Links 7/4/2014: Games
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-07 08:47:26 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-07 08:47:26 UTC
The Linux land has a reputation, especially among developers used to Windows, of being – let's say – somewhat savage, uncivilized. We've all heard the ghost stories: things being downright broken, lack of documentation and general despair; people coming, exclaiming: "what the fuck?!" and going right back.
In little over a year since the first stable version of Steam for Linux emerged, the number of Linux-supported games continues to grow at a rapid pace. Valve's digital game distribution currently hosts 376 games for Linux, with many quality commercial titles such as Shadowrun: Dragonfall, System Shock 2, and Europa Universalis IV to name-drop just a few of our favorites. With more game engines being natively ported to Linux, this trend is going to continue. For example, the CryEngine technology has recently been natively ported to Linux, so we could see ports of games like Ryse: Son of Rome and Crysis 3.
Every month Valve publishes a comprehensive hardware and software survey that reflects what is being used to run the Steam client. It’s been pretty accurate until now, but a couple of months ago Valve made a few small modification and eliminated most of the inconsequential entries for various other distros.
In the past I had a look at 17 free games available for Linux, overviewed here and here. In this article I will have a look at five more completely free and open-source games available to install in any distribution out there.
Shipwrecked. Captured. Betrayed. Forced to perform for an audience of cats? Yes, all that and more when you unlock BattleBlock Theater! This game just sounds funny!
It has only been a week since we let you know about Icebound, but it's now been released! Icebound is a dark fantasy visual novel that takes place in a steampunk world locked in the depths of an ice age, where alchemists possess supernatural powers.
Star Gem and Gaijin Entertainment’s inter-galactic MMORPG, Star Conflict, is celebrating its two year anniversary with a pretty hefty update that will see it gain Oculus Rift and Linux support.
We're extremely excited that Epic is porting Unreal Engine 4 to Linux -- see the official announcement or some press here and here. Once we heard UE4 Linux was coming we pretty much dropped everything to ensure vogl can handle UE4 callstreams. The latest code on github now supports full-stream tracing/replaying and trimming of UE4 callstreams in either GL3 or GL4 mode. UI support for UE4 is still in the early stages, but now that we can snapshot/restore UE4 and continue to play back the callstream without diverging it's only matter of time before the UI comes up to speed.
FaeVerse Alchemy, a puzzle game developed and published by Subsoap, has been released on Steam for Linux with a small 9% discount.
Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden, a point and click adventure developed and published on Steam by Artifex Mundi sp. z o.o., has also received a Linux version and a sizable discount.
Harvester, a disturbing adventure video game developed by DigiFX Interactive and published by Night Dive Studios, is now available on Steam for Linux.
While the voglperf code has been public for some time within Git, the first initial release of Voglperf was tagged on Tuesday evening by a Valve developer.
Getting games to stream properly from Windows to Linux seems to be the main focus of the Valve developers and many of the patches deal strictly with this feature. It's unlikely that In-Home Streaming will exist the Beta stages too soon, but the developers might surprise us with the next stable release.
One month after releasing Unreal Engine 4 and talking about Unreal Engine 4 Linux support, Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4.1 preview today and it's paired with first-rate Linux support.
The Unreal developers from Epic Games have expressed their support before for the Linux platform, but now they actually made it possible with the latest update for the Unreal Engine 4.
Good news for gamers who've been eyeing Valve's upcoming Steam Machines: Unreal Engine 4.1 will support the Linux-based SteamOS after a pending update. In a blog post today, Epic Games' Mike Fricker announced that the source code now includes "initial support for running and packaging games for Linux and Steam OS." This means that upcoming UE4 titles like Daylight and Fortnite could be ported to the systems.
Unreal Engine 4, the newest version of the game engine that powers many a AAA gaming title, just got a feature that may prove quite important in the near feature: the ability to build games that run on Linux.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
- Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
- Autumn Has Come
- Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
- IBM Has Taken Control of GNOME
- Don't expect a successor to be found any time soon
-
- “Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
- There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
- Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
- Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
- Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
- Links for the day
- Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
- Links for the day
- Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
- They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users
- Links 31/08/2025: Baggage Claim Scams, an Insurrectionist’s War on Culture, and a Sudden Robotics Hype
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 31/08/2025: Reviewing Netsurf and Slightly Less Historic Ada Design
- Links for the day
- Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
- This is What Google News Has Become
- Moments ago
- The Slopfarm WebProNews Has Turned Google News Into a Laughing Stock Full of Plagiarism by Slop
- If Google News dies of neglect, that's one thing. It's starting to seem like active neglect by Google is a form of participation.
- Do What is Moral, as What's Legal Isn't Always Moral
- Do what's objectively moral, no matter the costs and the risks
- Slopwatch: Google News Assisting Plagiarism and Anti-Linux FUD, Serial Slopper Rips Off Linux-Centric Journalists
- This makes the Web a much worse place and lessens the incentive to do journalism
- Links 30/08/2025: NVIDIA Fakes Results to Hide a Bubble Already in Implosion Phase, Data Breaches Galore, Important Win for Workers' Union in Canada
- Links for the day
- Representing and Speaking for Animals
- If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
- In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
- In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
- Bing is measured as down this month
- Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
- Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
- Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
- Links for the day
- Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
- Links for the day
- How Not to Build Software
- code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
- GAFAM and "MATA"
- The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
- Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
- I could not help but think of Free software analogies
- The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
- That issue is now resolved
- Flying in 2025
- worse than ever before
- Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
- Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
- The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
- The clock is ticking
- Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
- we won't publish much whilst on holiday
- Government Sites Should Run Free Software
- Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
- LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
- When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
- GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
- Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
- Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025