Valve News Archives

Thanks to Valve's incredible work on Steam Play and investing in low-level Linux graphics stack improvements, the latest milestone being achieved is HDR (High Dynamic Range) support beginning to work.

Yesterday Valve published their Steam Survey results for December and pointed to some really odd discrepancies. Valve this evening has revised the Steam Survey results that address some of the statistics oddities but still points to the Linux gaming marketshare as a percent regressing during the past month and also the Steam Deck usage declining relative to the overall Linux gaming base.

Valve has just published the Steam Survey results for December 2022 that come in at a bit of a surprise.

VKD3D-Proton 2.8 has been released as a nice Christmas gift to Linux gamers for advancing this Direct3D 12 on Vulkan implementation that is part of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for enjoying Windows games on Linux.

Valve just posted their November 2022 Steam Survey results and it shows the Linux gaming marketshare continue to climb, driven by the success of their Arch Linux powered Steam Deck handheld gaming console.

Valve has officially released Proton 7.0-5 as the newest version of their Wine downstream that powers Steam Play for enjoying countless Windows games on Linux, most notably now with the Steam Deck. Valve has also introduced "Proton Next" as their new testing grounds for future Proton updates.

Next week already marks ten years since Valve made public their Steam on Linux beta builds while today Google has advanced Steam on ChromeOS / Chromebooks to beta. Back in March Google formally announced Steam for Chrome OS and began with alpha support for select devices. Today that support has reached beta with new device support, new features, and other improvements.

With the start of the new month comes updated Steam Survey numbers from Valve for the preceding month. Thanks to the continued growth of the Steam Deck and Valve continuing to ramp up their production, Steam on Linux enjoyed another tick up for October.

Valve's new Steam client beta published today has rolled out an updated Big Picture mode for enjoying the Steam client on TVs and other large format displays while this Big Picture mode was designed and optimized for the Steam Deck.

Valve is preparing to roll-out Proton 7.0-5 as the newest version of this Wine-derived software that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux. For facilitating some testing prior to the formal Proton 7.0-5, a release candidate was published today.

Valve has worked their way through the pre-orders and ramped up the production of the Steam Deck to the point that the reservation queue is over. You can now order your Steam Deck today in-stock and Valve has also made available the much anticipated Steam Deck Dock docking station.

While the Steam on Linux marketshare has been consistently increasing this year since the launch of the Arch Linux powered Steam Deck, the September 2022 numbers are in and surprisingly there is a slight pull-back in Linux use.

Valve just published the Steam Survey results for August 2022 that show a slight increase to Linux gaming as part of the overall marketshare on a percentage basis.

Async page flipping via DRM_MODE_PAGE_FLIP_ASYNC has been available with the Direct Rendering Manager's legacy API but hasn't been supported by the atomic mode-setting interface. However, a proposed patch series would add that atomic async flip support and wire it up initially for the AMDGPU DRM driver. Meanwhile Valve's Gamescope compositor in user-space would be ready to make use of it.

Valve has just released Proton 7.0-4 as their newest downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play for enjoying many Windows games on Linux with great success for the Linux desktop, the Steam Deck, and more.

In addition to continuing to ramp up their Steam Deck production to fulfill existing pre-order reservations this calendar year thanks to addressing supply chain bottlenecks, Valve announced today that in partnership with Komodo they are bringing this Linux-powered gaming console to Asian markets.

Valve this evening has begun shipping SteamOS 3.3 to Steam Deck customers as the latest version of their Arch Linux based software stack initially targeting their handheld game console.

During the month of June the Steam on Linux usage hit a multi-year high point of 1.18% while for July there is another tick upwards thanks to the continued interest in Linux gaming around the Steam Deck.

Last week's Vulkan 1.3.219 release introduced the VK_EXT_shader_module_identifier that was worked on in part by Valve. This ability for software to query an identifier associated with a Vulkan shader module is seeing quick driver adoption and is preparing for use within VKD3D-Proton as an efficiency improvement.

With the new month comes the latest figures from Valve regarding the Steam on Linux marketshare and other metrics for the past month as a result of the Steam Survey.

Valve has published a SteamOS 3.3 Beta today for those Steam Deck owners or those otherwise loading this Arch Linux based OS image onto their own hardware.

Valve today promoted Proton 7.0-3 to stable as the newest version of this software based on Wine and leveraging DXVK / VKD3D-Proton and other components for running Windows games with great success on Linux. Proton 7.0-3 is now available for Steam Play when firing up the Steam client while Valve also today issued a new Proton Experimental update.

The Steam Survey results are in for May 2022 and while it shows Linux slightly down on a percentage basis, it shows a new top-spot for the most popular Linux distribution unseating Ubuntu LTS.

Valve this evening published SteamOS 3.2 as the newest version of their Arch Linux based operating system for the Steam Deck and currently running unofficially by passionate Linux gamers on other hardware too.

As I've written about since last year the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" has been working on experimental mesh shader support and more recently in Mesa Git code around task shaders for RADV have been landing. Timur Kristóf who is contracted by Valve to work on the open-source Linux graphics stack has been working on the mesh/task shader support in preparation for an upcoming cross-vendor Vulkan extension around mesh shading.

Valve's Vulkan-powered Gamescope Wayland compositor has merged support for NVIDIA Image Scaling.

Valve just published the updated Steam Hardware/Software Survey results for April 2022 providing a look at the Linux marketshare for April among other interesting metrics.

Valve overnight released a beta of SteamOS 3.2 with some notable improvements for Steam Deck users.

Proton 7.0-2 is out today as the newest version of this Wine downstream that powers Valve's Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux / SteamOS.

There hasn't been clear guidance from Valve whether Steam Deck units will participate in the Steam Survey (I haven't seen any survey myself there either) but it's looking like possibly not as the Steam on Linux marketshare dipped lower in March.

Valve's Gamescope Wayland compositor is what was born out of their former Steamcompmgr effort but rewritten to target Wayland, interfacing directly with DRM/KMS APIs for enhanced efficiency, and making use of Vulkan. To date Gamescope has worked with the Intel and Radeon open-source Linux graphics driver stacks while the NVIDIA proprietary driver is seeing work in the direction of supporting it.

After earlier this month announcing Steam for Chrome OS following months of rumors/leaks around the initiative, Google today has made an alpha build of Steam available for select Chromebooks.

After a week delay in processing of the monthly Steam Survey data, the Steam Survey results for February 2022 are in! Yes, the much anticipated Steam Deck did begin shipping in February, but at the tail-end and in limited quantities, so don't expect any big surprises...

Following the recent releases of DXVK 1.10 and VKD3D-Proton 2.6 this past week, DXVK-NVAPI 0.5.3 is out this Sunday as the newest update to this library providing NVIDIA driver API "NVAPI" integration around DXVK/VKD3D-Proton for Windows games running on Linux by way of Steam Play (Proton).

Valve's newest game is... Aperture Desk Job. This is a mini game set within the Portal universe and used for showing off the Steam Deck controls while also working with other game controllers too.

Ahead of the Steam Deck beginning to ship at month's end, Valve overnight released Proton 7.0-1 as the newest version of their software that allows many Windows games to run on Linux with great success. Proton 7.0 is rebased against the new upstream Wine 7.0 while also having many other changes in tow.

Ahead of the Steam Deck being released later this month, Valve today opened up all the Steam Deck design files to the public.

A Linux kernel driver was posted today for platform control support for Valve's upcoming Steam Deck.

Ahead of the Steam Deck shipping later this month, here is where the Steam on Linux marketshare currently stands.

As a particularly important move for Linux gamers and enthusiasts where you may be riding frequent Git builds of new Mesa graphics drivers or even the bi-weekly point releases - compared to the multi-week/monthly update regiment for Windows graphics drivers - Valve's Steam client will now flush its stale shader cache upon GPU/driver changes. This is important for conserving disk space especially where storage constraints are possible like with the Steam Deck.

Valve's Gamescope as a Wayland compositor for running games on Linux now has integrated support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR).

After slipping from the original shipping target of Q4 due to component shortages, Valve is making good on their Q1'2022 shipping plans for the Steam Deck.

Ahead of the Linux-based Steam Deck hopefully shipping around the end of February, Valve announced a new Steamworks feature called Dynamic Cloud Sync.

As good news not only to future Steam Deck users but all Linux gamers making use of the Mesa open-source graphics drivers, Valve is sponsoring additional continuous integration (CI) testing of Mesa commits.

DXVK 1.9.3 is out as its first release of 2022 for implementing Direct3D 9/10/11 over Vulkan for allowing Windows games to enjoy good performance when running atop Linux via Valve's Steam Play.

For those wanting to pickup some new games to enjoy around the holidays and/or expand your game collection ahead of the Steam Deck beginning to ship next quarter, Valve's Winter Sale is now underway.

Following recent Steam database entries suggesting as much, Valve this evening formally pushed out a new Counter-Strike: Global Offensive build introducing initial Vulkan API rendering support.

With the beginning of a new month comes updated Steam Survey results from Valve for the month prior. The Steam on Linux marketshare continues increasing albeit ever so slightly.

Valve has provided an updated developer-focused "frequently asked questions" area stemming from community questions during the recent Steam Deck developer event.

It's been almost two months since Proton 6.3-7 released and two weeks since 6.3-8 RC while this evening that Proton 6.3-8 stable release is out for empowering Valve's Steam Play in running Windows games on Linux.