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PC Games (Games) Games Linux

Steam On Linux Now Has Over a Thousand Games Available 192

Posted by Soulskill 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?
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Steam On Linux Now Has Over a Thousand Games Available More

Steam On Linux Now Has Over a Thousand Games Available

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  • If Xorg would fix... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:06AM (#49233583) Homepage

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

    • Re:If Xorg would fix... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:11AM (#49233649)
      Well, this is open source, so when bugs are found, they are fixed quickly.

      • Re:If Xorg would fix... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:14AM (#49233673) Homepage

        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.

        • Re:If Xorg would fix... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by armanox ( 826486 ) <asherewindknight@yahoo.com> on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:29AM (#49233817) Homepage Journal
          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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Multiple people experiencing the problem, an offer to assist in debugging it in any way possible, and no responses in three months. Do you find this acceptable?

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by ledow ( 319597 )

            How many of those multiple people have done what was requested in one of the very first replies - test under nouveau, where they stand a chance of debugging? None. How many tested not on Fedora, as suggested? None.

            An offer to debug is only useful if people have a tiny clue what's going on. In this case, we know exactly what the problem is - there's an unshared pixmap trying to be used as a shared one.

            And, as someone points out in the thread, there is NO instance of an unshared pixmap being created in th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kav2k ( 1545689 )

        Not sure if trolling or being funny. You succeed at both.

  • Year of the... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MacDork ( 560499 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:07AM (#49233601) Journal
    Linux desktop/gaming/etc. They don't just have linux games. They're going to be shipping linux hardware! [steampowered.com] Nice hardware. I'm excited to see titles like Dying Light treating Linux as first class citizens.

    • Yeah, like that is going to happen. Once they realize there is no money in linux games, that will be the end of that.

  • It will never be the year of Linux Gaming. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:09AM (#49233631) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • Sounds like it's high time for a Microsoft "exclusivity" bribe again.

    • Re:Redolent of the past. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:18AM (#49233715) Journal

      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.

      • 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.

        Sometimes a smaller company needs to promise to produce one or more exclusive or timed-exclusive games for a console as a condition of becoming a licensed developer on that console. That's how "Pub Fund" on PlayStation family platforms works: Sony provides a devkit to an indie studio in exchange for exclusivity.

  • Thanks to the Humble Bundle (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pecosdave ( 536896 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:14AM (#49233681) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • Nice (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:17AM (#49233707) Homepage Journal
    It seems like Steam is enjoying some success where Loki failed. I'd guess PC gamers are subsidizing Linux development at the moment, an advantage Loki lacked. Has anyone put an Xtrek client up on steam yet?

    • Apparently Steam has made it very easy for develop cross-platform, so with great ease developers can target multiple systems. This is great for Steam and the end users who may have multiple gaming platforms.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        Steam makes it easy for developers to publish cross-platform. It does nothing to make it easy to get your game running on multiple platforms. That's up to your (and your middleware vendor's) developers.

        • Well yeah, technically it's Valve that helps people get their games running on multiple platforms, not Stream. But that's still picking nits.

        • In a way, it does make it easy to get your game running on multiple platforms. The base dependencies for Steam are also basic middleware installed on virtually every Linux machine, and Steam ensures that it is there. SDL/OpenGL are easier to use than DirectX (IMO, I concede), and making sure that Steam enforces the dependencies across multiple flavors of platforms does in fact overcome the most difficult aspect of Linux development- dealing with the nightmare of different ways or slight variations in the de

  • I'm a Member of That 1% (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:17AM (#49233709) Journal
    The summary maybe should have mentioned something more important: SteamOS [wikipedia.org] 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?

    • Re:I'm a Member of That 1% (Score:5, Interesting)

      by armanox ( 826486 ) <asherewindknight@yahoo.com> on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:32AM (#49233839) Homepage Journal
      It's equally easy on Fedora (I think you need to enable RPMFusion first) - 'yum install steam' and you're good to go.

      • Re:I'm a Member of That 1% (Score:4, Informative)

        by The_Dougster ( 308194 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @12:49PM (#49234657) Homepage

        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... [gentoo.org] 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.

    • Re:I'm a Member of That 1% (Score:4, Interesting)

      by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:45AM (#49234003) Journal

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

      There is also a Steam community group where they post announcements, [steamcommunity.com] 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.

    • Let's just stipulate that the answer to every summary-ending question is "No."

      Is this the year of the Linux Desktop?

      Is this the year of Wearables?

      Will Mars One ever land people on Mars?

      Is this the year of the Linux Game Console?

      Is this the moment when Ruby on Rails takes over the programming market?

    • Is 2015 the year of the Linux gaming system?

      Could we please stop this shit? Please?

      This is the one time it might actually apply (though maybe it was properly 2014). Two years ago major game being ported to Linux were virtually non-existent. Now 20% of the games from the largest game store on the Internet are suddenly available and generally functional.

      For Linux desktop users that exposition of commercial software is completely unprecedented.

    • Valve likely wants to release SteamOS hardware and is pushing for ports/originals that target that platform.

      Yeah, they announced a bunch of pieces of hardware [steampowered.com] in the past week or two, and it looks like they're pushing out Steam Boxes in the fall. This means you'll be able to buy a game console that's basically commodity hardware, running Linux and Steam.

      It would only make sense that Steam will try to expand their library of Linux-supported games before the launch.

      • Commodity hardware means you can upgrade it instead of buying a new console- at least for a while.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      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.

      Would that be pure 64-bit, or mixed mode 64/32 bit?
      As far as I can tell, Steam absolutely requires 32-bit OS support and system libraries.

      • I have Steam installed on a pure 64bit Linux distro and I've had no issues so far.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rich0 ( 548339 )

          I have Steam installed on a pure 64bit Linux distro and I've had no issues so far.

          Hmm, wonder if they are static linking or you're getting 32-bit libs that you don't realize you're getting.

          You're sure that 32-bit support is actually disabled in your kernel? I'm not aware of any distros that do this out of the box.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by arth1 ( 260657 )

            Gentoo, unless you choose a multilib profile, will be 64-bit clean.
            In addition to the speed benefit, this is also a security benefit, as most rootkits and exploits are 32-bit and just won't run.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rich0 ( 548339 )

              Gentoo, unless you choose a multilib profile, will be 64-bit clean.
              In addition to the speed benefit, this is also a security benefit, as most rootkits and exploits are 32-bit and just won't run.

              The kernel will still run 64-bit code unless you disable that feature. That means that a static-linked 32-bit binary or a package (like steam) that bundles its own 32-bit libs may still work, even on no-multilib Gentoo.

              I don't know for sure that this is what is happening in your case, but I wouldn't rule it out without checking.

            • I would love to hear what the speed benefit is of not having 2 separate runtime linkers that each only apply to binaries of their architecture.
          • He's getting 32-bit libs that he didn't realize he was getting.
            Not that that's a problem... in any way, whatsoever.

  • this is 2015 (Score:5, Funny)

    by stud9920 ( 236753 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:23AM (#49233757)
    Tuxracer and xbill don't count as games anymore

  • GOG.com (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    GOG.com will get there with almost 1000 games and also a lot of games for the Linux platform! ;-)

    • Actually DosBOX runs like a champ. I was playing Wing Commander Privateer in a fullscreen DosBOX session a long time ago, and it's been improving ever since. Since GOG mostly runs their stuff from within a DosBOX anyways, all of those titles are de-facto linux titles as well.

  • Wasn't it 2013 already? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jones_supa ( 887896 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:24AM (#49233779)
    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.
    • It would need to climb significantly above 1% of users before it's even a competitor. 1% after how many years? That's pitiful.

      • On par with Windows Mobile although they breached the 2% mark last year.

        • So windows phone (which I still have yet to see someone actually using it in the wild) still has double the market share of a major operating system.
          Wow.

          • I did see a Windows Phone at work a couple weeks ago. The poor owner was made fun of mercilessly. Especially since she said she just bought it and had gotten rid of her Blackberry.

            That's like kicking your tobacco habit by switching to crack cocaine.

      • If you can play the games you want to play, then mission accomplished. Who, other than shareholders and accountants, cares about marketshare?

  • Wow, that's.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by pastafazou ( 648001 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @11:27AM (#49233795)
    ....almost a game per user!!!

  • Now there's more games than gamers!

    Seriously, yes, I know -- or at least suspect -- there are more than a thousand Linux gamers on Steam out there, but really...when you've got barely 1% of the gaming market, it's a little silly to say 2015 could be the "Year of Linux Gaming." At some point you have to disconnect yourself from wishful thinking and hyperbole and just say "yeah, it's getting better, but it still has a very long way to go."

  • It has been for me, started with Civ 5 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Maltheus ( 248271 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @12:21PM (#49234361)

    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.

    • most aaa games on linux that there is are simply done as a curtasy to the user base linux sales on aaa games would never recoup the cost of even porting it at this point in time. for low cost indie games the boosted sales is well worth it. thats not a stab at linux or anything its user base just does not make up enough sales.

  • It is a market blip.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      It's still money on the table, and the effort to port a game from OS X to Linux is very small compared to the effort to port from Windows to OS X. Humble Bundle's statistics also put Linux users at a 3.7% revenue share. Not huge, but for developers already porting to OS X, or who use some middleware like Unity that pretty much does all the work for you, it's a nice little boost to your revenue.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thebes ( 663586 )

        Oblig. xkcd. 1% of anything but Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc. is still a remarkably small number. Progress? Yes. Newsworthy or worth being associated with "year of _______"? No.

        http://xkcd.com/1252/ [xkcd.com]

  • effect on Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by neghvar1 ( 1705616 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @12:26PM (#49234425)
    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.
    • just not true i fix pcs on the side for people and most users dont give a crap whats on the box as long as it turns on and does what they what it to. meaning as long as pcs are bundled with windows your not going to see any large decrees in windows use..

  • 1% (Score:2)

    by Mirar ( 264502 )

    Obviously there might be more that would run the games under Linux or SteamOS.

    I personally have one full desktop machine running Windows _only_ for games. If I could run SteamOS instead, or Linux, I would.

    But thanks to Steam in-home streaming, I now have more computers running Linux because I can stream from the heavy desktop. Like the NUC running Mint (Kodi, Firefox, Steam) in the bedroom.

  • A more relevant data would be:

    - % of total sales of games that support linux. Ignoring the OS that the buyer actually uses, just if the game supports linux or not.
    - % of the sum of playtime of games that are supported on linux. Ignoring the OS the gamer is actually using during said time.

    With these two datapoints we could reach a conclusion that a buyer could use linux/steamos as opposed to windows and still have a decent game library available.

    A thousand of crappy games (and steam is chokef

    • Re:% of total sales (Score:4, Informative)

      by Daniel Hoffmann ( 2902427 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2015 @01:45PM (#49235219)

      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.

      • 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.

        Small business are often the first to take advantage of niche markets, because fairly small numbers of sales is still worthwhile to them. AAA games require a huge investment in engineering time, especially if they use their own engine or have heavily modified a commercial engine. As such, the much smaller market share of Linux makes less financial sense for them. I'd guess most AAA games that come out on Linux are using an engine that supports Linux natively. If that weren't the case, there's almost no

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      About 20%. There are about 5000 games on Steam.

      Probably not a lot. The hardware surveys don't bother to include Linux for most things because it's such a tiny portion.

      But the old arguments of "We can't make games for Linux because of X..." doesn't hold true - it's just as capable as the other two major OS. It still may not be economical to make Linux ports for everything, but that's another question entirely.

      And, again, the Steam purpose-built machines may change all of the above dramatically. Or not.

      An

  • I can port our paid educational games to Linux/Steam.

    http://www.dragonboxapp.com/ [dragonboxapp.com]

    How do I know how many people would be interested ? Where do I reach the nerd crowd ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ignacio ( 1465 )

      Work on porting to a cross-platform engine/library first. Without that your work will be much harder. And bullet points 6 and 7 in your system requirements are showstoppers.

      Also, you may want to talk to organizations like Edubuntu [edubuntu.org], OLPC [laptop.org], and RPi [raspberrypi.org] since their primary focus is education.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pastis ( 145655 )
        I can already publish on Linux. I have the cross platform toolkit (Unity3d).

        My question is:

        does the effort of

        • * making the last mile to have a nice port (maybe Steam achievement integration)
        • * QAing the builds on a variety of systems
        • * publishing to Steam (including assets, etc)

        is going to bring any revenue ?

        The main issue isn't making the software, it's getting known, sell and maintain.

  • out to be enough for anybody.

  • Valve has done an awesome job of making Linux a viable gaming platform. I have over 200 games in my Steam collection, about half of which run on Linux now.

    The only thing keeping me booted into Windows most of the time is that my primary game is World of Warcraft, taking up about 70% of my total gaming time. If Blizzard would step up and embrace Linux* I'd gladly get rid of my Windows partition.

    * Yes I know WoW can run in a limited capacity under Linux, that's not good enough for real raiding/PvPing

  • Part of me asks why are we still beating this dead horse, the other part likes to think it is only a matter of time as mobile platforms become more prevalent.

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