Steam coming to Linux with Left 4 Dead 2

Valve has muttered and murmured about bringing Steam and its Source engine to Linux before, and now it's revealed the plan--port Steam and Left 4 Dead 2 to Ubuntu 12.04, then work from there.

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Valve has muttered and murmured about bringing Steam and its Source engine to Linux before, and now it's revealed the plan--port Steam and Left 4 Dead 2 to Ubuntu 12.04, then work from there. Steam will come to Linux in all its glory, and Valve's building a speedy OpenGL version of Source it can use for more of its games too.

The Valve Linux Team already has Steam and L4D2 up and running natively on Ubuntu, the 11-person group formed in 2011 explains in its first blog post. They need a bit more work before we can all play with them, though, and Valve notes, "Our goal is to have L4D2 performing under Linux as well as it performs under Windows."

Why Ubuntu? The team explains, "First, we're just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster. Secondly, Ubuntu is a popular distribution and has recognition with the general gaming and developer communities."

Depending on how well it goes down, the team will look at bringing Steam to more distros. And, naturally, Valve wants to bring more of its games to Linux.

Linux users have enthusiastically supported efforts to bring proper games to its platform (sorry, Tux Racer), consistently paying far more to the Humble Bundles than Mac and Windows folks.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 17, 2012 6:00 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Steam coming to Linux with Left 4 Dead 2.

    Valve has muttered and murmured about bringing Steam and its Source engine to Linux before, and now it's revealed the plan--port Steam and Left 4 Dead 2 to Ubuntu 12.04, then work from there.

    • reply
      July 17, 2012 7:34 AM

      psssht gurl.... steam aint comin to linux... linux is comin to steam!

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      July 17, 2012 9:38 AM

      This is all well and good and its good of them to do this but what about the hundreds of non-valve games that no longer get updated? Just Valve's games on their own would not make me a permanent Ubuntu user.

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        July 17, 2012 10:28 AM

        Its a start?

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          July 17, 2012 11:04 AM

          Yep. You gotta start somewhere for sure. It'll be interesting to see how they tackle it.

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        July 17, 2012 11:37 AM

        It's identical to the situation of Steam on Mac.

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          July 17, 2012 2:29 PM

          Yep, except the Mac side of things is coming on pretty well... I have 75 games in my Steam account for my gaming PC, and when I log into Steam on my Mac it says I have 27 games. Admittedly most of them are either Valve games, older games or small indie titles, but that's not bad going really. The 'biggest' AAA non-Valve games I have for Mac are Two Worlds II and Civ 5... and the best is Psychonauts :)

          • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
            reply
            July 17, 2012 2:51 PM

            That's the point he was trying to make. The Linux side of things doesn't even exist yet.

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              July 17, 2012 4:19 PM

              Pretty much everything in the Humble Bundle also works on Linux. It isn't anything like the PC or Mac selection but it isn't as horrible as it seems either.

              As unlikely as it seems, it would be great if Blizzard put out games for Ubuntu as well.

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                July 17, 2012 4:22 PM

                Everything in Humble Bundle 5 works in Linux, meaning Bastion, Limbo, Amnesia, Psychonauts, Super Meat Boy, Braid, etc.

                I read up on compatibility and of all the games offered in all Humble Bundles, only Limbo ran inside a wrapper for compatibility, everything else has been native. That isn't bad!

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            July 17, 2012 3:59 PM

            I have so many games on my Mac now, it's not even funny.

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        July 17, 2012 2:59 PM

        Humble Bundle has grown my linux game collection quite a lot this year and all of those games are on Steam already. I'm assuming they will also be moving to Steam for linux much like Steam Play on Mac

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      July 17, 2012 4:00 PM

      I am glad they officially announced it. I was kind of getting annoyed by the back and forth rumors on several sites. Next step is seeing if Valve can convince other developers to port for the platform.

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      July 18, 2012 8:45 AM

      Of course, the only downside of this is that we'll have rogue Linux copies of Civ IV and GTAIII appearing in our PC Steam Library as well as the Mac ones ;)

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