Hey guys! Look! Steam!

I haven't read the ToS so I wouldn't say this is foolproof, but I've installed Steam on Ubuntu and am not part of the beta. 1 month+ later and I'm still not banned. Can't do much with it, but it's cool to have.

so ... with starforce cracked ... i could get sunrise on wine? ... possiblely (although that wouldn't really be legally correct ... even though I own the game cd)

I would like to put money, but only in free software, with DRM it's an absolute no for me too!

World of Goo is a (pretty good) non-free game that has no DRM whatsoever ... whats your opinion on that?

I don't have anu money now anyway, if I really liked the game(as much as Xonotic) I would probably buy it.

Cool. Signed any NDAs or can you share your frustrations?

No NDA as such but I think there's things that they'd really people rather not do anyway!

Here's the forum for the group, not sure if non-members have access:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/1/

So dpkg -x can undeb it and I have sort of got something installed under Arch in my home directory now. Only thing is running it, it immediately wants to go into downloading a million Gigabytes of stuff which I'd really rather it didn't do right now. I'll update it overnight at some point and then see how it goes actually playing games.

Steam is now in the Aruch User Repository (AUR):
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/steam/

Means any Arch Linux user can get it I guess.

It has loads of 32-bit dependencies and right now only Team Fortress 2 is available. Also the mouse cursor is one of those funny wrong way round mouse cursors. Don't know why any application should want to change cursors.

I got the beta access too. I installed the package that the opensuse community put together, so that was painless. The Steam interface works rather well, downloads even workshop mods, but doesn't download cloud savegames (yet). I tested on Dungeons of Dredmor and Darwinia. The downsides are performance issues - it's so slow that it's not playable & it seems that after launching a game something has enormous mem leaks. Which effectively leads to a system hang :-P.

Beta ver - nuff said ;-). I think that those problems will be dealt with.

Tried it a few days ago. Steam itself loads, TF2 doesn't really. A memory leak looks likely as it ends up ranning out of RAM and then exiting. Notice there is an update right now so maybe fixed.

Still want to see HL2 on Linux before I can say this is any use to me.

By the way there are tones of people confirming that the work around will not get you banned,also the same trick was in mac no one got banned. They want you to use this all feedback is great but they take beta testers more serious witch is sad.Also some stuff beta testers don't see and people like me and you see that use the work around making beta kinda pointless.

The beta is available for everyone now anyway.

And yeah, maybe they don't want to punish you, but it's always good to know when you're giving Valve legitimate reasons to ban you.

They want you to use this all feedback is great but they take beta testers more serious witch is sad.

Well it's rather obvious that they'd take beta testers more seriously, it's not officially released yet and they expect those testing it and running into problems to give feedback in return to improve it. Structured testing and feedback is also a requirement, not something everyone can do at the same time.

Also some stuff beta testers don't see and people like me and you see that use the work around making beta kinda pointless.

The point of the beta test programme was also to keep a controlled group to make their job easier. This is why they initially only released it to Ubuntu users. Then they expand it to cover other user groups. I have been involved with a number of product development programs and initial trials and you always keep the numbers small initially, then expand, then release. A free for all product testing programme wouldn't work.

They want you to use this all feedback is great but they take beta testers more serious witch is sad.

Well it's rather obvious that they'd take beta testers more seriously, it's not officially released yet and they expect those testing it and running into problems to give feedback in return to improve it. Structured testing and feedback is also a requirement, not something everyone can do at the same time.

Also some stuff beta testers don't see and people like me and you see that use the work around making beta kinda pointless.

The point of the beta test programme was also to keep a controlled group to make their job easier. This is why they initially only released it to Ubuntu users. Then they expand it to cover other user groups. I have been involved with a number of product development programs and initial trials and you always keep the numbers small initially, then expand, then release. A free for all product testing programme wouldn't work.

Ok if this is all true why did valve leave the bypass in there and also OMGUBUNTU posted it here is the link for proof also people have asked steam and they said you wont get banned also the same thing applied to OSX so no need to cry that you will get banned you wont you need valve/steam telling me this i can get it.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/?s=steam+bypass

also people have asked steam and they said you wont get banned also the same thing applied to OSX so no need to cry that you will get banned you wont you need valve/steam telling me this i can get it.

Source for that:
http://linuxgamecast.com/2012/11/valve-o...n-for-you/
Posted on November 25. Hindsight is 20/20.

Again, I'll repeat my point: when you are violating terms of use, you should reasonably expect to be punished for it until you are sure that you won't be. I never said you would get caught or even punished, but the risk is present and you would have had no excuse to defend yourself if it happened. That was just something to keep in mind. I don't see why you're saying people "cry that they would get banned" when clearly nobody did such a thing in this thread.

So is this thread about Steam for Linux or potential penalties for EULA violations?

Anyway.... updated my steam client on Ubuntu 12.04 and installed TF2, runs flawlessly

Ok if this is all true why did valve leave the bypass in there

For their own development purposes. Do you think they might actually have tested it internally on something other than Ubuntu before asking anyone else to? Anyone using it outside of that would be breaching their EULA and be entirely unsupported.

have asked steam and they said you wont get banned also the same thing applied to OSX so no need to cry that you will get banned you wont you need valve/steam telling me this i can get it.

Agree with everything Mr B said, in addition:

If you're going to break the terms of the EULA, you're on your own. They could punish you if they wished. They may actually know that you are breaking the EULA, maybe they don't care as you suggest but it is a risk you take. If you then went on to break some other part of the EULA, they might not take it so lightly because of your previous indiscretion. In such a circumstance they could use it against you to get you banned.

Let's say for example you break the EULA by using it outside of the beta when you're not supposed to. They turn a blind eye and don't care. Then you start making defamatory comments about Valve. They then ban you. Not because of the defamatory comments, but officially because you broke the EULA, even if unofficially it's because you pissed them off.