Six years ago tomorrow (yes really!) Valve announced the Steam for Linux beta for a limited amount of interested gamers. After getting more responses than they expected (over 60,000) they kept the testing pool quite small.
Later that month, on November 21st Valve added an additional 5,000 testers to help find more issues. Rather quickly, Valve pushed the beta out for a much larger audience on December 19th in that same year with anyone being able to try it. I remember it extremely well, having a rather ordinary week and suddenly being thrown into the thick of it making sure I could test everything possible.
We didn't start off with many games, with very few developers joining Valve for the initial testing period. That pretty quickly changed and now the number is in the thousands. The number by itself obviously doesn't mean a lot, since there's a lot of rubbish available but we do have access to some pretty fantastic titles. Who would have honestly thought we would have access to everything we do now? From FTL to Mad Max, Bastion to Rocket League we have around 5,100 native Linux games now (and still growing daily) available on the Steam store.
Without the push from Valve, it's highly likely we wouldn't have a lot of the things we might take for granted now. Popular game engines support Linux, our graphics drivers have pushed forwards quite rapidly, the Vulkan API was introduced and released and so on.
The biggest surprise Valve has given us? Absolutely has to be their new version of Steam Play. Linux gamers had been asking for a long time to have the ability to run Windows games using Wine directly from the Steam client. We're also closing in an additional 3,000 games that work in some form (some don't have a lot of reports yet) using Steam Play/Proton according to ProtonDB as well. Pushing aside how some feel about using it themselves, most agree it's a good thing given how we've been lacking in ports of games from bigger studios and so hopefully a year from now more will try out Linux.
In a few days time on the 10th of November, it will also mark three years since Valve officially released the Steam Machines, Steam Link & Steam Controller as well. While the Steam Machine idea from never really took off, it at least laid the groundwork for Linux gaming as it is today. The Steam Controller though, I still consider it a thing of beauty. Sure, you need to look past the surface of the bulky cheap looking design and feel to it but it also helped to push Valve towards improving controller support on Steam too with many pads now having configuration options.
The next few years are going to be a very interesting time for both Linux and Steam gaming, with so many big players now doing their own stores and launchers. Valve have their work cut out for them more than ever, although hopefully with their return to making games we might be in for a few nice surprises. I've said it a few times recently, that Valve seem to be sat on some seriously good IP with Left 4 Dead, Portal, Half-Life and more so hopefully they will eventually do something with them.
Mini-Timeline:
- 16th July 2012 - Valve's first blog post about bringing Steam and the Source Engine to Linux
- 1st August 2012 - Valve do another blog post, this time about the performance of Linux gaming
- 26th September 2012 - Another blog post to announce their external beta is starting soon
- 6th November 2012 - Valve announces Steam for Linux limited beta
- 21st November 2012 - The beta expands to include another 5,000 people
- 19th December 2012 - The Steam for Linux beta is available to everyone
- 14th February 2013 - Steam for Linux officially released out of beta
- 23rd September 2013 - SteamOS announced, Valve's Linux-based living room operating system
- 10th November 2015 - Steam Machines, Steam Link & Steam Controller officially released
- 21st August 2018 - New version of Steam Play announced
Now if you will excuse me, I need to go scroll through my 1.4K+ list of Linux games and attempt to choose something to play…who am I kidding? Rocket League, obviously.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Here's to more future titles and improvements to gaming on Linux (raises glass).
Huge thank you to all the developers that have gotten us this far.
I can remember when I got the first "professional grade" games with the first Humble Bundle in 2010.
I never really got to experiences that as I used to own several of the Loki releases, so I watched they dream die and the be resurrected when that first Humble Bundle happened. Glad Valve hoped on the Linux train six years ago.
2018: Still no broadcasting? Whatever. I have a Steam Controller and more Linux playable games in my Steam Library than I'll be able to play in decades of unemployment.
(And somewhere in the Alps, a penguin spins in a burgeoning field of edelweiss begins to sing, The games are alive with the sound of Liiinuuux ...)
Last edited by Nanobang on 5 November 2018 at 12:48 pm UTC
Six years ago tomorrowNo!
(yes really!)Wow. :D
2012: Xbone or PS4? Xbone or PS4? Xbo---Hm? What's this? Steam? Linux? Hellz yeah!Absolutely. The last few years have been pretty tough for me, and I simply can't afford a current-gen console. Steam on Linux came at the perfect time. I've lost count of the games I would never have had a chance to play otherwise (and, thanks to sales, bundles, etc., they've been way cheaper than they would have been on a console). Steam has its critics - not without reason - but if I ever meet GabeN, I'll shake his hand and buy him a beer.
I dualbooted at first ; tried many games. Once i decided i was ok with natively available games on my library , ditched Windows entirely. It just lives in a VM now , just for some edge cases.
I'm still a noob compared to many of you Linux veterans but in these four years i only saw gaming on Linux platform just gone forward.
Both from drivers side and with available games.
I really hope that Proton can help with 1 percent market share goal anytime soon.
Since it is good to have such an option ; Linux still needs visibility.
2018: Still no broadcasting?Yeah, the Linux Steam client itself still cannot broadcast to the internet. But there is a workaround: You can use the Store Broadcast Beta. Join this group, generate a RTMP token, and use this as well as the nearest steam rmtp server as details for your streaming software, e.g. obs. More details on https://steamcommunity.com/broadcast/upload
If you then go live with obs, and play a steam game from within the steam client, it will show up on your profile.
I read about this the first time on the restream.io blog: https://support.restream.io/streaming-services/platform-setup/how-to-stream-games-to-steam
And it's working pretty well. Sure, it's not the easy "right-click-on-a-buddy-and-watch"-thing, but still better than nothing.
You want a cake? You know the drill!
Ah. The "good old days" of Linux - compiling your own stuff. Sure, you can still do it now, but most distributions give you awesome package management instead.
I haven't used "make clean ; make menuconfig ; make dep ; make bzImage ; make modules ; make modules_install ; make install" for a long time.
I'm generally so, so happy with the Debian package management. Considerably less irritating than Windows updates.
And now: Steam client with Steam Play/Proton/WINE technology which gives us the opportunity to play games which will never make their way directly onto Linux, with no need to tweak WINE - Just launch the installer and play.
Happy Birthday, Steam client for Linux :)
I think I should ask Fedora to add cake-1.0.f29.x86_64 packages to its core repo, then...You want a cake? You know the drill!
Ah. The "good old days" of Linux - compiling your own stuff. Sure, you can still do it now, but most distributions give you awesome package management instead.
I haven't used "make clean ; make menuconfig ; make dep ; make bzImage ; make modules ; make modules_install ; make install" for a long time.
I'm generally so, so happy with the Debian package management. Considerably less irritating than Windows updates.
And now: Steam client with Steam Play/Proton/WINE technology which gives us the opportunity to play games which will never make their way directly onto Linux, with no need to tweak WINE - Just launch the installer and play.
Happy Birthday, Steam client for Linux :)
Ah. The "good old days" of Linux - compiling your own stuff. Sure, you can still do it now, but most distributions give you awesome package management instead.
Gentoo offers both :P
About 10 years ago I had a bunch of hosts acting as distcc slaves for days of update fun.
But I agree, binary packages and generally all package managers improved immensely over time. Dependency hell is now mostly the subject of scary bonfire stories.
Uhhhhh Liam...do you actually own 1.4K games??
Is that really so unusual, given the site he runs here?
I mean...that's a lot of games for anyone to own. Although to be fair I did forget that he probably gets quite a few free keys for reviews and stuff but that's an absurd amount of games. Like good lord. I only have 223 with 168 being Linux and that's considered a lot in my circle of friends lol.Uhhhhh Liam...do you actually own 1.4K games??
Is that really so unusual, given the site he runs here?
Last edited by Scoopta on 5 November 2018 at 7:41 pm UTC
Windousico Nov 6, 2018
I mean...that's a lot of games for anyone to own.
My Steam client says 1307 "STEAMOS + LINUX" - comes from scooping up lots of bundles, LOL! Like others have mentioned, I also have been a lot more selective lately.
Not so much "hopped on" as "hooked up a powerful locomotive".I can remember when I got the first "professional grade" games with the first Humble Bundle in 2010.
I never really got to experiences that as I used to own several of the Loki releases, so I watched they dream die and the be resurrected when that first Humble Bundle happened. Glad Valve hoped on the Linux train six years ago.
I still have a couple of those old Loki ports . . . been a while since I tried to get them to run. Last time it was tricky, but do-able, although I wasn't getting sound. Alpha Centauri's still the best in its genre . . .
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