Valve News Archives

Valve just published their October 2023 stats for the monthly Steam Survey and they point to a nearly quarter point drop in the Linux usage after previously hitting its own highs.

For those wishing to interact with Steam from virtual reality (VR) headsets, today Valve promoted SteamVR 2.0 to stable.

Kicking off XDC 2023 yesterday in Spain was Igalia's Melissa Wen talking about her work on color management with the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver stack to empower Valve's Linux work on the Steam Deck. That was followed by Joshua Ashton of Valve talking about their work on HDR and color management from the Steam OS / Gamescope side for the Steam Deck.

Valve has just released Proton 8.0-4 as stable on the Steam client for enhancing the experience for running Windows games on Linux for this Wine-based software that powers Steam Play.

Prolific RADV developer Samuel Pitoiset with Valve's Linux graphics driver team has re-enabled Delta Color Compression (DCC) with mipmaps for AMD GFX11 (RDNA3) hardware for the Mesa 23.3 release.

Following the Counter-Strike 2 limited test since March, Counter-Strike 2 is now officially released and there is also a SteamOS/Linux build now available.

This shouldn't come as any surprise to any longtime Phoronix readers and dedicated open-source/Linux enthusiasts, but Valve with their work on the Steam Deck and SteamOS have been lifting the open-source ecosystem as a whole. A talk this week at the Linux Foundation Europe's Open-Source Summit highlighted some of the great and ongoing contributions by Valve and their partners.

In time for the weekend gamers, SteamOS 3.5 has just rolled out into Valve's preview channel for the Steam Deck. Those switching over to the "Preview" mode from the System Update Channel setting can begin to enjoy this huge feature update for the Arch Linux based SteamOS.

Hans-Kristian Arntzen of Valve's stellar Linux graphics/Proton team has released VKD3D-Proton 2.10 as the newest feature release for this Direct3D 12 API implementation built atop Vulkan that allows for modern Windows games to run on Linux atop Steam Play.

A new version of DXVK-NVAPI is now available, the NVIDIA public NVAPI interface implemented atop DXVK for use by Direct3D games running on Valve's Steam Play (Proton). DXVK-NVAPI allows for NVIDIA DLSS for Vulkan / D3D11 / D3D12, NVIDIA Reflex support, PhysX, and other NVIDIA features to be enabled for popular Windows games running on Linux.

It's been nearly four months since the release of DXVK 2.2 for this Direct3D 9/10/11 API implementation built atop the Vulkan API that is used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for enjoying Windows games on Linux. Out today is DXVK 2.3 as the latest major step forward for the project.

In July the Steam Survey results pointed to a half percent jump in the Linux gaming marketshare, taking it to nearly 2% thanks to the success of Valve's Steam Deck that runs their Arch Linux powered SteamOS platform. After the big boost in July you are probably wondering what happened in August... Well, a few minutes ago the new Steam Survey monthly results were published.

The Steam Survey results for July 2023 were just published and it points to a large and unexpected jump in the Linux gaming marketshare.

Proton 8.0-3 is rolling out on Steam that powers Steam Play to enjoy the latest Windows games on Linux. Proton 8.0-3 brings many fixes and gets more Windows games now running gracefully on Linux desktop systems as well as the Steam Deck.

Valve has shared their Steam Survey results for the month of June which shows the Steam on Linux marketshare holding steady.

If your dream is to work for Valve Software, getting experienced with the open-source Linux graphics driver development niche seems to be a decent pathway. Besides Valve, all the big hardware companies are routinely looking for more Linux graphics driver developers as well.

While yesterday brought a major update to the Steam client stable series, tonight brings a new update to the Steam beta series with some notable enhancements to the Linux client.

Following recent Steam client beta updates that have introduced many new features, Valve tonight rolled out a rather big Steam client update to stable users.

Last month Steam on Linux aimed to enable NVIDIA GPU video hardware acceleration by default but ultimately ran into problems. With Tuesday's Steam beta update they hope to have that resolved and re-enabled the NVIDIA GPU video hardware acceleration by default.

Valve just published the Steam Survey results for May 2023 and on a percentage basis show the Steam on Linux marketshare growing ever so slightly.

Valve released a new Steam client beta overnight and contains a few notable fixes for NVIDIA Linux gamers.

DXVK 2.2 is now available as a big update to this open-source software for mapping the Direct3D 9/10/11 APIs to Vulkan and the first major release since DXVK 2.1 shipped back in January.

Today's Steam client beta will be a delight for some Linux gamers with the Steam client finally recognizing the GNOME and KDE desktop global scaling factor for text sizing.

Less than a month has passed since Proton 8.0-1 shipped as the software that powers Valve's Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux. Already out today is the Proton 8.0-2.

At the start of April there were the Steam Survey results for March 2023 that showed a 0.54% dip to the marketshare. With that were als some strange shifts in the Windows 10 vs. 11 marketshare as well as a big boost to the Chinese marketshare. The March numbers were not revised but with the start of May comes the April numbers... Showing a boost to Linux and largely recovering from the April anomaly.

Valve is working toward the end of April on a high note as they issued a "significant" update to the Steam client beta.

Open-source Linux graphics driver engineer Melissa Wen with Igalia, Joshua Ashton with Valve, and Harry Wentland with AMD have been working on kernel mode-setting (KMS) color pipeline enhancements for SteamOS and in particular for enhancing the Steam Deck.

Valve's Linux graphics driver developers continue relentlessly optimizing the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" and today landed an optimization for an unnamed, upcoming game where now it's able to nearly match the performance enjoyed under Windows.

Valve and CodeWeavers have made available Proton 8.0-1 as their newest version of this downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux.

Valve just published their Steam Survey results for March 2023 and these initial numbers show a 0.54% drop to the Linux gaming marketshare, putting the overall Linux gaming population at around 0.84% of the Steam customer base. However, once again these numbers appear skewed/inaccurate.

Following recent rumors and leaks, Valve today officially announced Counter-Strike 2 that they announce as the largest technical leap in Counter-Strike's history.

Valve today started their first-ever Steam Spring Sale that runs through next week. In addition to sales on games, this is the first time Valve has offered the Steam Deck at a discounted price.

Valve has just published the Steam Survey results for the month prior and it points to Steam on Linux as a percentage dropping as well as a similar pullback in the Steam Deck hardware usage.

With the upcoming Linux 6.3 cycle there is finally support for the Steam Deck being added to the Steam HID driver.

Valve has just published Proton 7.0-6 as the newest version of this Wine-based software that powers Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux. Proton 7.0-6 had been available in testing and release candidate form since the end of last year while now has been promoted to stable.

Valve has just published their Steam Survey results for the month of January. Apple macOS has eaten a tiny bit of marketshare from Windows while on a percentage basis there is no change for Linux.

Thanks to Valve's incredible work on Steam Play and investing in low-level Linux graphics stack improvements, the latest milestone being achieved is HDR (High Dynamic Range) support beginning to work.

Yesterday Valve published their Steam Survey results for December and pointed to some really odd discrepancies. Valve this evening has revised the Steam Survey results that address some of the statistics oddities but still points to the Linux gaming marketshare as a percent regressing during the past month and also the Steam Deck usage declining relative to the overall Linux gaming base.

Valve has just published the Steam Survey results for December 2022 that come in at a bit of a surprise.

VKD3D-Proton 2.8 has been released as a nice Christmas gift to Linux gamers for advancing this Direct3D 12 on Vulkan implementation that is part of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for enjoying Windows games on Linux.

Valve just posted their November 2022 Steam Survey results and it shows the Linux gaming marketshare continue to climb, driven by the success of their Arch Linux powered Steam Deck handheld gaming console.

Valve has officially released Proton 7.0-5 as the newest version of their Wine downstream that powers Steam Play for enjoying countless Windows games on Linux, most notably now with the Steam Deck. Valve has also introduced "Proton Next" as their new testing grounds for future Proton updates.

Next week already marks ten years since Valve made public their Steam on Linux beta builds while today Google has advanced Steam on ChromeOS / Chromebooks to beta. Back in March Google formally announced Steam for Chrome OS and began with alpha support for select devices. Today that support has reached beta with new device support, new features, and other improvements.

With the start of the new month comes updated Steam Survey numbers from Valve for the preceding month. Thanks to the continued growth of the Steam Deck and Valve continuing to ramp up their production, Steam on Linux enjoyed another tick up for October.

Valve's new Steam client beta published today has rolled out an updated Big Picture mode for enjoying the Steam client on TVs and other large format displays while this Big Picture mode was designed and optimized for the Steam Deck.

Valve is preparing to roll-out Proton 7.0-5 as the newest version of this Wine-derived software that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux. For facilitating some testing prior to the formal Proton 7.0-5, a release candidate was published today.

Valve has worked their way through the pre-orders and ramped up the production of the Steam Deck to the point that the reservation queue is over. You can now order your Steam Deck today in-stock and Valve has also made available the much anticipated Steam Deck Dock docking station.

While the Steam on Linux marketshare has been consistently increasing this year since the launch of the Arch Linux powered Steam Deck, the September 2022 numbers are in and surprisingly there is a slight pull-back in Linux use.

Valve just published the Steam Survey results for August 2022 that show a slight increase to Linux gaming as part of the overall marketshare on a percentage basis.

Async page flipping via DRM_MODE_PAGE_FLIP_ASYNC has been available with the Direct Rendering Manager's legacy API but hasn't been supported by the atomic mode-setting interface. However, a proposed patch series would add that atomic async flip support and wire it up initially for the AMDGPU DRM driver. Meanwhile Valve's Gamescope compositor in user-space would be ready to make use of it.