I've seen some posts on reddit and across the wider net about Steam hitting around 2,000 games for Linux. The truth is the number is actually quite a lot higher.
People seem to be using SteamDB numbers which aren't up to date. The problem here is that SteamDB is unofficial and a manual process for people to let them know a game works. So you need to own the game and manually tell them, which makes their numbers rather different to the reality.
Note: SteamDB do truly excellent work, this isn't a bash attempt, but to let people know how they work and how their list is different.
The other problem is that the Steam Search when filtering only for Games and only for Linux is still incorrect. It actually lists games that are due soon, or due this month and haven't released yet. It also still lists games that haven't updated their release date that were supposed to release before today, but didn't actually release yet.
In reality, the number is around 2,500 Linux games on Steam right now. Using the official Steam Search it gives us "2,549" games, but that's still off by a little bit due to the above mentioned issues.
With that said having at least 2,500 games on Linux is pretty amazing isn't it? Granted there's a lot of junk, but we have been steadily getting some bigger releases as well as some fantastic smaller games.
In comparison, Mac OSX has around "3,791" games and Windows has around "10,260". Those numbers are without taking into account the above issues, so those numbers will also be a bit smaller. Windows will continue to dwarf us in game count for a long time given the current numbers and rate of increase.
We have two key things that are missing right now as far as games go:
- Day 1 releases for bigger titles
- Bigger titles
There's obviously a lot of other issues holding us back, but this article is entirely about the games themselves.
Both of which have slowly been increasing over time thanks to the porting efforts of various companies and individual porters.
Just remember, a couple years ago that number was zero on the biggest PC gaming store and community of them all. Good progress, but lots still to do for us.
Another interesting mark is the top played games on Steam. This changes often with releases and sales, but as of right now 8/10 games in the top 10 support Linux. Pretty good that. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
People seem to be using SteamDB numbers which aren't up to date. The problem here is that SteamDB is unofficial and a manual process for people to let them know a game works. So you need to own the game and manually tell them, which makes their numbers rather different to the reality.
Note: SteamDB do truly excellent work, this isn't a bash attempt, but to let people know how they work and how their list is different.
The other problem is that the Steam Search when filtering only for Games and only for Linux is still incorrect. It actually lists games that are due soon, or due this month and haven't released yet. It also still lists games that haven't updated their release date that were supposed to release before today, but didn't actually release yet.
In reality, the number is around 2,500 Linux games on Steam right now. Using the official Steam Search it gives us "2,549" games, but that's still off by a little bit due to the above mentioned issues.
With that said having at least 2,500 games on Linux is pretty amazing isn't it? Granted there's a lot of junk, but we have been steadily getting some bigger releases as well as some fantastic smaller games.
In comparison, Mac OSX has around "3,791" games and Windows has around "10,260". Those numbers are without taking into account the above issues, so those numbers will also be a bit smaller. Windows will continue to dwarf us in game count for a long time given the current numbers and rate of increase.
We have two key things that are missing right now as far as games go:
- Day 1 releases for bigger titles
- Bigger titles
There's obviously a lot of other issues holding us back, but this article is entirely about the games themselves.
Both of which have slowly been increasing over time thanks to the porting efforts of various companies and individual porters.
Just remember, a couple years ago that number was zero on the biggest PC gaming store and community of them all. Good progress, but lots still to do for us.
Another interesting mark is the top played games on Steam. This changes often with releases and sales, but as of right now 8/10 games in the top 10 support Linux. Pretty good that. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I wonder how many of the "x most played games" are available on Linux...
That might be a bit more of a thing than pure number of available games.
That might be a bit more of a thing than pure number of available games.
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Quoting: tmtvlI wonder how many of the "x most played games" are available on Linux...I added a bit about the current top 10.
That might be a bit more of a thing than pure number of available games.
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Kimyrielle Sep 27, 2016
I think in terms of numbers we're more than fine now. These days, the more interesting number is indeed the % of top selling games available for Linux as quality trumps quantity. Not sure where you got the 8/10 from, but when I look at the "Global Top Sellers" list in Steam, we're not quite at 80%, even when counting Arma III (which AFAIK has an unofficial Linux port) and Civ VI (which is confirmed for Linux, but doesn't show the Linux tag in Steam).
Also, don't forget that the top 3 publishers in terms of top selling games aren't even on Steam (EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft). To calculate an accurate % of all top selling games for Linux we'd probably have to include them (although I personally won't shed a tear about never seeing one of their games on Linux.)
Also, don't forget that the top 3 publishers in terms of top selling games aren't even on Steam (EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft). To calculate an accurate % of all top selling games for Linux we'd probably have to include them (although I personally won't shed a tear about never seeing one of their games on Linux.)
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Thanks for this post. I still dont understand why people seems to respect so much this page when its flaws are so evident.
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Quoting: KimyrielleI think in terms of numbers we're more than fine now. These days, the more interesting number is indeed the % of top selling games available for Linux as quality trumps quantity. Not sure where you got the 8/10 from, but when I look at the "Global Top Sellers" list in Steam, we're not quite at 80%, even when counting Arma III (which AFAIK has an unofficial Linux port) and Civ VI (which is confirmed for Linux, but doesn't show the Linux tag in Steam).I said top 10 played, not top selling: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Also, don't forget that the top 3 publishers in terms of top selling games aren't even on Steam (EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft). To calculate an accurate % of all top selling games for Linux we'd probably have to include them (although I personally won't shed a tear about never seeing one of their games on Linux.)
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Sure, some of those 2500 games are not available or not yet released but there's also a bunch of Steam games that can be easily installed natively even when their Steam version only supports Windows. Like most of these games for example: https://lutris.net/games/by/id-software/
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This is great news, as this give Linux users more choices in term of what we can play. While day 1 releases for big titles would be nice, I think what we need is more publicity for the devs that do support Linux. You guys here do a good job but I mean more in terms of the actual users. For example on STEAM, reviewers on Linux should denote that somehow. I tend to post my distro for the games I review. I should do it more often, tho.
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Mountain Man Sep 27, 2016
Didn't realize there were so few games for OSX!
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Kimyrielle Sep 27, 2016
Quoting: Mountain ManDidn't realize there were so few games for OSX!
Same, really. Mac had years of headstart on us in terms of developer acceptance, but it seems we're catching up fast.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised seeing Linux overtaking Mac in terms of releases soon. Apple has shown time and again that they don't care about their desktop line anymore. The hardware platform is laughably outdated and their proprietary Metal garbage will discourage studios from supporting Mac. Linux gaming picked up when it became reasonably easy to deploy on it - Apple is intentionally moving away from platform interdependence, making it -harder- to deploy there. That won't work well for a niche platform.
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Maybe we should be happy with the lack of day 1 releases. The experience should be better after a few updates.
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Kimyrielle Sep 27, 2016
Quoting: EhvisMaybe we should be happy with the lack of day 1 releases. The experience should be better after a few updates.
A week or two of delay doesn't matter much, but when the Linux version is months behind the Windows release, some might just bite the bullet and get the game for Windows, driving down Linux sales in the process. Which is hardly a good thing, as our sales figures aren't terribly impressive to begin with.
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QuoteAnother interesting mark is the top played games on Steam. This changes often with releases and sales, but as of right now 8/10 games in the top 10 support Linux. Pretty good that.
key word: steam
we could really benefit from blizzard and EA (origin) getting involved in Linux
with google getting ready to sell higher end pc, this might trigger a chain reaction pushing all the big companies to forget about windows only
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A few months ago I looked at my gaming backlog, I looked at good games available for Linux/SteamOS and came up with a genius plan to solve my backlog issue: don't buy any new Windows only games, complete what I have in the library and then become Linux only.
How naive I was. There are so many great games for Linux, my wishlist has 57 games for SteamOS and the backlog is growing again.
Disclaimer: yes, old Assassin's Creed games on my wishlist are Windows only, as are Train Simulator add-ons. And yes, I bought Lego Batman and Lego LotR for my kids recently (Feral, pleeeease, port Lego games to Linux, please?).
How naive I was. There are so many great games for Linux, my wishlist has 57 games for SteamOS and the backlog is growing again.
Disclaimer: yes, old Assassin's Creed games on my wishlist are Windows only, as are Train Simulator add-ons. And yes, I bought Lego Batman and Lego LotR for my kids recently (Feral, pleeeease, port Lego games to Linux, please?).
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Quoting: skinnyrafA few months ago I looked at my gaming backlog, I looked at good games available for Linux/SteamOS and came up with a genius plan to solve my backlog issue: don't buy any new Windows only games, complete what I have in the library and then become Linux only.
How naive I was. There are so many great games for Linux, my wishlist has 57 games for SteamOS and the backlog is growing again.
Disclaimer: yes, old Assassin's Creed games on my wishlist are Windows only, as are Train Simulator add-ons. And yes, I bought Lego Batman and Lego LotR for my kids recently (Feral, pleeeease, port Lego games to Linux, please?).
Did you try to set them through Wine? Majority of LEGO titles work very well with WINE but I hate that I cannot manage to get my controller working on playonlinux which drives me mad since I'd really love to play lego titles from the couch through controller.
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Kimyrielle Sep 27, 2016
Quoting: skinnyrafHow naive I was. There are so many great games for Linux, my wishlist has 57 games for SteamOS and the backlog is growing again.
Seriously. I have more good games for Linux than I can possibly play and 25 more waiting on the wishlist. Generally, I (mostly) stopped buying Windows games around two years ago. The only exceptions I grant myself are MMOs (as there is still not a single decent one available for Linux) and Bethesda's games. Otherwise I haven't looked back. I guess in my case it helps that I consider anything made by EA and Ubisoft garbage by definition, and while I wouldn't label Blizzard games that, I still don't buy their stuff (I can't stand their choice of art style, it makes my eyes bleed).
If I wouldn't be such a die-hard MMO fan, I'd probably have wiped Windows off my hard drive already. It will still happen, sooner or later.
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whitewolfguy Sep 27, 2016
An interesting fact to know, is selling porcetagem of games for Linux, now it seems that this number is close to 1%, which is a value not great interest to the big games producers.
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SeekTheShrubbery Sep 27, 2016
Surprised that Telltale hasn't ported any of their games to Linux, considering more than half of their titles are available on OS X, Android, iOS and consoles.
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@Kimyrielle: War Thunder. It's MMO game and it's very good. However I would like to see SW:TOR on Linux... ;)
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Kimyrielle Sep 27, 2016
Quoting: seguleh@Kimyrielle: War Thunder. It's MMO game and it's very good. However I would like to see SW:TOR on Linux... ;)
I should have said MMORPG, because that's what I meant. MOBAs, MMOFPS and MMORTS I have not too much interest in. :D
Agreed on SWTOR, though.
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OK, so here's a question, and maybe an article: At the current rate of growth in number of games for Linux and for Mac, how long before Linux has as many games as Mac?
(Assuming they're converging at all. If Linux and Mac are getting games at roughly the same rate, you'd see a situation where Linux has a larger and larger percentage of what Mac has, but never gets to 100%. Although, even if that's how it is now, I agree that Linux is likely to start overtaking in future if trends continue--like, if and when Vulkan starts seeing serious uptake, Mac ports/versions will be noticeably harder than Linux ports. And Apple does tend to be pretty stubborn about their NIH syndrome)
(Assuming they're converging at all. If Linux and Mac are getting games at roughly the same rate, you'd see a situation where Linux has a larger and larger percentage of what Mac has, but never gets to 100%. Although, even if that's how it is now, I agree that Linux is likely to start overtaking in future if trends continue--like, if and when Vulkan starts seeing serious uptake, Mac ports/versions will be noticeably harder than Linux ports. And Apple does tend to be pretty stubborn about their NIH syndrome)
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