Valve News Archives

While Valve's Steam Controller isn't expected to formally launch until 10 November, at least some of those who pre-ordered this gaming controller early are now reportedly set to receive their device any day now.

While more games continue to be ported over to Linux and offered on Steam, the overall Linux gaming market-share remains under 1%.

Statistics published by Valve show Steam's Linux usage still at under 1%.

Valve engineers have decided that they will not support system suspend/resume on SteamOS... Why? Because it's poor under Linux.

While all of the initial Steam Machines use Intel CPUs with NVIDIA graphics, a portable Steam Machine gaming device that hopes to ship next year and run SteamOS will be using AMD graphics.

In the comments to this morning's article about the Steam Linux survey numbers for last month it was pointed out that as of last week there is a Linux-exclusive title currently on Steam.

The July 2015 Steam Survey results are now available! Back in June the Steam Linux usage was falling further but how did Linux gaming perform in July?

Earlier today Valve announced a weekend sale for SteamOS games.

With new games seeming to come over to Linux every day courtesy of Steam -- such as this week's Star Wars port -- we're now well past 1,300 games available for SteamOS/Linux.

Brewmaster is Valve's codename for the next version of SteamOS currently available in a preview state. SteamOS Brewmaster is based on Debian 8.1 stable.

It's been revealed that for Alienware's Windows-based SteamMachine-like boxes that their default UI will be a customized user experience built atop the Kodi (formerly XBMC) multimedia software.

Just days after pushing out Dota 2 Reborn for Linux gamers, Valve has released a massive update to this Source Engine 2 game and it includes some driver/rendering fixes.

Since last week we've been eagerly looking forward to Valve releasing Dota 2 Reborn in beta as their first Source 2 Engine game. Today that's become a reality! The first Source 2 Engine title is out and available for Steam Linux gamers.

By this time next week, Valve's first Source 2 Engine game should be available in open beta.

For those that haven't heard yet, Valve has begun their annual Steam Summer Sale with a variety of Linux games.

In addition to the Steam Linux news this week that the Steam Controller and Steam Machines is up for pre-order and the Steam Linux usage has dropped to an all-time low, I noticed the Linux game count is well past 1,200 titles.

For anyone that didn't get a chance yesterday to look at the Steam Machines up for pre-ordering, these SteamOS loaded devices all come with Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GeForce graphics.

Valve has announced today that pre-orders have started for the Steam Controller, Steam Link, and select Steam Machines.

Last month Steam Linux usage dropped below 1.0% during April, which was the lowest point we've seen it in some time with the monthly OS average attributing Linux to a 1.0~1.6% average. However, the May numbers are out and the Steam Linux usage has declined even further.

Valve has shipped a DLC to Dota 2 that appears to be the Source 2 Engine version of the game.

Valve today pushed out the SteamOS 159 update into the Alchemist repository today, which matches the recent changes to the Alchemist Beta repository. This update isn't too exciting as it's mostly stable fixes, branding updates, etc, but the NVIDIA Linux driver update does remove the support for pre-Fermi graphics cards.

While we didn't expect any big gains for the Linux gaming market-share over the past month, it does come as a surprise there's a significant drop.

Valve Software today released the OpenVR SDK, an API and runtime that allows accessing virtual reality hardware from multiple vendors without requiring the applications be specifically targeting that platform.

In the latest of the frequent updates to SteamVR, Valve has added 64-bit Linux support.

It was this week three years ago when there was the big Steam Linux reveal when I was over at Valve HQ learning from Gabe Newell about their Steam Linux client plans, their ambitions for a Steam Linux distribution on consoles (now known as SteamOS), and much more.

It was just last month I wrote about there being more than 1,000 games on Steam for Linux/SteamOS. Recently, Steam crossed the 1,100 games milestone; over one hundred additions in just over one month!

Last year Valve made all of their games free to Debian developers as a thank you since SteamOS is based on Debian. Now Valve is giving out their collection of all current and future games to open-source Mesa developers.

Valve's monthly hardware/software survey is out for the data collected in March and provides an interesting look at the current Linux gaming market-share.

While these days there's more than 1,000 Linux games on Steam, just three years ago in their early Source Engine porting process they were barely able to get good frame-rates.

LunarG, the company that's been doing a lot of consulting work for Valve on optimizing Linux graphics drivers, is also the company that Valve paid to develop the Intel Vulkan Linux graphics driver. LunarG has been doing Linux graphics driver development for years with Mesa/Gallium3D and was formed by some of the same former Tungsten Graphics staff. Here's some more information on their Vulkan and SPIR-V adventures.

At this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas there are no big Steam Machines announcements but just much talk about the state of affairs for Valve and their Steam Machines and SteamOS projects.

Valve has started the new year with a new Steam client beta for all supported platforms.

While Valve doesn't provide any official BSD binaries of Steam nor are any of the Steam game titles listed as supporting BSD, it doesn't stop some from trying to get their gaming fix on FreeBSD/PC-BSD.

While Valve's VOGL open-source OpenGL debugger was off to a great start when announced at the start of the year, recently it fell into a bit of a dry period when it didn't see any new work for more than a month. Fortunately, that dry spell is over and there's new commits flowing back into VOGL.

It was on this day two years ago that the Steam Linux client went into beta following the many exclusive Steam Linux stories and after being over at Valve's headquarters to learn about their ambitious Linux plans.

The Steam hardware/software survey has been updated with its October 2014 data and it reflects slightly larger Linux gaming market-share.

For those longing to play the Dead Island action RPG / survival horror game on Linux, the Game of the Year Edition of Dead Island is now available!

Valve has released to stable their SteamOS Update 145 today after the changes were in their alchemist beta testing area since last week.

Curious if running Linux games via Steam's Big Picture Mode causes a performance impact over a conventional desktop session? Here's some benchmarks.

Rich Geldreich, one of the original Valve Linux team members who started work on their VOGL OpenGL debugger, thinks it will take three years or more before the next-generation OpenGL materializes for users.

Valve pushed down a big update yesterday following their successful Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Linux launch last week.

AMD is expected to release an updated Catalyst Linux driver in due time that will improve the frame rates for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Following the launch of the launch of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Linux and approaching the one year anniversary of the Steam Machines announcement (so much happens during Oktoberfest season...) is Valve rolling out a new Steam storefront.

Valve's Pierre-Loup A. Griffais has begun publicly listing known issues with AMD's Catalyst Linux graphics support.

Valve is finally getting ready to bring Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to Linux!

A new Steam beta update was released yesterday that adds support for streaming from Linux hosts.

Valve released this morning the 133 update to the SteamOS Alchemist Beta. With this update comes new packages and other updates.

Another Steam Linux client update is out today and with this latest revision comes VA-API video acceleration support when using Steam on Linux for in-home streaming.

Valve just pushed down a big Steam client update that has a number of Linux improvements along with other general improvements.

The Leadwerks game engine is now available in an experimental form on Steam.