Canonical may be ramping up its efforts to improve the Ubuntu gaming experience — yasss — but it seems their Steam snap package is causing a few headaches for Valve.
Timothée Besset, a software engineer who works on the Steam client for Valve, took to Mastodon this week to reveal: “Valve is seeing an increasing number of bug reports for issues caused by Canonical’s repackaging of the Steam client through snap”.
“We are not involved with the snap repackaging. It has a lot of issues”, Besset adds, noting that “the best way to install Steam on Debian and derivative operating systems is to […] use the official .deb”.
Those who don’t want to use the official Deb package are instead asked to ‘consider the Flatpak version’ — though like the Steam snap the Steam Flatpak is also unofficial and not directly supported by Valve but unlike the Snap it says so in its store listing.
Steam Snappenings
Canonical launched its Steam snap in 2022 as a testing/development preview. That effort lasted around 11 months, and the build was deemed stable in April of last year, in time for the release of Ubuntu 23.04.
Because Canonical a) develops Snap, and b) packages and integrates the Steam Linux client to work within the tech, any bugs, issues, or quirks stemming from the Steam snap build should (in theory) be reported to them first, rather than to Valve.
After all, Canonical’s engineers are best placed to know if an issue is snap-related or something within Steam itself that upstream developers at Valve should know about.
But it doesn’t sound like that’s happening.
Why?
I mean, do Ubuntu users know they’re using a snap version not made by Valve? They open Ubuntu Software, search for ‘Steam’, click the matching result, see the a reassuring green tick (albeit next to ‘Canonical’ rather than Valve, but it’s a tick), and hit install — ergo, the Steam snap.
While Ubuntu Software (and the newer App Center) shows display package filters and format/source labels within the UI, as well developer/packager names and support links, such features are only helpful to those who know what they mean or to look for them.
Cos it’s easy to assume that anyone who uses Ubuntu, breathes it too. I’d argue they don’t. Ubuntu has a colossal install base, and there’s a good chance most users don’t know what snap is, how it differs to traditional packaging, etc (and arguably they shouldn’t need to, either).
Still, some simple signposting within the Steam Snap to point users to the right avenues for reporting bugs would help shift the burden off if Valve. And with the recent launch of an Ubuntu Gaming room on Matrix, there’s plenty of places Ubuntu users can go to get advice on gaming.
They just need to know about them, I guess!
Could Canonical could tweak their store description to mention their package is not supported/affiliated with Valve? Maybe, but the benefit would hinge on people reading the description, and I reckon most people looking to install Steam wouldn’t since they know what it is!
“If it gets really bad I guess we could start popping a warning”
Snap back to the current situation, and there is another option.
If Canonical’s Steam snap continues to have issues which cause Valve to contacted by users unhappy with the experience Timothée Besset suggests the company could “start popping a warning” to Steam snap users when they open the app.
While that would be seem as an extreme move, would it be unfair? Valve (and its reputation to an extent) is the one being affected as it stands.
Any suggestions yourself? Share ’em below.
I’m curious: do you use the Steam snap? What’s your experience been like? And have you reported issued you’ve encountered to Valve or to Canonical? Let me know below!