Linux always has been an extremely good platform, and with distros like Ubuntu, has gotten a million times better in the last 10 years. Also, given that Android is linux, whats the harm?

I installed Windows 8 beta and used it for all of 4 days before going off my mind. Didn't like it at all. Apart from the buggy nature of the beta (to be expected), it felt way too complex to achieve simple tasks.

I'll ruffle some feathers with this comment, but PC games are responsible for the majority of hardware advances in the last 20 years. Games have been pushing the capacity of ram, gpu's (graphics cards) and cpu's. Bigger, faster, flasher. As a result the spin offs for other industries have been huge.

IF what Newell has said is correct, and windows 8 is a (somewhat)closed format that will severely impact game devolpment, the uptake to the new os will be next to nothing.

I won't even mention the difficulty in getting older games to run on current operating systems.

Let's see what others say now that a 'Big name' has spoken out.

It seems this is going to lead to even more dumbing down of PC games. Ports from console to PC? Shudder...

Would be stoked to see more games ported to Linux. Can play many games already using Wine (it lets you run Windows software under Linux), but it's often a bit of a hassle to get them going. A Linux distro designed for ease of use (like Linux Mint) with Steam and a decent catalogue of compatible games would persuade many people to give it a go I reckon!

Ok Gabe so apples allowed an app store but Microsoft isn't?

Complete bollocks. What is Gabe Newell basing this assertion on? XNA is a dead duck but noone wrote commercial games using that anyway. DirectX is still in Win8. Sure they've made a few changes but it's the same with every version. In fact it's even got some interesting NEW capabilities that may make things easier...

Even if you asume that DirectX was a no-go, there is still Open GL, and you can guarantee that support for that will be good to go for Win 8.

And finally we get to my last point - Win 8 is potentially a goldmine for a whole new group of game (and other app) devs. Those who want to build games for the Metro interface. Maybe many of these will be "casual" type games, but we've seen an utter explosion in the availability of these types of game on mobile platforms.

The real reason Newell is upset? Metro apps will be available only via the Windows Marketplace, not Steam. So he's responding to a competitive threat with FUD.

Typical of someone who's running scared.

Mickysoft is following the same business model that it developed in 1984; Strangle the market with its products so that most business rely on their software, then every three or four years release a new OS and office suite that are not only clunkier and slow down the fastest PCs on the market but also have virtually no backwards compatibility, forcing people to upgrade.

It's taken me more than six months to get all my old games(Some from 1997) working on 7, if M$ keeps this up, I'll just remove my Windows partition completely and run older versions of it through one of the VMs I have running on Linux.

Anyone who thinks we need M$ and their plethora of dinky software releases in this day and age is either a non-techy or a noob.

Imagine the day a game box has "Recommended OS: Windows 10 or compatible emulator." I guess dreams are free right?

Developers go where the market is. Linux has how much of the desktop market again?

I can't even see Valve developing HL3 for a market share of <5%

I onmly use windows for the thing it is best at, namely gaming. All my other stuff is done on a Linux computer. Given what gabe newell is saying, it looks like everything will be on the Linux computer soon.

I suspect some tech journalists, or some commenters, will reference back to when Newell trashed PS3 and then turned around to praise it later, but before anyone uses that, keep in mind Gabe KNOWS the PC market better than any other. Valve wasn't too big in consoles until The Orange Box and that was easy porting while distribution was handled by EA, but when it comes to PC, the man has to be listened to.

He was a Microsoft millionaire back in the day before starting Valve. PC technology has been his entire life. The man knows the personal computer, more personally than many.

If Microsoft is turning away from gaming to focus more on aesthetic UIs, they're dooming computer technology as a whole.

As Crowbar said, PC gaming has driven the advancement of hardware for decades. Apple has shied away from gaming for a while now and though they've found a large base in media production, they're barely catching up to PC's in terms of hardware. Why? Because their base doesn't need better graphics, faster processors or more RAM. They optimize their software so incredibly well, it's not necessary.

If other PCs go the same route, gaming will lag horribly behind as well as all technology.

In short, PC gaming is important to all computer tech, Gabe is a genius when it comes to computer tech and all should listen.