One year on from its arrival in the Ubuntu Software Centre, Steam for Linux now offers more than 500 gaming titles.
In the twelve months since its initial stable release, the number of games available on Linux through Steam has increased substantially. Based on numbers listed by the Steam ‘Linux’ Store page, it may be as much as a mammoth 900% – jumping from a mere 50 titles at launch to more than 530 today.
After spending much of late 2012 in beta, the popular games distribution platform was formally released on Ubuntu back in February 14, 2013.
While stats from Valve’s own monthly Hardware Survey appear to show a continuing decline in the number of Linux gamers using the service, barring the odd uptick, user enthusiasm and improvements in support from big-name games developers remain on the up.
With the first Linux-based Steam Machines launching this year the pace of new arrivals for Linux is unlikely to slow down. Mid-2014 could be when we start to see more current, big-name gaming titles hit Linux at the same time as Windows and Mac.
Debian and Ubuntu developers were recently gifted with free access to Valve’s own in-house catalog of games, with the promise of gratis copies of future releases also included.
12 months on: are you still using Steam for Linux?