Valve to release an open source version of Steam networking sockets. - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-to-open-source-gamenetworkingsockets-to-help-developers-with-networking-steam-not-required.11483 In a rather helpful move for developers, Valve is about to open source 'GameNetworkingSockets' and it won't require Steam. You can see the source here on GitHub, including the fact that it will use a the 3-Clause BSD license. What's interesting is that since it won't require Steam (they're pretty clear on that), this could possibly help with developers who need multiplayer functionality and end up not doing Linux builds outside of Steam. Given this quote: "The intention is that on PC you can use the Steamworks version, and on other platforms, you can use this version." It's entirely possible that's exactly what they're hinting at. This is something we've seen lately, with GOG games not having a Linux version due to this very reason like Serious Sam's Bogus Detour and Heroes of Hammerwatch as two quick examples of this, so it's quite exciting to hear about. From reddit: This is pretty cool. I imagine this is appearing now because of Fletcher Dunn's talk at GDC, Denial-of-Service Mitigation, as he probably talked about this there. SteamNetworkingSockets isn't actually publicly available yet in the Steamworks SDK; it's so far only really been used for Dota 2 and CSGO, where one of the main features is that it uses Valve's relay network to hide the game server from the public internet, which is what protects the server from DDoS attacks. The most that can be done is to attack the relays, and if a relay goes down because it's overwhelmed, the game traffic can reroute to the server via another relay. So, given this talk, it seems that Valve are planning to open up SteamNetworkingSockets to other games to use. I guess that (along with the description of the GDC talk) implies that if the game is on Steam, they'll be able to use Valve's networking infrastructure to help mitigate DDoS. Which'll be nice. And then the reason for providing an open-source version of the same thing is that it means that developers can write their code to the same API and not have to worry about writing an alternate fallback path if they want to not require Steam. The open-source version will almost certainly not allow for the use of Valve's infrastructure, but it's still a battle-tested networking library that more than 900k users are using as I type this, so... pretty damn cool.

Well shit, that's awful nice of them considering it doesn't really benefit them in any direct way, but rather just the Mac/Linux gaming community. Which yeah I know Valve also dreams of getting away from Windows but still

Got me gud https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/165/56c3fb9f-3d45-4ebc-a119-5f602c28e5b6/Screenshot_20180328-180307__01.jpg

I was super confused reading the op and only realised that wasn't the title when I saw this reply. Garry pls.

if it ends up getting more games built in source again then it does benefit them, source has been falling behind other popular options for years now

It won't, because it has nothing to do with the Source engine.

Man I'd love to see triple A games on Linux :V

this is great! networking is one category of programming I still have yet to wrap my head around, would love to give this a shot.

ya I misread that headline (thanks cutoff titles) and assumed it was an open version of source

Cool that they are trying to reconnect it's other fandoms.

Too bad most AAA devs are stuck to directx and windows api spaghetti tangled DRM.

I love Valve for the amount of technology they've been shaking forth and pushing the last while. OpenVR, Steam Audio, MoltenVK (paid by Valve for the open-sourcing), and now Steam Networking Sockets.