Valve, creators of the number one games online distribution system, Steam, will be opening their Linux client beta to everybody next week. Making the client available for everyone who wants to try it is possible due to the 'stability of the client', Valve has stated.
“The Open Beta will be available to the public and will increase the current population from 80K to a higher number,” they wrote in a message to the closed Steam for Linux Mailing List.
To go even further, all Linux-friendly games are now showing their system requirements under the "Linux" tag in their storefront page. Among the list of games which are available for Linux at the moment, the only ones who made into the beta are the following:
- Amnesia
- Dynamite Jack
- Eversion
- iBomber Attack
- Killing Floor
- Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45
- Serious Sam 3:BFE
- Sword & Sworcery
- The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles
- World of Goo
Some of these games are already available for Linux on Desura, so if you don't want to wait until next week you can grab them right now from the Desura store.
Leading the list is the top-rated horror adventure Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which was finalist at the 2011's Independent Games Festival. It already lists its requirements under the Linux tag at their storefront page.
Anyway, this game has already been available on Desura for Linux for a long time, and, in fact, it currently leads the "Most popular" section.
The same with the other award-winning indie game, World of Goo, which not only has updated their storefront page but they have also released their demo of the game.
But not only indie games are coming to Steam for Linux next week. There are other titles which have been released in the closed beta and are at the moment only Steam-available, developed by big developers.
Serious Sam 3: BFE and Team Fortress 2 are two of the other titles which will be released next week. No doubt that the release of Team Fortress 2 as the debut of the Source Engine (developed by Valve and used in many of their games) will give a green light to the coming of other titles, such as the Portal franchise and Left4Dead, as the latter has been confirmed by Valve in their Linux blog.
However, for us Counter-Strike fans, there are no official words from Valve of us Linux users having Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on our desktops any time soon. But there's always hope and, as Valve have already stated their plans of developing a console based off Linux to bring Steam to the living rooms, and the release of Steam's Big Picture feature along with the Linux client, I do believe we will hear comments about this any time soon.
In the meantime, we will have to settle with this - which is in fact GREAT news already as it is - and expect next week's update to try it in our computers. For now, all we can do is sit tight, watch the video below - by OMG! Ubuntu - and wait.
For those who want to know more about this so called Steambox console I recommend you to read this article at Kotaku.
Great news for us Linux gamers! The porting of Unity, Steam and Source to Linux in a single year could prove very interesting. I'm curious how their rivals will react to this.