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Steam On Linux Now Has Over a Thousand Games Available

Posted by Soulskill on from the year-of-linux-on-the-console dept.

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?

22 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. If Xorg would fix... by Rei · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...the bug that prevents me from having accelerated graphics in Linux, I'd be among that 1%. Until then? Reboot... reboot.... reboot... reboot...

    --
    "Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." -- Primer
    1. Re:If Xorg would fix... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, this is open source, so when bugs are found, they are fixed quickly.

    2. Re:If Xorg would fix... by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The problem is that the OP of the bug report has only tested on nVidia binary drivers, by the look of it, and has not managed to reproduce on nouveau. Only an nVidia engineer has said that it was an X bug, nobody else, and that's hardly gospel.

      Maybe it's just a cock-up in their binary driver? Who knows? And it doesn't look like an awful lot of people have the same problem.

    3. Re:If Xorg would fix... by armanox · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hard to say. It could be broken like the nvidia engineer says, and everyone else just allowing something to work that the spec says shouldn't.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  2. Year of the... by MacDork · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Linux desktop/gaming/etc. They don't just have linux games. They're going to be shipping linux hardware! Nice hardware. I'm excited to see titles like Dying Light treating Linux as first class citizens.

    1. Re:Year of the... by MacDork · · Score: 3, Interesting

      outdated by November 2015

      LOL, you didn't even read the specs did you? 6th gen intel processor. Not haswell. Not new 5th gen broadwell. 6th gen skylake. If anything, it's so cutting edge, I'd worry about it shipping in time for xmas given Intel's lousy track record with broadwell.

      Also, 970m isn't going anywhere any time soon. It's going to be early/mid 2016 at the soonest before Pascal GPUs ship out of nvidia.

      Also(!) Zotac tends to ship barebones systems in addition to full systems. Don't like the RAM/disk provided? Get a barebones and choose your own.

  3. It will never be the year of Linux Gaming. by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just like the year of Networking it will never happen. If it happens it will just keep creeping up until you notice it is everywhere and then look back and wonder when was the year of X.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  4. Thanks to the Humble Bundle by pecosdave · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
    1. Re:Thanks to the Humble Bundle by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Interesting

      >> Once it works with Mac or Linux making it work with the other is trivial.
      >
      > Are you for serious? Maybe if your middleware supports Linux yea, otherwise not so much.

      Of course he's serious.

      Once you get past coding for DirectX only, the gap between that and the next thing is MUCH smaller. That's why Mac companies are doing the most interesting Linux ports right now.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:Thanks to the Humble Bundle by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Trolling? There's no harm in running a mixed-mode system. It makes your kernel slightly larger and means 32-bit shared libraries will be loaded when and only when you're actually using 32-bit programs. You still get the speedup for software compiled in long mode. Given that the CPU designers baked the support logic into your CPU anyway, there's really no downside ot using that support when it makes sense.

      --
      vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
  5. I'm a Member of That 1% by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The summary maybe should have mentioned something more important: SteamOS is basically Debian Linux with Steam libraries. Valve likely wants to release SteamOS hardware and is pushing for ports/originals that target that platform. If this takes off, it's great news for gaming in Linux as it's just a matter of installing the right packages to be able to run these games. In fact repo.steampowered.com already has packages that you can install on 64 bit Debian to be able to select SteamOS as a session on your Ubuntu or Debian box. But you don't even need to go that far -- if you're running Ubuntu and have a steam account, please try this: apt-get install steam. It's that easy and like the article says there are many great titles. I highly recommend Faster Than Light.

    Is 2015 the year of the Linux gaming system?

    Could we please stop this shit? Please?

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:I'm a Member of That 1% by armanox · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's equally easy on Fedora (I think you need to enable RPMFusion first) - 'yum install steam' and you're good to go.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    2. Re:I'm a Member of That 1% by waspleg · · Score: 3, Interesting

      it's not just likely, they already have a bunch of companies releasing stuff in November.

      There is also a Steam community group where they post announcements, with a DIY section. It's also meant as a console/htpc replacement not as a desktop replacement.

      If and when it's stable/good enough I might eventually actually be able to run Linux as my primary desktop with some SteamOS packages on the side (Windows 7 Ultimate at home, because I'm a gamer). I'm glad they chose Debian instead of Ubuntu in the end because that's not what they said they were going to do early on.

      However the assholes spamming every game thread with "When will there be a Linux version" then often being very snarky, rude and arrogant about it aren't helping the cause much.

    3. Re:I'm a Member of That 1% by The_Dougster · · Score: 3, Informative

      I recently got it working on Gentoo with the usual fiddling around. A portage overlay makes this pretty painless and there is a decent guide. http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/St... It's just a matter of building appropriate compatibility libs somewhat akin to supporting 32-bit binaries on a 64-bit system. I was impressed enough that I did a little re-partitioning to allocate a couple hundred gig sandbox for Steam to live in. Some of those games are big!

      What's cool is that, for me, linux steam came with the batteries included. I have a fair smattering of games for it that I've already accumulated just as a side-affect of their being cross platform titles.

      --
      Clickety Click ...
  6. Re:Redolent of the past. by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Exclusivity bribes are on the wane even in console gaming land. Modern development costs means that the size of the bribe needed to provide the game's publisher with confidence it can still turn a profit despite locking out part of the market is getting ludicrous. If a developer/publisher expects that a platform will generate enough sales to be worth the porting costs, the general rule these days is that they will do the port.

    Valve is notoriously secretive about its sales figures, but it's increasingly clear that the Steam platform is a direct and significant competitor to Sony's Playstation platforms and, more crucially, Microsoft's Xbox platforms.

    Valve are not in a happy commercial place for so long as they are dependant upon their platform sitting on top of one of their competitors' products. They had a bad scare with the Windows 8 app store (though it turned out to be essentially a false alarm on this occasion). So it's entirely unsurprising that they are encouraging alternatives to Windows.

  7. this is 2015 by stud9920 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Tuxracer and xbill don't count as games anymore

  8. Wasn't it 2013 already? by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Wow, that's.... by pastafazou · · Score: 5, Funny

    ....almost a game per user!!!

  10. It has been for me, started with Civ 5 by Maltheus · · Score: 4, Informative

    It started with Civilization 5 last summer. It got me to install Steam. I ended up buying about eight games since. I'd probably buy a lot more games, if more of them supported Linux. We have money too, ya know.

  11. effect on Microsoft. by neghvar1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:Quality vs Quantity by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not going to argue that every one of those games is fantastic, there is certainly a lot of questionable quality in there, but the problem isn't nearly so bad as you make it out to be.

    Steam lists 1001 games that run on Linux and have enough user ratings to give it a score, and 791 of them have good user ratings (defined by 70% or more of user reviews being positive for the title). 168 have mixed reviews (40%-70%). 42 have bad reviews (0%-40%.

  13. Re:% of total sales by Daniel+Hoffmann · · Score: 3, Informative

    You know after posting this I went to steam to check top sellers, in the front page ALL of them support linux. There is even one that supports linux but does not support mac (Dying Light)! The situation improved far faster than I expected...

    Most AAA tittles still don't support linux, I originally thought that the AAA would support linux before the more indie tittles would, supporting multiple platforms require a lot more QA and I thought the AAA would be the only ones with enough money and time to do it.