Earlier today, Valve Co-Founder and internet celebrity Gabe Newell hosted an AMA on Reddit. During the open Q&A session with Reddit users, Newell stated that a Linux version of Counter Strike: Global Offensive was currently in-development, but Valve doesn’t “have an ETA” yet. The rest of the Counter Strike series is already available for Linux via Steam Play, so a Linux port of GO should come as no surprise. Counter Strike: Global Offensive is the first game in the franchise to have a console-release, as it was released in 2012 on XBLA, PSN and of course PC. Several of their more popular titles are already available through the Linux version of Steam, including The Orange Box (Half Life 2, HL2: Ep. 1-2, Team Fortress 2, Portal), and Left 4Dead 2.
With SteamOS already available, and the Steam Box series of home-console-PCs coming later this year, Valve has certainly taken a liking to the open-distribution OS. Several other games outside of Steam have already made the leap over to Linux, via self-published ports and Humble Bundle debuts. Even then, some games- Minecraft, for example- are going so far as to have versions created for the Raspberry Pi.
During Newell’s AMA, a Redditor asked him about the status of the elusive Half Life 3. While the head of Valve didn’t have anything to say about release dates, development cycles, or any concrete details about the game for that matter, he did have this to say as to why no announcements have been made:
“When we announced our products years in advance in the past and then were really late delivering them, it was pretty painful for both us and the community. We’d rather not repeat that.”
With several Indie titles, Counter Strike: Global Offensive and other Valve multiplayer titles featuring Linux support, how many of you are interested in using Linux as a gaming platform? Do you ever see it taking off and becoming as popular a platform as Windows?