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Steam On Linux Now Has Over a Thousand Games Available
An anonymous reader writes: This week the Steam Linux client has crossed the threshold of having more than 1,000 native Linux games available while Steam in total has just under 5,000 games. This news comes while the reported Steam Linux market-share is just about 1.0%, but Valve continues brewing big plans for Linux gaming. Is 2015 the year of the Linux gaming system?
I have a significant share of that 1,000 games.
I'm very disappointed when I see a Windows only game, but I can understand why the big developers do it.
I'm even MORE disappointed when I see a game that works with Windows and Mac but not Linux. Once it works with Mac or Linux making it work with the other is trivial. Don't give me the coca garbage - if it runs at full-screen you really don't have to mess with that a lot.
The indie guys are really leading the charge, and based on very visible results with the Humble Bundle "Triple Compatibility" seems to up the success of the bundle, and I heavily suspect it's why they tend to make the one or two Linux compatible games in a heavily Microsoft centric bundle the "Pay at least $10 to get" game.
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Wasn't the Year of Games on Linux already in 2013? Why can't we settle with that? That year was the launch of Steam for Linux and the stream of games begun. We don't have to have every single game on the planet to be ported to Linux before we can celebrate.
I know numerous people, including me, who hold on to Windows because we are avid gamers of a wide variety of games which are not supported on Linux. If game support became a “killer feature” for Linux, then Microsoft would likely receive a significant reduction in users of their OS and Office suite.
Yes, 1,000 games is a good thing. Sadly, 985 of them suck ass, which makes this a meaningless statistic.
99% of everything is crap, so your 'statistic' falls right in line with that. Besides taking a cursory glance at the game list shows that there are a lot more than just indie darlings and ancient properties are becoming available. Stuff like Civilization V, Borderlands 2, and the Portal games are on the service and Linux compatible. Heck, Cities: Skylines and Hotline Miami 2 were released just yesterday.
So, yeah, there's a lot of crap on the service, but there's a decent number of reasonably good games coming to Linux, too. You might have to work a little harder to find the good stuff, but so what? The fact that companies are starting to see Steam on Linux as a viable platform to even attempt to bring games to is definitely a good thing.