A Casual Connect game conference isn’t where you’d expect to find Valve boss Gabe Newell throwing fightin’ words at Microsoft, but yesterday Venture Beat reported on the PC gaming godfather openly calling Windows 8 “a catastrophe” and implied that he’s positioning Steam for a big gamer migration to Linux. Is it time to panic? – via Venture BeatGabe’s ready to blow Microsoft’s popsicle stand.In short, probably not. The end times Newell’s prophesying here sound to me like warning shots across Microsoft bow, signaling that he’s ready to take his business to another platform if it does something fundamentally stupid and continues down the path of a semi-walled-garden OS.Newell doesn’t specify exactly what he doesn’t like about Windows 8 (and Valve has yet to respond to my request for clarification,) but he’s likely referring to Microsoft’s new Apple-like app store. That’ll be a direct competitor to Steam, pre-installed on every new PC sold,diablo 3 gold (http://www.adiablo3gold.com), where every application sold will require Microsoft’s stamp of approval. Given what happened to Netscape when Microsoft built Internet Explorer into Windows, the sheer omnipresence of this store is definitely a cause for alarm at Valve, even if it’s doubtful (or laughable, even) that Microsoft could put out anything that provides remotely as good a user experience as Steam. The Windows 8 Start Screen can certainly be described as a catastrophe.So what does this mean for gamers? In the short term, not much. It doesn’t necessarily mean you should avoid Windows 8 because it’s bad for your PC gaming experience, because there’s no indication that’ll be the case. There are plenty of reasons to think twice about upgrading from Windows 7, but whatever you think of the controversial Metro UI, the “consumer preview” beta removes any doubt that it will allow us to play all of the games that we do now. Steam installs on it just fine. As for the long term, it’s impossible to say what will or won’t happen, but the silver lining to all of this is that no matter what we won’t be stuck with a bill to transition to a potential new world order of PC gaming. The worst-case scenario is that in order to experience the interesting indie scene, we’ll have to install a completely free OS on our existing hardware in a few years — and if Valve can extend its Steam Play feature (which currently gives you access to both the Mac and PC versions of any supported game you buy) to Linux, it could be a very painless transition.