Valve Software’s Greg Coomer already revealed that the studio has no desire to develop and release an “exclusive killer app for SteamOS”. Now, in conversation with The Verge, Doug Lombardi has added his own two cents and comments on how the decision to release any follow-ups to their past franchises as exclusives on SteamOS would go against the idea of making the platform open.
“It’s against our philosophy to put a game in jail and say it only works on Steam Machines. It works best on Steam Machines, perhaps … but to get to exclusives or anything else just wouldn’t be our style.”
He also commented on how Valve used Half Life 2 and its subsequent Episodes to get people to adopt Steam on its release. Lombardi revealed, “That may or may not have been a good idea given the condition that Steam was in at the moment.” History indicates that this was indeed a bad idea – there were many criticisms of slow download speeds and glitches using Steam when Half Life 2: Episode 1 first released with it.
Regardless, if there is a Half Life 3 or even Left 4 Dead 3 out there, it won’t be exclusive to SteamOS. Will we ever see them in the near future? The wait continues.