The Debian developers got the same deal with Valve

Apr 12, 2015 14:16 GMT  ·  By

Valve is now offering its entire catalogue of games to the Mesa developers in order to reward them for the work they've put into this open source project.

Valve has also provided Debian developers with the same offer, and it seems that there are plenty of gamers among developers. To make things even more interesting, the extended Valve offer, made possible by Collabora, includes all the games that will be released in the future by Valve, but also the ones that are already available.

Some companies choose to donate to developers from various projects, but Valve chose a different route, which seems to be equally successful. They could just hire the guys or give them money, but they wanted to provide them directly with the fruits of their labor, which, in this case, is a gaming library. To be fair, the Mesa 3D library is not used only in games, but it seems to be most prominent in that department.

Valve is pulling out all stops

Valve needs to make SteamOS much better in time for the November release of the Steam Machine, the PC and console hybrid that's being developed right now. SteamOS is a Linux distribution based on Debian, which means that any improvements made for it will also benefit the rest of the ecosystem.

"Valve are keen to give back to the community, and we've been discussing ways they can help do that, including providing free access to Valve games on Steam to Debian developers last year. We're happy to say that this has been extended to Mesa developers as well, to say thanks for all the great work. If you have 25 commits or more (an arbitrary number) to Mesa in the past five years, please drop me an email (with 'Steam' in the subject) with your freedesktop username and Steam username. We can then get you access to all past and future Valve-produced games available on Steam," wrote Collabora's Daniel Stone.

There are other important components that power the Linux platform, so it remains to be seen if Valve will extend the same courtesy to other developers as well. In the meantime, Valve is also setting an example of how a company should behave if it makes use of the work of independent developers.