14 DAY TRIAL // It's been more than a year since Steam for Linux was officially released by Valve and the library of games has just reached 500 titles.
Before the release of Steam on the Linux platform you couldn't get 500 Linux titles even if you gathered all the games ever made for the open source platform. The advancements made on Linux as a gaming platform extend way beyond the entertainment side of things.
The first effect of so many games is clearly visible in the number of drivers that are now being released. Up until a couple of years ago, it would take months before users got a new NVIDIA or AMD driver. Now, it's possible to even get two or three in just one month.
It's also very likely that we will soon start to see new companies contributing to the Linux kernel and new efforts are being made to ensure that Linux becomes a proper entertainment platform.
Valve is, in fact, betting its future on Linux and they have committed a lot of resources to make this happen. The company is now building a Linux distribution called SteamOS and they hope that it will eventually become a contender and even a replacement for Windows.
That goal is still a long way off, but one of the immediate results is that a lot of developers have started to port their games to Linux, in greater and greater numbers. In fact, it seems to be a snowball effect that brings more people to the open source platform with each passing day.
The game that had the honor of being the 500th title added on Steam for Linux is “Enigmatis: The Mists of Ravenwood,” which is a hidden object game, a genre that is very popular right now.
The best-selling game on Steam for Linux is now Rust, a sandbox MMO FPS that allows its users to do almost anything in order to survive in a world populated by numerous enemies and other players.
At the current rate of growth it is impossible to predict where Steam for Linux will be in one year's time, but so far none of the major publishers, like Ubisoft or Electronic Arts, has shown any interest.
The Linux boom will be evident once these companies start building games that work on Steam OS. It might take more than a year, but that day is surely coming.