The Sunday holiday round-up special of Linux and gaming news

It's Sunday, it's chilly here and we're feeling quite festive now at GOL. Let's have a little round-up of some missed bits and a few reminders.

Do you use an Xbox One gamepad and have troubles with it on Linux? A new driver for the wireless dongle is now in progress, currently supporting the later slim model but they do wish to support the old dongle too. Check it out on GitHub if interested.

Ubisoft announced they're funding another open source project, after already fronting cash for Blender they're now giving money to Dear ImGui, a very good open source user interface library. I'm actually shocked at how this year, we've seen a sudden shift in behaviour with multiple companies suddenly announcing funding for open source projects. A good sign, one I hope continues.

Surprisingly, Windows Central recently wrote a positive Linux gaming article. How times have changed, to have such a pro-Microsoft website not only writing about Linux gaming, but seem reasonably impressed too.

SteamDB, the unofficial place people go to see all sorts of extra information about things on Steam just updated their player count charts to have a monthly breakdown. It's pretty great and can be really handy, like this one for Slay the Spire:

Some of the smaller Dota 2 tournaments haven't gone well, with Valve now suing Singapore-based tournament organizer GESC for not paying out prize funds. Additionally, Valve has announced The Singapore Major tournament for Dota 2 takes place June 20-28, 2020.

Thrive, the free and open source game about the evolution of life is coming along, with another release now available with 0.4.3. It adds in a new UI for the microbe stage, adjustments for smoother gameplay, AI species will now spread, pausing the game now works and more. Still rough, but promising.

Wizard of Legend, a no-nonsense, action-packed take on wizardry that I very much love is getting another huge update. Currently planned for January, it's going to get a whole new Lightning stage, enemies and a boss. Over 20 new magical abilities, 30 new relics to give you some buffs and a lot more. Wizard of Legend is currently 45% off on Steam too, good fun go try it!

Sale Reminders:

• Humble Paradox Management Bundle (2 days left) - some really top Paradox games.
• Yogscast Jingle Jam 2019 - 100% to charity.
• itch.io holiday sale, a good store to support indies
• GOG holiday sale
• Steam holiday sale

So many sales going on, you should be able to pick up plenty of cheap and good games that support Linux to keep you busy during the holiday season.

Hope you've all had a great weekend playing awesome Linux games. Just a reminder, I will be away on December 24th and 25th so don't be alarmed if you see nothing on those days.