Since there was actually more from E3 2019 for Linux than I expected, here's a little round-up of things so you don't get lost in a sea of articles. As expected, there's little in the way of AAA games but anyone actually expecting that for Linux hasn't been keeping up. Traditionally, E3 has never really given much information for Linux gamers. There were still a few fun little surprises though!
Coming this year
- Lovely Planet 2: April Skies - June 18th
- Mable & The Wood - Summer 2019
- UnderMine - Summer 2019
- Police Stories - September 19th
- Stoneshard - November 7th
- Commandos 2 HD Remaster - Q4 2019
- Starmancer - "Soon"
- Terraria 1.4 "Journey's End" - 2019 sometime
- Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary - No ETA from Aspyr Media
- Mosaic - "It’s not a day 1 priority, but we want to get it out on Linux as well." (source) - 2019
Coming in 2020
- Aground (Early Access already on Linux) - New update live, full release "early 2020"
- Bite the Bullet - Q1 2020
- CARRION - 2020
- Spiritfarer - 2020
- Psychonauts 2 - 2020 + Double Fine join MSFT
- Wasteland 3 - Spring 2020
Crowdfunding
- Ribbiting Saga - Crowdfunding
- SkateBIRD - Crowdfunding
Hardware
- Ryzen 9 3950X and Radeon RX 5700
- Smach Z handheld - Shipping this year, Linux by default (Windows costs extra). There's been talk of them bringing out a Switch-like dock, to enable the CPU to run faster too.
- Atari VCS console - March 2020
Pinched by Epic Store
- WHAT THE GOLF? - Epic Exclusive until next year
- Griftlands - Epic Exclusive until next year
- Afterparty - Epic Exclusive until next year, waiting to hear more info from the developer
Stadia
Since Stadia will work on Linux and it's powered by Linux, here's what is newly announced for it:
- Marvel's Avengers - Square Enix
- Watch Dogs: Legion - Ubisoft
- Uplay+ - an extra subscription service, with access to 100+ games. Not clear how many of those will be on Stadia.
Interestingly, we also now know why Valve are going it alone in making their own stand-alone version of Dota Auto Chess. During E3 at the PC Gaming Show, the original creator of the popular Dota 2 game mode revealed that his own stand-alone desktop game is going to be an Epic Store exclusive. It now makes more sense why Valve said, "Valve and Drodo could not work directly with each other for a variety of reasons".
On another Valve-related note that's small, Valve also put out Steam Play Proton 4.2-7 to "Fix for performance and sound regression that affected some games, like Wolfenstein: The New Order.". This was needed, as FAudio was a bit messed-up.
For those curious (we've been asked a few times about this), Paradox Interactive and Romero Games also revealed Empire of Sin, sadly though it seems to be another game published by Paradox that won't be seeing Linux support. Linux was missed out of all the press info they sent.
As for a random bit of non-gaming news, Debian 10 Buster was announced this week to release on July 6th.
Plenty more non-E3 news to come Linux gaming fans! I have a big todo-list and inbox waiting for me, which got pushed back by the surprising number of announcements over the last two days.
I will continue to add to this, as more comes out so check back often!
Stadia could be very good news for Feral, Aspyr, et al. now that everyone and their Linux gaming grandma are playing Windows games with Steam Play. I imagine that it could be good business for them to eg. offer a one-time cut (and an optional support agreement) to port AAA games to Stadia, and additionally make an agreement to publish Linux and Mac versions on other store fronts for a cut of the sales, as they usually do.
I could see Valve eyeballing the Stadia games list and talking to the developers about releasing Linux native versions. At the very least, this could make a world of difference in SteamPlay if the developers don't want to go "all-in" on Linux.
Shams was the one who pushed for Linux internally at PDX and wanted it to succeed, so I doubt it was an easy decision, but he is a businessman. He did say they they always examine possibilities so they may revisit this in the future, but it seems we have lost one of our longest and strongest larger supporters.
Link here for confirmation:
Twitter Chat With Shams
I had a brief chat on Twitter with Shams
Thanks for sharing!
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