Speaking of backpedalling...

It was just two days ago that we were pouring one out for the Steam Machine, after Valve removed the section of the Steam storefront that featured the SteamOS-powered consoles. Valve, however, are now claiming that they really do still have plans for SteamOS, and for Linux gaming in general, regardless of how things might appear based on what they're doing (or not) with the platform.

From TechRadar:

Valve has posted a spirited defence of both Steam Machines and the future of gaming on Linux on its Steam Community forums. [...] The forum post, written by Valve employee Pierre-Loup Griffais, insists that the removal of any reference to Steam Machines was simply “a routine cleanup of the Steam Store navigation”, which was “removed from the main navigation bar based on user traffic”.

Because this move sparked a large number of people to speculate on the future of Steam Machines, Valve decided to set the record straight. As the post acknowledges, “While it's true Steam Machines aren't exactly flying off the shelves, our reasons for striving towards a competitive and open gaming platform haven't significantly changed.”

[...]

While Valve is honest about the lack of success of Steam Machines, it highlights that it has learnt a lot from customer feedback, and is working to address a number of issues. One of these is by its ongoing investment in the Vulkan graphics API, which is an open source alternative to Microsoft’s Windows-only DirectX tools. If more developers use Vulkan, more games should be able to run on Linux.

While it's heartening to hear that Valve are still committed to helping build Linux into a viable alternative to Windows for gaming, I can't help but think that Valve's words fail to match Valve's actions, here. The simple reality is that Valve hasn't done anything much with SteamOS; their last announcement that involved the platform was when they announced the beta of SteamVR for Linux over a year ago. And even that isn't going well.

True, part of this might just be Valve's legendarily poor PR-fu, but even if the removal of Steam Machines from the navigation bar really is just a response to user traffic, it's hardly encouraging for  traffic to that part of Steam to be so poor that the section's removal becomes "routine." And there's just no way around the simple fact that Valve's most recent gaffe feels more like they've inadvertently revealed an embarrassing truth, than like a simple miscommunication.

I'd love to be wrong; I'd love to see Valve visibly devoting the kind of time and resources to SteamOS and Linux gaming that they have to, say, VR. But I don't expect to see anything like that announced in the near future.