Back in 2013, Valve announced SteamOS. The company, notable for games such as Half-Life 2 and the legendary Steam platform, told its audience of avid gamers that this operating system would be based off of Debian, a popular Linux distribution. Because SteamOS would be open source (save for a few proprietary bits in the Steam framework), the operating system would be able to be distributed freely and modified.
This news, however, left many with unanswered questions. Those who knew Linux well were left to wonder when their favorite exclusive Windows games would be ported, if ever. While I cannot speak for those who are not familiar with Linux, I can guess that they were, in a way, confused. Windows has historically been the go-to desktop gaming OS and both game developers and end users have traditionally accepted that.
But still, Valve continued to make the dream of a Debian based gaming OS a reality. And in January 2014, they hit a huge milestone: the first SteamOS Beta was released. Even though the operating system has been in a beta state since then, it has seemingly pushed both AAA and Indie developers to port their games to Linux. For example, The Witcher II: Assassins of Kings, a popular RPG that can be found on Steam, was recently ported to Linux. Its release was met with a joy of sorts from Linux users because it held the knowledge that there will be more to follow, whether it be in 2014 or some time down the road.
Some would say that 2014 has been a year of leaps for the gaming on Linux movement, thanks to Valve alongside devoted developers. I personally am extremely excited to see what the remainder of 2014 will bring to us in terms of Linux gaming.
Author’s Note: Even though Valve is actively working on SteamOS and many developers are porting their games to Linux, the Windows and Mac platforms is still a top priority for both Valve and game developers. Linux will not replace Windows or Mac for gaming at the current state of things. It will merely act as another outlet for gaming.
