All games built with the Source engine will have Linux support

Oct 29, 2012 14:30 GMT  ·  By

We announced last week that Valve would speak at Ubuntu Developer Summit, hopping they're going to make a big announcement. The announcement never came, but we got some pretty interesting information.

Drew Bliss, an engineer at Valve, has answered a few questions about the upcoming Steam Linux client. We all thought he's going to speak about what games will be available at launch, but it's a developer summit after all.

The Valve representative managed to share some tidbits of information, which are more important than a few official game announcements.

The Source SDK and all features developed games by Valve, with this engine, will provide support for the Linux platform from now on (Half- Life 3 anyone?).

Another important information given by Drew Bliss was the fact that, even if the recommended operating system for Steam on Linux is Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS, it will not be made only for this platform. This means that Fedora, Suse, and other distros will be able to run the application.

The Valve developer has also addressed an interesting question from the audience, regarding DRM measures (digital rights management).

We all know that DRM is a big issue on the Windows platform and a lot of publishers are pushing really aggressive solutions to protect their games. What will happen on Linux, a platform that by definition is open source?

The answer Valve provided is only half-satisfactory. They are not promoting any kind of DRM, with the exception of their own solution, which is very mild, but they can't actually stop anyone from adopting any kind of DRM scheme they choose.

Ubuntu Developer Summit is a four-day event for Ubuntu contributors that will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark on October 29 – November 1, 2012.

Steam is a digital distribution platform developed by Valve, who is also the maker of the Half-Life series, Portal series, Team Fortress, and Left 4 Dead franchise.