Valve News Archives

Portal's been in beta on Linux since early May, but today Valve Software has finally moved this popular Source Engine game out of beta on Steam for Linux.

Valve has updated their Steam Hardware Survey results to reflect usage statistics by their gamer customer base as of May.

Gabe Newell, the well-known leader of Valve Software, will be keynoting this year's Linux Foundation LinuxCon event.

Valve's very popular Portal and Portal 2 interactive puzzle video games are now natively available on Linux!

Korora, the Fedora-based Linux distribution that focuses on desktop friendliness through a number of modifications and extra packages, has released their Fedora 18 incarnation.

With Valve's very well known "Steam Hardware Survey", after showing some promising Linux statistics at first, last month indicated that the Linux adoption of the game distribution software was stagnate or on the decline. The April figures for the Steam hardware survey are now public and they indicate further losses for Linux gamers.

Valve released this week a new beta version of their Linux Steam client.

It appears that the X3: Terran Conflict space training and combat simulator game has finally reached Linux, nearly five years after it premiered for Windows and OS X.

When I exclusively reported last year that Valve would be releasing their Steam client for Linux and Source Engine, most Linux desktop users and gamers were filled with joy. However, now that the Steam client is out in the wild and more and more games are coming to Linux via this digital distribution system, it seems not everyone is happy.

Curious how NVIDIA Corp and Valve Software brought the Source Engine to Linux and their game porting lessons learned?

Last month at the Game Developers' Conference (GDC), NVIDIA and Valve shared their experiences and pitfalls in porting the Source Engine to Linux. While talking about Valve's experiences, many of the information can apply to any game developer (or Direct3D/OpenGL application) wishing to come to Linux.

For Valve's forthcoming Linux-based Steam gaming console the first packages are starting to emerge within a package repository on the SteamPowered web-server.

Valve has added Half-Life 4 to Steam and it will be a title for Linux without mentioning OS X or Windows support.

March 2013 was another interesting month for Linux users. The Mir Display Server, ARM on Linux advancements, and Valve's continued Linux game play continued to excite readers.

Today marks one year since an important milestone in the public history of Valve's Steam client and Source Engine coming to Linux.

For those hoping to do some gaming over Easter weekend, Valve has released five new games that have been ported to Linux.

Valve has released new Steam user survey data for March 2013. Interestingly though, the Linux usage hasn't risen but rather appears to be stagnant or on a decline.

Valve released a Steam client update to their gaming customers today.

Valve's hardware/software survey for Steam that shows details about their user-base, is now showing a lot more Linux distribution details.

Valve's original Day of Defeat game and the Day of Defeat: Source titles are now in beta on Linux via the Steam client.

Based upon my extensive Linux hardware testing of enthusiast and gamer grade hardware over the past nine years on Phoronix and immense amounts of performance benchmarking, plus having been involved with Steam on Linux, here's some of my thoughts, expectations, and hopes for the hardware comprising Valve's official SteamBox.

Released during CeBIT this week was a special edition Kanotix 2013 release, which incorporates auto-detection of the binary NVIDIA/AMD graphics drivers and it also pre-installs Valve's Steam Linux client.

Valve has shared that they're now official up to 80 Linux games that are available through the native Steam Linux client.

It looks like Valve is planning to begin Steam Box testing with gamers this summer.

In the flurry of polarized discussions that have emerged since yesterday's Ubuntu Mir announcement, some have speculated that Valve's interactions with Ubuntu may have had a hand in them developing their own display server. This is most likely not the case and the first-generation Linux-based Steam Box from Valve will almost surely be running an X.Org Server.

With the start of a new month, Valve's popular hardware survey has been updated with the latest software/hardware stats about their millions of customers.

One of the requests that Valve has long had for Intel and the open-source Linux graphics drivers in general has been supporting GL_ARB_debug_output, an OpenGL extension that assists game/application developers in debugging and optimizing their code. Fortunately, support for this extension is finally being pursued aggressively within Mesa.

In addition to word that Garry's Mod is soon being released for Linux, there's some more positive Valve/Steam Linux news to share today.

Back in mid-November there were concerns about packaging Valve's Steam Linux client by Linux distributions that allow binary blobs to reside within their package repositories. In particular, Arch Linux developers were unsure whether they were legally allowed to put Steam into one of their repositories for each re-distribution. Valve has now said it's okay by clarifying their license.

Counter-Strike 1.6 for Linux was released towards the end of January while this evening Counter-Strike Source has finally been brought to Linux over Steam.

Valve has originally ported their original Half-Life title to Linux.

A new game is coming to Linux via Valve's Steam client as the result of Steam Greenlight and interest in the Linux platform.

Planned for release next week, on 23 January, is "The Cave" game and there will be a native Linux port when it debuts on Valve's Steam platform.

Valve's Gabe Newell has confirmed their Steam Box will be Linux-based and will be open for its users and not a locked-down piece of hardware.

Making the rounds today is word that Xi3 and Valve have partnered up. Xi3 is a computer hardware manufacturer known for making small PCs and now in conjunction with Valve they are working on a "Steam Box" that's codenamed Piston.

Valve has released their December Steam statistics that show initial data on Linux client usage.

As said a few times already, this year will be marked by the release of a Linux-based Steam hardware gaming console out of Valve.

With the initial roll-out of the Steam Linux client being a success while primarily focusing upon supporting the Ubuntu distribution, Valve is now looking at improving the Steam support on non-Ubuntu Linux distributions.

Valve has announced that their Steam Linux client is now available to all Linux gamers. It's open beta period now and just in time for the holidays.

Valve will allow many more Linux gamers to participate in the Steam Linux client beta testing at the start of next week.

The Video Game Awards happened on Friday night in California. During the event, Gabe Newell of Valve commented a bit more on their next-generation console / living room PC plans. To no surprise, Linux plays a big role.

I am now cleared to begin publishing Linux graphics benchmarks of Valve's Source Engine games on Linux plus other performance-related information from the Steam Linux client.

In time for those who plan to spend their weekend playing games natively on Linux, Valve Software has expanded their Linux beta program.

Here's some interesting comments from Ryan "Icculus" Gordon about the latest state of Linux gaming and what's ahead.

With November coming to a close, here's some statistics on the most popular content on Phoronix this month.

Intel has tagged their quarterly driver package for their customers looking towards the best open-source Intel graphics experience on the Linux desktop.

Prior to going on their Thanksgiving holiday, Valve's Linux cabal opened up the Steam Linux Beta program to an additional five-thousand applicants.

In part due to Steam now being available on Linux, Egosoft wants to hire a Linux game developer to continue bringing their X3 games to the penguin platform.

Valve is adding more individuals to its select group of beta participants on a regular basis. So far things are going well for the Valve Linux beta.

Valve's initial roll-out of their Steam client for Linux is all centered around Ubuntu. With Ubuntu having the largest market-share on the Linux desktop, Valve is focusing upon proper Ubuntu support as their first priority. In the days that the Ubuntu/Debian package has been available of the Steam Linux Beta, it's already been reported to work on other Linux distributions. Some Linux distributions have also begun to package the Steam Linux binary for their own platforms, but now there's some concerns about doing this, at least from the Arch Linux camp.