Today we can add another critic of Windows 8. During the annual game conference Casual Connect in Seattle, the founder and CEO of Valve Gabe Newell has shared his opinions on Windows 8. Newell worked at Microsoft on Windows for 13 years and was in an onstage interview with Ed Fries, a former VP of game publishing at Microsoft.
During the interview Newell was very clear about his thoughts on Windows 8, "I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space," he said, "I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality," he added.'
With the alternatives Newell referenced to plans of Valve to support Linux. Valve is currently working to support Linux in their download platform Steam and has released a Linux version of their of its game Left 4 Dead 2. After this game, the studio hopes to make more games available for Linux. Valve hopes that their efforts will also convince other game studios to make games on Steam available to the Linux platform.
As Newell said: "We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy". According to the CEO, this is how Valve has to hedge itself in case Windows 8 becomes a failure. Read more here.
