Valve News Archives

Kicked off this morning in Seattle was Valve's first Steam Dev Days conference where they were pushing their Steam Machines and Linux-based SteamOS agenda, OpenGL/Linux gaming, VR, and other hot topics.

Valve released an updated version of SteamOS yesterday with various improvements including but not limited to reduced GPU/CPU usage and Debian updates.

Built into the latest version of the Steam client is Valve's beta support for VR devices like the Oculus Rift.

Valve's first Steam/gaming development conference that will also push along Linux gaming and SteamOS / Steam Machines is in just a few days time.

For those AMD Radeon customers disappointed by the buggy and poor performance of the Catalyst Linux graphics driver with Steam games, Valve has released a preview driver via their SteamOS repository. This AMD Catalyst preview driver for Linux hasn't been made available elsewhere.

Valve has announced their first 12 partners that intend to bring Steam Machines to the marketplace this year.

At the start of every month one of our rituals is always checking in on Valve's Steam Software/Hardware Survey to see their Linux statistics for the month prior. Let's see how Steam Linux usage was in December with the arrival of SteamOS...

While ardent Linux gamers have likely already heard and own a copy, for those that didn't hear yet Valve's latest kindness, the Linux-friendly entertainment company is giving away their very popular Left 4 Dead 2 game today and tomorrow as a Christmas present to gamers.

Just one week after doing the first public beta release of SteamOS, Valve Software has released the second beta public ISO image. This new release has various package updates and fixes, including graphics driver work.

The Gentoo-based Sabayon Linux distribution is out with a new release, 14.01. This Sabayon release makes it easier to use Steam Big Picture Mode for Linux gaming if you're not after SteamOS.

Valve added the Steamworks API support yesterday for handling their new Steam Machines controller inside new games.

Valve's initial Steam Controller prototype for use with the Steam Machines Linux-based game console will also work "out of the box" on other Linux distributions.

If all goes according to plan, Valve will be making publicly available their Linux-based SteamOS platform in a matter of hours.

Valve has just revealed their first 300 beta units of Steam Machines and their Steam Controllers are shipping this week, Friday the 13th. Also available at this time will be the first public SteamOS images!

Another open-source game has been "Greenlit" via Steam that does support Linux and seems to have quite a following in the Japanese community.

Valve's love for Linux continues... Their latest sign of the game company's compassion for the open-source operating system is by joining the Linux Foundation.

Valve pushed out a Steam client update for all platforms this week and includes a number of Linux improvements and more work on their Big Picture mode ahead of the public SteamOS debut next month.

With the start of a new month comes some new numbers out of Valve as part of their Steam hardware/software survey.

Word has now gotten out that iBuyPower is planning to introduce their own Steam Machines device next year that is powered by the Linux-based SteamOS and will be using an AMD processor and AMD graphics.

Besides shipping a large Team Fortress 2 update for Linux gamers this weekend, Valve also released another Dota 2 update on Friday.

For those interested in some updated Team Fortress 2 gaming this weekend, Valve has updated the popular free-to-play title.

Besides the recent Steam update beginning to land SteamOS changes, the one year and one week old Steam Linux client saw some more improvements this week.

Valve has begun pushing Steam Big Picture changes for SteamOS into their public Steam client, but hidden behind a command-line argument.

It was one year ago today that Valve first made available the Steam Linux beta! While Phoronix was exclusively covering Valve's Linux developments in the months prior, it was on 6 November 2012 that Valve began rolling out the Steam Linux beta to selected participants.

We knew it was coming and today it finally is publicly available... Metro: Last Light is available for Linux gamers via Valve's Steam client.

Valve has begun showing off their Steam Machines Linux-based gaming console prototypes.

Valve has released their latest hardware/software survey statistics for the following month. Is Linux back above a 1% market-share for gamers?

While Valve is mostly centered around supporting Ubuntu right now when it comes to their Linux initiatives, the Steam client and its games will generally work fine on other modern Linux distributions. For making it easier to run Steam on Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the binary package has entered the third-party RPM Fusion repository.

In the latest code hitting the mainline Mesa Git tree is an Intel Mesa DRI driver improvement that can provide for significant performance improvements with Valve's popular Dota 2 online battle arena game.

Valve has updated the Linux build of the popular Left 4 Dead 2 game to fix some crashers and add microphone support.

After announcing the Steam Controller / GamePad at the end of September, Valve has now released a video showing off the interesting gamepad in action.

In promoting their Linux-based SteamOS and forthcoming Steam Machines and Steam controller/input devices, Valve will be running their own "Steam Developer Days" conference that will focus on game development around Steam, their hardware devices, and Linux / OpenGL.

While the Steam Machines prototype consoles are running with Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs, Valve has said in 2014 they will release some Steam Machines that are powered by AMD Radeon graphics.

With Steam Machines and SteamOS just around the corner, Valve released a big update this week to their Steam client.

Last week it was made public that the Linux-based SteamOS-powered Steam Machines console will use Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs in the living room prototypes shipping this calendar year. Now there's a bit more on Valve's relationship with NVIDIA.

After last week announcing Steam Machines as the Valve-backed Steam "living room consoles" (a.k.a. Steam Box) powered by the Linux SteamOS, today Valve has released the prototype hardware details that they will be shipping to 300 beta testers.

Of the newest game releases on Steam, around 20% of them are supporting Linux from the start, but that will certainly rise.

Valve just revealed its third announcement of the week! After announcing the Linux-based SteamOS, then the SteamOS-powered Steam Machines game console, the Bellevue-based company just unveiled their own controller / gamepad!

After Valve announced SteamOS on Monday as their highly-optimized Linux distribution for gaming, today they announced the first "Steam Machine", a.k.a. their SteamOS-powered console for the living room.

As most Phoronix readers are now aware, the first countdown timer is now complete for Valve's SteamBox-related news. The first drop was about SteamOS, their own Linux distribution that's highly optimized for gaming.

Valve has launched a new part of the website where they have initiated a countdown timer for "The Steam Universe is Expanding in 2014."

For those that didn't yet watch Gabe Newell's talk about Linux gaming, at the end of the presentation he notes next week will be more information from Valve about their plans to bring Linux into the living room.

Gabe Newell was one of the prominent speakers today during the first day of LinuxCon in New Orleans. Here's an upload of his presentation where he's trumpeting the benefits of Linux for servers and gaming. Gabe believes, "Linux is the future of gaming."

Valve has updated their Steam Hardware Survey that also provides statistics on used Windows/OSX/Linux versions for this digital game distribution client. It appears that the Steam Linux usage during August dropped and the overall Linux count is below 1%.

The Natural Selection 2 game has surfaced on the Steam for Linux library.

Just over a week since Dota 2 test builds for Linux were available in beta form, Valve has officially released Dota 2 for Linux in time for any weekend gameplay.

Recently I wrote about RAD Game Tools looking for Linux developers with experience working on debuggers. In particular, RAD has been eyeing LLVM's LLDB debugger. Mike Sartain of Valve Software has now written about why LLDB currently comes up short on Linux.

Valve's Dota 2 game will soon be released for Linux gamers. Dota 2 is the sequel to Defense of the Ancients and under Windows has proven to be a highly popular title, which is now being tested on Linux.

Valve has added support for Steam to support 64-bit Linux game titles.

Since Valve's Linux gaming announcements last year, many game modders have been looking for Source SDK to be supported under Linux. Valve today released Source SDK 2013 and it now supports Linux as well as OS X.