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Steam Has Brought 1,600 Games To Linux In the Past Three Years (phoronix.com)

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

An anonymous reader writes: Today marks three years since Valve's Steam client went into beta on Linux. In that time over 1,600 games have become natively available for Linux. Going beyond having many new Linux games, Phoronix recaps, "we've seen Valve make significant investments into the open-source graphics stack and other areas of Linux (in part through their sponsorship of Collabora and LunarG). Valve developers are significantly pushing SDL2. We've seen more mainstream interest in Linux gaming, and Valve has been heavily involved in the creation of the Vulkan graphics API. They have given away their entire game collection to the Mesa/Ubuntu/Debian upstream developers, and much more." The three-year anniversary is coincidentally just days before the release of Steam Machines.

4 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Re:1600 by ledow · · Score: 5, Informative

    I suggest you peruse the actual lists once in a while:

    https://steamdb.info/linux/

    Although "big-studio" games are largely absent, an awful lot of top-end indie games are there. Indie doesn't always mean shite in a bundle, by the way.

    Killing Floor, X3, Civ, Bioshock, Trine and all kinds of other games are well worth the money.

    And there are definitely more of them lately, and bigger titles are getting more attention since Valve started their Linux port.

  2. No Tetris on Linux by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't think Tetris® was ever officially ported to GNU/Linux. The original designer of Tetris is in fact on record as an opponent of free software. He said free software "should never have existed" because it "destroys the market". It makes me wonder why the Free Software Foundation hasn't been sued yet for one of the .el files included with Emacs. The closest to Tetris for Linux is probably EA's port to Android.

    "EA's port: It's in the game."

  3. Exit to GNOME by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unless Valve wants to pull a little "Chromebook" move, say a switch that swaps between console mode and desktop mode and suddenly you have an alternate desktop for basic use.

    Last time I checked, SteamOS had exactly such a switch: Exit to GNOME.

  4. Re:1600 by AntiSol · · Score: 4, Informative

    As you say it's getting better for the bigger titles. Here are some of the bigger games you forgot to mention:
    * Borderlands 2
    * Borderlands The Pre-sequel (linux version on launch day!)
    * XCOM: Enemy Unknown
    * All the valve games (Half-Life + all addons, HL2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, counterstrike, portal 1+2, etc etc)
    * KOTOR 2 got a port not long ago
    * Shadow Warrior (the reboot/remake thing, it's awesome)
    * Serious Sam 3
    * Saints Row 4 (announced, I can't wait)
    Also the ones you mention: Civ 5, Bioshock Infinite, X3, etc

    Also the next Crysis engine will have Linux support, as does Unreal Engine 4 and the new Unreal Tournament (which is open source and community built! You can sign up, clone the git tree, and compile it now).

    There are also a bunch of really great not-so-huge titles:
    * Oddworld: New & Tasty
    * Grim Fandango Remastered
    * Postal 1+2 (available before steam)
    * Duke Nukem 3D
    * Shadow Warrior (original)
    * Psychonauts (available before steam)
    * Goat Simulator
    * Spec Ops: The Line
    * Kerbal Space Program (I think this just might be the best game ever made)

    As an exclusive Linux user, I have a huge backlog of games I haven't gotten around to playing yet. It's awesome!