nearly punched through a window and more, it's an experience that simply cannot be compared with when it comes to gaming - but you do need the right games for it.

Half-Life: Alyx, for example, is the gold standard on a full VR story experience. Not surprising though, if it was anything less people would be seriously questioning why they got the Valve Index. The graphics are simply fantastic and the gameplay is brilliant. It's very much a Half-Life game down to the core too, everything about it reminds me of Half-Life 2 but turned up to 11. At times it's so tense you might pop, other times it's just wondrous to walk around a bit and interact with various parts of the environment. An absolutely extraordinary game, and it's pretty darn scary too. There's been numerous times I've completely forgotten how to reload in a total mad panic.

Enjoy a few minutes of me failing in the below video:

Watch video on YouTube.com

The tenseness of gaming in VR can be quite a strain too. Stretching first is a must, as is trying to remember not to stiffen up. Playing faster paced-games like Groove Gunner, Beat Saber and the likes can easily make you sort-of lock up. Keep moving a little otherwise, you're going to ache. Bending your knees a little is a must. I forgot once or twice and felt the pain after a session.

What I am most surprised by is the performance. With my NVIDIA 1080 (as our 2080 is in a different machine), it's been very smooth with the titles I've put some time into. I was fully expecting to need to pull out the 2080 for this but so far it hasn't been needed.

Technical Issues

There are some technical issues to be aware of though. The situation is far from perfect. For starters, sometimes SteamVR as a whole just dies on you. You might be trying to load a game, and find yourself stuck in the loading area limbo and - nothing happens. On top of that, the in-game SteamVR overlay often just doesn't work so you have to restart SteamVR until it does. Thankfully, restarting SteamVR is a pretty quick experience so it's not too much trouble but definitely still very very annoying.

Out of the box the microphone will also not work, this is an issue with Pulse Audio it seems. Opening this file:

/etc/pulse/daemon.conf

And setting this:

default-sample-rate = 48000

Will fix it and then you have the working microphone. However, some times it seems to just fail to initialize. Restarting SteamVR and the headset seems to fix that. Doesn't happen often but it does happen.

Like taking screenshots? Well, here's another problem, you can't take them with the controllers. F12 on the keyboard works but it seems still years later it's not working as it should be and that's not helpful when you have a headset on. Want to adjust your volume in the SteamVR Overlay? That doesn't work either, also hasn't for years .

Games played through Proton often seem to have audio crackling too. I'm not entirely sure yet on a good solution to properly solve it. Setting the commonly given "PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 %command%" launch option does nothing, restarting Pulse Audio also does nothing. The only way I've found is having Pulse Audio Volume Control open. It would be good if the root cause of this issue could be found, as it's the single most annoying thing about SteamVR on Linux right now.

If you're a Twitch or YouTube livestreamer, getting the chat to show up in your HMD is not exactly click and play. Sadly, there's currently no really simple way to do it. I'm currently waiting on Collabora upgrading xrdesktop for GNOME 40, so I can bring over a transparent chat window overlay. Once that's working, I'll be testing and reporting on that.

Lastly, not a technical issue but something to know - the Base Stations give off quite an annoying high-pitched noise when turned on. Thankfully though it is quite quiet but I imagine for some it could give headaches but you don't hear it when you have even some quiet music on so it's not too bad. The Base Stations on Linux won't power down when you're done. Not a big problem but the sound is annoying, you can try something like the SteamVR Utils for Linux or just have them in a switchable power-socket which is faster than any powering up/down via software.

So, there's plenty of rough edges you need to be aware of when doing SteamVR on Linux. I've covered a few on the main annoying bits here.

More thoughts

Is VR like this the future of gaming? Originally, I would have laughed at anyone who said yes. Now though? I'm not so sure. It's so ridiculously immersive that you forget you're even wearing a headset. To the point that I've punched the headset a few times when bringing my hands up — woops. Still, a high price and wiring everywhere are two issues I hope are eventually solved to make it the future. More headsets are coming out at lower prices which is good and wireless is coming along so eventually they might be a much smaller issue.

Also, once you've got your full kit, that's not the end of your expenses. Oh no. You're going to want replacement face covers, or a cover to put over your existing one to protect it further. The previously mentioned lens covers to protect them too, the high of buying up all the VR games you can get your hands on to experience more of it, controller covers, perhaps even a pully system to hold up the wire from the floor and the list goes on. Prepare to splash out and get seriously broke.

Playing in VR definitely makes going back to flat/pancake (or whatever you want to call it) gaming feel…weird. Everything else now feels so far away and moving a mouse to turn a camera? What is this, the stone ages? I need more VR, MORE! That said, I can't imagine how sweaty and gross an experience it's going to be in the hotter months of the year, and in the UK we don't really have houses with air conditioning but we don't have plenty of insulation so we're not exactly ever prepared for warmer times.

While my time with it is limited so far (SteamVR says ~33 hours clocked), it's already safe to say that VR on Linux with the Valve Index seems pretty fantastic. I do hope many more people get to experience it. It's a complete brain and senses overload, it's amazing .

By now you've probably heard either through us in our previous article or elsewhere that Valve are cooking something up to help Linux gaming even further. We have an idea on what one part of it is.

Valve already do quite a lot. There's the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer, the new container runtime feature to have Linux games both natively supported and Windows games in Proton run through a contained system to ensure compatibility, their work on Mesa drivers and much more.

In Valve's review of Steam in 2020 that we covered in the link above, one thing caught our eye and has been gaining attention. Valve mentioned for 2021 they will be "putting together new ways for prospective users to get into Linux gaming and experience these improvements" so what exactly does that mean? Well, a big part of that might have already been suggested directly.

Back in November 2019, the open source consulting firm Collabora presented an overview of the work they have been doing funded by Valve. Towards the end of the talk they mentioned ongoing work towards foolproof and fast instant upgrades of Linux systems. Collabora mentioned it could work for specialised systems like consoles or other systems where you don't expect users to be highly technical. Leading into that, a Valve developer posted on Reddit to clarify more details around this:

The image-based updater work is part of a set of efforts to attempt to improve the experience of trying out Linux on a normal PC with live USB media, and instantly updating said media from the other OS without losing user data. There's no "locking down" involved, as it can easily be disabled by the user to fall back to the normal package manager.

Linux has long been able to run directly from USB drives but what about the next stage of this evolution? That appears to be what Valve are hinting at in their 2020 review blog post.

Imagine if you will for a moment: a SteamOS-style USB stick, that's highly optimized for Linux gaming, with drivers ready to go and Steam pre-configured with everything it needs all direct from Valve and also this special update system to ensure it keeps on working. Now add in some pre-configured persistence so your games, files and so on stay on it and that sure sounds like a new way for users to get into and experience Linux gaming doesn't it? Steam Machines didn't work, so a way to properly experience Linux gaming in full on hardware people already own? That could certainly work.

That could be a much more interesting way to actually market and advertise Linux gaming too. It's not enough to have Linux distributions be fast and stable, and to have plenty of games available to play otherwise we would already be in a better position as a platform. The conversation changes with such an easy to use way to get involved. Burn it to a USB stick, load it on your PC and login to Steam, download a game and away you go — you're now gaming on Linux .

USB drives have been ridiculously cost effective in the last few years too, along with plenty of USB3 options now existing for the speed and you can get quite a lot of storage on them so it would be a pretty interesting move.

Over to you in the comments, what are your thoughts?

With 2020 done and out the way, Valve have put up a 'Year in Review' post highlighting a bunch of facts about what people were doing on Steam and some of the numbers are pretty surprising.

Going over their past Year in Review posts for 2018 and 2019, it shows that Steam is growing nicely. 2018 saw 90 million monthly active users, 2019 saw 95 million monthly active and 2020 jumped a lot up to 120 million monthly active users. That's a pretty huge jump for one year, likely down to the COVID-19 lockdowns across various countries.

To put that into some perspective for the Linux side of things. If we take the December 2020 Linux user share on Steam as reported by the Steam Hardware Survey (0.78%) that gives us a figure of about 939,120 Linux monthly active users - which we note at the bottom of our Steam Tracker . Quite close to 1 million then!

Is Linux growing then? Well, obviously yes it is overall but not dramatically so - more of a slow and steady build up. If we take the 2018 numbers of 90 million, with the Linux share back in December 2018 of 0.82% it would have been 738,000. So we've added around 201,120 users between Dec 18 and Dec 20. None of that is exact of course, we're guesstimating based on the share Valve gives out in their surveys.

Linux and the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer got a mention too which is always good to see:

Throughout 2020, work continued on Steam Play and extending Proton , our runtime for seamlessly running existing Steam games on Linux without additional developer work. We released Proton 5 , which supported many new games, improved performance, and introduced support for DX12 and EA Origin games on Steam. For a full list of changes, see our changelog .

We also saw an increase in developers engaging with Valve for early Proton testing during their game development, and fixing Proton-specific issues post-release. All in all, this resulted in exciting new releases this year such as DEATH STRANDING , Horizon: Zero Dawn , and Cyberpunk 2077 being playable on Linux at or shortly after release.

It's still amazing that Valve do actually put all this effort in for Linux with Proton, and all their other contracted developers to work on other parts of Linux from GPU drivers to the new container runtime system. Lots going on for Linux overall when it comes to gaming.

Looking to the future for Linux, Valve stated their clear intention to continue supporting Linux and not just with what's already mentioned. They said they're "putting together new ways for prospective users to get into Linux gaming and experience these improvements" - which sounds pretty exciting. What do you think Valve are cooking up to further Linux gaming? After all, I've long said they must have some real goals with all this work since Steam Machines / SteamOS didn't go far.

Through 2020 the Steam store expanded a bit too through features like the Points Shop, Text and Chat Filtering systems for both the Steam community areas and for developers to use in their games, the News Hub, support for Subscriptions and more.

VR seems to be doing quite well too, with Valve seeing 1.7 million first-time users of SteamVR through 2020. Valve has also been regularly pushing out upgrades to SteamVR and it's steadily become much more stable. On the subject of hardware, they saw a 66.6% increase in gamepad use over 2019 - showing to developers that well tested gamepad support can often be essential.

All in all, a really big year for Valve and Steam. You can see their full post here with lots of details.

How do you know when someone uses Arch Linux? They will tell you. Welcome to an article telling you about how I use Arch Linux, well sort of anyway. It's a running joke in the Linux community and now one I am very much a part of.

Over the many years I've used Linux since discovering it properly about 17 years ago, I've seen many distributions rise and fall. With that in mind, I've obviously used quite a lot of different distributions. Like many people, early on in my Linux life I was a "distro hopper", someone who can't sit still and has to keep trying everything out. Moving between the likes of Mandrake (before it was Mandriva), Fedora Core (the original Fedora name), openSUSE and eventually feeling quite at home when discovering Ubuntu.

A long time later, i wanted to be a bit more bleeding-edge and have all the latest bells and whistles so I settled on Antergos. It was based upon Arch Linux but gave you a nice installer, which eventually died like many distributions before it. Manjaro was an option too, which I used for a while (two times, years apart) but I found it to be too unstable for my liking due to the way they bundle updates, and they've made a lot of…odd decisions lately that I felt pushed me away from them.

So what to do? I felt a bit stuck. Ubuntu was too safe, not particularly exciting and I didn't want another normal distro. I was told some tales of EndeavourOS , a fresh distribution that is the successor to Antergos. Giving an easy to use installer, with plenty of desktop environments to pick and unlike Manjaro, they are right up close to Arch Linux on the packaging with EndeavourOS sticking to Arch upstream but they have a few of their own extras. This was exactly what I wanted, Arch Linux but easy to install and get going.

Pictured above - EndeavourOS plus the MATE desktop. It's not fancy, and the MATE desktop isn't full of bling but that's why I like it. For the most part: it stays out of my way, it's highly configurable when I want it to be and it's easy to use.

Here's the thing. EndeavourOS is absolutely not something I will recommend to new users, or to even reasonably confident Linux users because for most I still recommend other distributions talked about in this previous article . Why? You really do have to setup a lot yourself, sometimes annoyingly so and there are problems at times with Arch being so fresh with packages.

The most annoying issue so far was a bug in the Arch packaging of libcairo, which caused the demo of APICO and all Paradox Interactive titles that used their launcher to fail to launch from Steam with the normal Steam Linux Runtime. The issues were reported ( #1 - #2 ), then to the libcairo developers too ( here ) and in less than 24 hours the fix was committed. Part of why I love open source and Linux so much at times, because finding issues is often nothing more than running something in terminal to see and then you can go and report it and help get it fixed. Issues like that are why I never suggest people go and use the likes of Arch Linux (or anything based on it) since the updates continually roll in and breakages can and will happen but you find them before other distributions do so it all balances out.

That said, EndeavourOS has actually been great. Surprisingly so too. It's now my /home on Linux and I continue to learn more about Linux every day when going a little out of my usual comfort zone with it.

If you're after something that's constantly up to date but easy to setup and you know what you're doing, EndeavourOS is the tip of the day.

Ethan Lee , the developer responsible for the XNA reimplementation FNA along with around 50 game ports to Linux and macOS has announced they're stopping future macOS ports with a big update to a bunch of existing games.

Don't know who they are? You've probably played plenty of games either ported by them or running on tech created / maintained by them including: Streets of Rage 4, Superliminal, FEZ, Transistor, Rogue Legacy, Salt and Sanctuary, Owlboy and loads more .

Writing on their IcculusFinger profile page, Lee wrote a few paragraphs about a little history before diving into the current state of Apple products mentioning "I've put it off for as long as I could, but after looking at Apple's trajectory vs. my own infrastructure for Mac support, it's looking like 2021 is the year that I have to say goodbye to the Mac as a primary target.".

The good news for Linux fans? According to Lee, "New games, however, will primarily be Linux (and Windows, if applicable) only.". It also seems quite interesting that console releases have been opening up the gates for Linux ports according to Lee too. This is also backwards to what we often see with Linux support removed (hi Rocket League), so it feels a little odd.

As for existing ports? Lee went ahead and updated over 30 of them with the latest tech for both macOS and Linux, so they should all continue running smoothly.

Hopefully Ethan Lee will have many more Linux ports planned for 2021 and beyond.

I also found the bit about drivers interesting, with how they can grab a RenderDoc capture and post it to the Linux Mesa driver issue tracker when they have a driver problem and sometimes get a response and a fix in the same day - shows how awesome open source can be, compared with Apple "reporting bugs to Apple when you're not rich is like pulling teeth with boxing gloves".

On top of all that? The latest releases of FNA , FNA3D and FAudio are out now.

For newer Linux users or people looking to switch, it can be a minefield to try and find accurate and up to date info on what Linux distro to game with. Here to help. What is the best Linux distribution for gaming? It's actually not a tough question.

With how far Linux has come in only the last 2 years, you can play a seriously large amount of games now. Sadly, there's some (quite a lot actually) places out there that seem to slap a new date on old crusty articles and give really bad Linux gaming advice. Most of the people writing these types of articles elsewhere clearly don't use Linux - I do, and I have done for around 15 years now.

Let's start off with what not to do shall we? First off, don't bother with SteamOS from Valve. Currently, it's out of date and has been for some time now. It hasn't been properly updated since 2019! Valve are not working on it but they might return one day. Anyone suggesting it likely has no idea what they're talking about and any website listing it is junk.

Next: Ubuntu GamePack or any "specialized" Linux gaming distribution. You can throw almost all of those types in the trash. They really don't do anything normal Linux distributions don't do already and they can often introduce their own special bugs. I consider them like the old discs you would find in the bargain bin in a local PC store. You really don't need them, don't waste your precious time.

So what to actually install at the end of 2020 and in 2021 to game on Linux?

The answer is actually really simple, it's not a long list and you have two really easy choices: Ubuntu or Pop!_OS .

Pictured - Ubuntu 20.04 running Steam on my laptop.

Why those? Well, Ubuntu is almost always the most widely used Linux distribution by normal desktop users. On Steam, it has always been on top as the most used distribution by gamers - there's an obvious reason for that too — it works. It's what I always recommend to newer users because it's like a warm cuddly Linux blanket. It's easy to find answers for, and it's not complicated to use. As for Pop!_OS, it's based on Ubuntu and since System76 sell desktop Linux hardware with it you can be sure it's also well tested.

Even our own GamingOnLinux livestreamer uses plain Ubuntu! Ps. follow us on Twitch .

If you do want a specialized distribution, perhaps for a console like experience that SteamOS was supposed to offer then take a look at GamerOS . Despite the naff naming, it offers up a good big-screen experience for Steam.

Apart from that, everything you need can be easily installed directly on Ubuntu. Steam for the biggest library of Linux compatible games and for the Steam Play Proton compatibility layer for playing Windows games on Linux, Minigalaxy for GOG games, RetroArch for emulation, itch.io has their own client too for lots of indie gems and the Lutris game manager for everything else. It's really easy to get going too, on Ubuntu you just need to open up Ubuntu Software and search for Steam and it does it for you.

Don't make it complicated for yourself. I say all this as an Arch Linux user, which is a bit of a long-running joke about you always knowing who an Arch user is as they will tell you - and oops, I just fell into it. I'm saying it for good reason though! I have been through Arch Linux, Manjaro, Fedora and more and I still consider Ubuntu to be the number 1 Linux distribution for getting going quickly especially if you're not too comfortable yet.

Keep in mind that just as macOS and Windows do have plenty of issues, so does Linux. Don't expect perfection, be prepared to learn a bit and do things differently. If you need help, we have plenty of resources available for you. We have: a Forum , a Discord , IRC , Matrix , Telegram . You will find answers across there, with the Forum being the best way because search engines pick up answers from forums and do not from social chats like Discord.

Lastly - have fun and keep on gaming on Linux .

Valve are committed to Linux and Linux gaming with Steam, that much is currently clear. They're working with so many contractors on various things, and it seems not everything is as people think.

Recently, Collabora, one of the companies they're contracting with went over a bunch of details like their upcoming Linix Kernel work coming to Linux 5.11 and then a quick overview of everything . Many people thought that a lot of the ongoing work, like the Kernel work was to help things like anti-cheat with Steam Play Proton and it was mentioned by Collabora however it seems that's not exactly the case. Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais commented on Reddit to clear up on some speculation, mentioning that Collabora did some speculating of their own.

Griffais mentioned the Kernel work is "nothing to do with anti-cheat" and is instead for anti-tamper and DRM to function properly while also mentioning proper anti-cheat support "is still a long ways out and will need vendor support". That alone is going to be a sore spot for a long time for multiplayer titles run through the Proton compatibility layer, which is why we have an FAQ entry for Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye (the most popular) on our dedicated Proton site .

Other points mentioned are that the Steam Linux Runtime Container has nothing to do with security, OpenXR for SteamVR was done by Valve directly (Collabora's own VR work like Monado is unrelated), and the "image-based updater work" is actually towards improving live USB media to update them without losing user data.

After a three day event to show off new games for Stadia, along with three special demos now live you would think Google was having a good time. Unfortunately for them, one developer derailed it all.

For a quick recap of the Stadia event you can see day 1 here with PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle, day 2 here with the HUMANKIND demo and as for day 3: you can now play a free demo of the upcoming Immortals Fenyx Rising free, they announced a new exclusive 'First on Stadia' title Young Souls and the strategy game Phoenix Point is coming to Stadia in 2021. Additionally, they expanded their invite system so that if you do invite a friend to Stadia, they will get two months of Stadia Pro free and if they continue with it you then get a month free to. See the Stadia community post for all the info on that.

So that all sounds pretty reasonable, some nice games coming to Google's Linux-powered streaming service Stadia. Where did it go wrong then? Well, they're currently enjoying a serious round of bad press and Stadia ended up trending all across Twitter, and not for positive reasons.

The problem was Alex Hutchinson, who according to their Twitter bio was the "Creative Director for Google Stadia" that tweeted out these thoughts :

Streamers worried about getting their content pulled because they used music they didn't pay for should be more worried by the fact that they're streaming games they didn't pay for as well. It's all gone as soon as publishers decide to enforce it.

As a bit of context here, Twitch has caused a lot of issues lately due to DMCA take-downs due to copyrighted music. You can see an overview on The Verge .

Hutchinson followed that tweet with :

The real truth is the streamers should be paying the developers and publishers of the games they stream. They should be buying a license like any real business and paying for the content they use.

Of course, that's not really a good look but they doubled down on it in another follow up tweet :

Amazing to me that people are upset at someone saying that the creators of content should be allowed to make some of the money from other people using their content for profit.

Not exactly a good look, coming from a person who works for a currently not exactly popular service streaming games. Even worse when they posted these up with what their Twitter bio said they were. However, they're not the Creative Director of Stadia as their profile originally said. They actually worked for Typhoon Studios, which Google acquired and then became part of Stadia Games and Entertainment. So they work for a smaller game studio that Google happens to now own to make games for Stadia. Hutchinson has since changed their Twitter bio to reflect that more clearly.

The problem though, is that their comments have been widely ridiculed and it caused Stadia to enjoy thousands of angry gamers, developers and publishers all calling out Hutchinson's comments. Their original tweet has been quote-tweeted over four thousand times.

It's an easy argument to deconstruct for how ridiculous it is too. Showing off a game is nothing like playing music, or a movie. It's not static content, it's transformed by the person playing it and it's free advertising for the developer and publisher. You need only look at some of the most popular PC games around to see how livestreaming has caused massive surged in people buying those games like Among Us ( source ):

Care to guess when livestreamers picked it up? As another very quick example, here's what happened to Freehold Games with their roguelike Caves of Qud when a single video was done on it, to be clear this is their "whole sales history" ( source ):

There's plenty of other examples of this but you get the idea. There's a reason why so many developers have blanket statements up approving the use of their games in videos. Most understand it's important, and plenty directly pay streamers to take a look at their game. When talking about huge games from big publishers, most developers involved likely never see a penny from the games doing well anyway - only the people at the top do, which makes it even more ridiculous to want to see more money from people showing it off.

What Hutchinson said doesn't even match up with how Google are working with Stadia either. Google are building in streaming features to Stadia, gave out early access to livestreamers to show off Stadia and more. Google aren't dumb and they've distanced themselves very clearly from Hutchinson in a statement to 9to5Google :

The recent tweets by Alex Hutchinson, creative director at the Montreal Studio of Stadia Games and Entertainment, do not reflect those of Stadia, YouTube or Google.

As someone who personally purchased the Stadia Founders Edition, I have been watching in horror.

Unity Technologies, creator on the Unity game engine has now formally applied for IPO (initial public offering) and the documents are pretty revealing.

In these documents, they do show just how popular they are with the Unity game engine. They mentioned that they had approximately 1.5 "monthly active creators" across over 190 countries. That's seriously impressive, with a lot of people hooked into the Unity ecosystem. That was clear though, considering the amount of games releasing all the time powered by Unity.

Their revenue continues to grow as well from "$380.8 million to $541.8 million for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2019, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 42%, and from $252.8 million to $351.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020, respectively, representing period-over-period growth of 39%". So they're clearly pulling in plenty but the numbers aren't entirely rosy though, they're taking on plenty of losses too. Quoting again from the documents they had "net losses for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2019, and six months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020, of $131.6 million, $163.2 million, $67.1 million and $54.1 million, respectively, which included $20.9 million, $44.5 million, $14.8 million and $21.7 million, respectively, of stock-based compensation expense".

Even in their risk factor summary bullet-point list, they make it very clear that they may not "achieve or sustain profitability in the future". That's probably quite common to read in such documents but still not exactly a good look as a whole, doesn't fill with any sort of confidence.

If you're a Unity game developer, this is probably going to be quite concerning. Having more investors means many more people to keep happy. They key point is, will that result in a healthier company and a better game engine? Eyebrows must be raised from many game developers I'm sure. Thankfully, there's quite a lot of choice now when it comes to the tech you can use to design games. This includes various high-quality free and open source tech too from full games engines to cross-platform middleware including:

• Godot Engine
• FNA
• HaxeFlixel
• SDL
• LWJGL
• libGDX

…and so on. That's a really small list, the point is there's loads of choice. I don't want to sound alarmist and certainly not an intention, the point is to keep options open and be aware of what else is available.

Feel free to comment on how you feel about the IPO and offer suggestions for alternatives if you wish to as well.