I wrote a letter to Gabe Newell about a month back, a few days after I published an article about running the Orange Box using WINE. He personally requested feedback during the Developer Commentary within the game, and as I expected - received no response.

It’s not something I take personally, as I figure he’s pretty busy. However, when I wrote a similar letter after the release of Half Life 2, I received an immediate reply in less than a few minutes - pretty astonishing. Here’s the unanswered letter that mentions the “L” word - Linux.

Since I wrote this letter, that article has received over 27,000 views - at a rate of more than 500 hits per day after the initial spike of hitting the front page of Digg.

Here is a picture of the stats:

________________________________
Subject: This Is Not Your Average Email
From: wayne@fsckin.com
Date: Wed, October 17, 2007 2:45 pm
To: gaben@valvesoftware.com

Gabe,

With the amount of email you likely receive, I really hope you have a good handle on GTD.

I love your games, and please allow me to extend a huge pat on the back to everyone who works for Valve on finally shipping Team Fortress 2. I’ve been waiting as many years as you have. I really enjoyed the Developer Commentary, and hope that future games that you publish include that feature.

You probably don’t enjoy hearing the “L word” mentioned over and over via email, forums, news, etc, however, I’d like to let you know that I have written a how to on playing all of the games in the Orange Box on Linux. Since it was published just 3 days ago, it has received well over 13,000 unique visitors. I’ve written dozens of articles, and most simply do not see this level of attention.

http://www.fsckin.com/2007/10/15/how-to-run-team-fortress-2-half-life-2-hl2-ep-12-in-ubuntu-using-wine/

It is easily understood that providing a Linux client simply makes your rendering engine and tool chain a little bit more attractive to those who wish to license your engine. In the same vein, trying to keep a licensed, secured, up to date Windows installation around just for your games is also an inefficient usage of my resources.

Add my voice to the growing number of people who have switched from Windows and crossed over to using Linux “on the desktop.”

I’d like to propose a toast: Here’s to dreaming of the day when we can run your _fantastic_ video games in Linux.

Best Regards,
Wayne Richardson

________________________________

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Tags: email, Gabe Newell, Rant, Valve Software