Valve News Archives

Hans-Kristian Arntzen with Valve just released VKD3D-Proton 2.14 as the newest version of this Direct3D 12 implementation built atop the Vulkan API for Valve's Steam Play (Proton).

Valve and CodeWeavers today released Proton 9.0-4 as the newest version of their Wine downstream that powers Steam Play for running an incredible number of modern Windows games on Linux.

During October the Steam Linux marketshare crawled back up to 2.0% while overnight Valve published the Steam Survey results for November 2024.

In commemorating twenty years since the release of the highly acclaimed Half-Life 2 game, Valve today released the Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary update with various fixes and other refinements. Half-Life 2 is also being made free-to-own through November 18th for those that never experienced this legendary game.

Earlier this year and through July Steam on Linux was enjoying above a 2% marketshare thanks to the success of the Arch Linux powered SteamOS and Steam Deck offerings. But then for August and September Steam on Linux use was below 2%. After a 0.13% rise in October, Steam on Linux is back to sitting at a 2.00% marketshare.

Merged to upstream SDL today is an OpenVR video driver that was developed at Valve Software.

Back in March for GDC, Microsoft excitingly announced the official releases of Direct3D 12 Work Graphs for "enabling new types of GPU autonomy" for allowing more rendering work to be offloaded to the GPU. While this greater GPU-driven rendering with Work Graphs has been talked up by Microsoft and other parties, Valve engineers working on VKD3D-Proton for implementing D3D12 over Vulkan have found the new Work Graphs functionality to not be as nearly captivating.

The Wine developers at CodeWeavers who also collaborate with Valve on Steam Play's Proton have been working to enhance input device support for Proton/Wine gaming. In particular, for various gaming input devices that were never designed with Linux support in mind and various nuances around properly supporting them under Linux with different limitations from (X)Wayland to kernel driver handling.

Steam's Remote Play feature that allows playing Steam games on phones / tablets / TVs / other PCs while streamed from your main gaming system now is able to handle AV1 video streaming.

Back in May Steam on Linux usage crossed the 2% threshold and remained that way until August when it dropped back below 2% for all Steam gamers. The September 2024 Steam Survey results were just published and point to another downward bump for Steam on Linux gaming.

After several weeks of testing Valve has released Proton 9.0-3 as the newest version of this Wine downstream that powers Steam Play for being able to enjoy Windows games on Linux.

With the start of the new month comes the Steam Survey results for the month prior. The August 2024 data is in and it points to the Steam on Linux statistics dipping back below 2%.

With the start of a new month comes the latest Steam Survey statistics from Valve for providing interesting software and hardware insight.

With the start of the new month comes the Steam Survey hardware/software details for the month prior. The June 2024 results show a decline to the Steam on Linux marketshare but staying above the magic 2% threshold.

VKD3D-Proton 2.13 is now available as the newest version of this Direct3D 12 over Vulkan API translation later that is used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for accelerating D3D12 Windows games on Linux.

Proton 9.0-2 is out this afternoon as the Valve/CodeWeavers downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play for running Windows games under Linux within the Steam client.

Back in February 2022 prior to the Valve Steam Deck being released, a Steam Deck Platform Driver was posted for the Linux kernel. Sadly, more than two years later, this driver still hasn't been upstreamed into the mainline Linux kernel and it looks like it could still be months before it happens.

Valve tonight released a SteamOS 3.6 Preview as the latest version of their Arch Linux derived operating system that powers the Steam Deck and can be installed on other devices as well.

For those that were hoping Steam on Linux numbers would crack the 2% marketshare for April, unfortunately, that didn't happen.

Valve and CodeWeavers today released the Proton 9.0 Release Candidate 2 build based off Wine 9.0 for powering Steam Play to enjoy an excellent assortment of modern (and legacy) Windows games on Linux.

With tonight's Steam client beta update they have reduced the default scaling factor for those running it on Linux with a 4K display.

A patch is undergoing work to add Steam Deck IMU support to the HID-Steam kernel driver for supporting the accelerometer and gyroscope sensors of the Steam Deck controller.

VKD3D-Proton 2.12 is out today as the newest version of this software used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for implementing Direct3D 12 over the Vulkan API. With VKD3D-proton 2.12 is initial support for NVIDIA Reflex technology along with various other features.

With Steam on Linux use for January clocking in at 1.95%, I was very eager to see if the February results would once again surpass the 2.0% threshold... Unfortunately, it moved in the opposite direction.

Wednesday's small Steam client beta update should fix a crash when starting the Steam client when no OpenGL drivers are found.

With Valve's release today of the Steam Audio SDK 4.5.2 they have made the software development kit fully open-source under an Apache 2.0 license.

With the start of a new month comes the Steam Survey results for the month prior. For January 2024, the reported Steam on Linux marketshare continued falling just short of the 2% threshold.

In addition to OBS adding AV1 VA-API support, some more good Linux video acceleration news this week is Valve enabling VA-API DRM hardware-accelerated video decoding when using Remote Play with the newest Steam beta.

Valve has rolled out Proton 8.0-5 as the newest version of their Wine downstream for powering Steam Play to enjoy mass amounts of Windows games to run rather well on Linux.

The Steam Survey results are out for December 2023 and the Linux gaming marketshare is at nearly 2%.

The SDL3 library commonly used by cross-platform games and heavily relied upon by Steam continues to be under heavy development at the start of 2024.

Earlier Phoronix reporting on the "Valve Galileo" as a new Steam Deck device proved accurate and that is the new Steam Deck OLED gaming console. Further improving the upstream Linux kernel support is a set of patches to further refine the Sound Open Firmware (SOF) support for this new platform.

Steam on Linux enjoyed a various nice boost in popularity during the course of November at least as it concerns Valve's Steam Survey.

Valve has released SteamOS 3.5.5 to its stable channel for Steam Deck users that brings Steam Deck OLED device support, HDR display settings if supported by the external display, the default color rendering for Steam Deck LCD now emulates the sRGB color gamut, and many other changes.

Valve's Steam Deck is a heavy user of relying on pre-compiled shaders to yield quicker start times and a more efficient handheld gaming experience. But in cases where bugs happen and a shader compiler fix needs to be back-ported, there isn't a straight-forward means of properly handling that for the Steam Deck. But with new knobs being added to the Mesa RADV driver code, there will be some options for better dealing with this moving forward.

Valve just announced the Steam Deck OLED as an upgraded version of their Steam Deck handheld Linux gaming device.

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.