Valve News Archives

While Steam Play continues getting better for allowing more Windows games to run on Linux to enhance the overall Linux gaming ecosystem, Valve's latest monthly data for Steam shows another month-to-month decline in usage at least on percentage terms.

Valve's Linux developers today released Proton 4.11 as the newest release of their Wine-based software that powers Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux under the Steam client.

Following the release of OpenXR 1.0, Collabora has announced the release of Xrdesktop, which was funded by Valve.

Valve's interesting ACO shader compiler alternative to AMDGPU LLVM currently for the RADV Vulkan driver as well as for RadeonSI OpenGL in the future now can handle vertex shaders.

Valve's Steam Labs is the new centralized place for their different experiments around the Steam marketplace.

Valve has been funding work on "ACO", a new shader compiler alternative to the de facto AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler currently used by both the RADV and RadeonSI Mesa graphics drivers for AMD Radeon hardware.

While Linux usage of Steam as a percentage has generally been flat or ticking up slightly each month since last year when Valve introduced Steam Play for allowing many Windows games to run gracefully on Linux, during June was the first time in a while seeing a decline.

Following all the drama caused by Canonical announcing last week they'd stop their 32-bit archive with Ubuntu 19.10 and that leading to a mess of concerns including Valve saying they would not be officially supporting Ubuntu 19.10 and later, today they issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to Linux.

As some good news this week amid all the 32-bit Linux gaming drama this week and the networking snafu... Valve is now funding another developer to work on upstream open-source code, in particular on the KDE side this time with a developer who had been working for Blue Systems.

The planned dropping of 32-bit support on Ubuntu saga continues... Well known Valve Linux developer Pierre-Loup Griffais has said they plan to officially stop supporting Ubuntu for Steam on Linux.

As a follow-up to the issue reported on Friday regarding the latest Linux kernel releases causing problems for Valve's Steam client, a fix appears pending that with changing around one line of code does appear to address the regression.

If you are planning to enjoy some Linux gaming this week via Steam, you may want to think twice about upgrading to the latest Linux kernel Git code or even the newest stable point releases.

Proton 4.2-7 is out as the latest version of Valve's downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux.

The folks maintaining Proton as Valve's flavor of Wine for use by Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux just released Proton 4.2-6.

With the start of a new month, Valve has published their software/hardware survey numbers for the month prior. For May 2019, the Steam Linux usage did tick-up slightly on a percentage basis.

The Valve developers maintaining their Proton fork of Wine for use by Steam Play have outed a new update, version 4.2-5.

Valve issued a new Steam beta release that contains a lot of changes across the board, including Linux.

Valve has just released Proton 4.2-4 as their newest downstream of Wine that is used by Steam Play for running Steam Windows games on Linux.

With Valve's Index VR headset slated to ship starting in July, this premium $999 USD headset has now been quirk'ed to properly behave under Linux.

While Steam Play continues getting in better shape for running more interesting Windows games on Linux, there hasn't yet been a compelling enough reason for Windows gamers to switch over to Linux and that is reflected in the latest monthly Steam numbers.

Valve has published the complete specifications and details on their much anticipated VR Index headset with new controllers and base stations.

Following last month's Proton 4.2 for Steam Play that is derived from Wine 4.2 with many patches applied, Proton 4.2-3 has been released for the latest Windows gaming on Linux experience ahead of any Easter weekend gaming time.

On Wednesday night Valve issued their latest stable Steam client update and carries much of the work we've seen out of their recent beta releases.

With the start of a new month, Valve has just published their updated monthly Steam figures showing the Linux gaming market-share and more.

While Valve has long been collaborating with HTC and others on VR headsets and other ecosystem work to enhance virtual reality gaming as well as bringing VR support to Linux, the company is finally preparing to release its own high-end VR headset: the Valve Index.

Yesterday Valve released Proton 4.2 as a big step forward for this Wine-based software that is integral to their "Steam Play" for running Windows games on Linux. CodeWeavers, which is working on Proton/Wine improvements under contract for Valve, provided a look today at the massive amount of patches that have been upstreamed already from Proton to Wine.

Valve today released Proton 4.2 as their latest update to this Wine-based software for further empowering Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux.

Valve Software has been backing work on Fossilize as an open-source project providing a serialization format for persistent Vulkan object types.

Valve has released Proton 3.16-8 as their newest release to their Wine fork that adds in various improvements for helping Windows games on Linux primarily to bolster their "Steam Play" functionality.

Valve has just uploaded their Steam Survey hardware/software results for February 2019 and unfortunately the Linux gaming market-share has not continued an upward trend, at least on a percentage basis.

It's been a while since Valve issued a new Proton update for their spin of Wine that powers Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux. Fortunately, in time for any weekend gaming, a new Proton release is now available.

Valve has just published their monthly "Steam Survey" results that are always interesting for seeing the Linux usage metrics.

It was just yesterday that Valve dropped a big Steam client update including several long sought improvements for Linux gamers. Today that's been succeeded by another rather nice beta upgrade.

Valve has just released their biggest Steam client beta update of the year so far for Linux gamers.

With the start of a new month brings the Steam Survey results for the month prior where we see the Linux gaming market-share ending at a high point for the year.

Valve has made available a new version of their Wine-based Proton layer that powers Steam Play for allowing many Windows games to run seamlessly on Linux via their Steam client. This new Proton 3.16-6 Beta offers up several notable improvements.

After being announced last week, Valve's Steam Link application for the Raspberry Pi is now officially available.

A new beta relase of Proton 3.16 is now available, the Wine-based software that powers Valve's Steam Play for running many Windows games on Linux.

With the success of Fortnite and Player Unknown's Battlegrounds in the "battle royale" genre, Valve is getting in on the action with CS:GO Danger Zone.

Valve has published their latest monthly Steam survey data, which shows an increase in the Linux gaming population.

Valve managed to ship their latest game today as planned and without any major delays.

With just two weeks to go until Valve unleashes their latest original game, Artifact, it's now up for pre-order and there are also the system requirements published.

October was very interesting for Linux gaming with no AAA native game ports released but a heck of a lot more Windows games are now running nicely on Linux thanks to Steam Play / Proton / DXVK. So it's quite interesting to see Valve's just-published monthly Steam Survey results for the month prior.

Valve has ended out October with a very useful Proton beta update for Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux.

Valve in cooperation with CodeWeavers and other developers continues making rapid progress on Steam Play and their "Proton" downstream flavor of Wine.

Valve updated their Linux graphics driver requirements today for using SteamVR. On the NVIDIA side you just need the proprietary 387 driver or newer and you are all set for SteamVR -- assuming your GPU is fast enough to keep pace. But on the AMD side is where there are still relatively tight requirements which leads them to recommending third-party PPAs for the best experience.

The initial Steam Linux market-share figures for September showed a rise in Linux gamers which isn't too surprising given the recent roll-out of Steam Play / Proton. It turns out those figures are even higher than originally reported.

As expected when discovering a Valve "Moondust" repository on GitHub, today they indeed posted the code to this latest VR tech demo.

Back in June, Valve announced "Moondust" as a new VR technical demo to showcase their hardware efforts (primarily with the Knuckles EV2 VR controllers) and consists of some mini games. It looks like this tech demo might be soon open-sourced.

Valve's latest monthly Steam Survey results are in for August 2018.