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
- 99.99% Uptime in First Half of 2025
- Since January there was only one noticeable outage
- When People Call a Best/Close Friend of Bill Gates a "Serial Rapist"
- Good thing that the Linux Foundation keeps the "Linux" trademark ("Linux Mark") clean
- Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia, Shutdown in Pakistan, What Next?
- It seems possible that in 2025 alone Microsoft will have laid off over 50,000 workers
- What Matters More Than "Market Share"
- The goal is freedom, not "market share"
- Credit Suisse collapse obfuscated Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners scandal
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- UK Media Under Threat: Cannot Report on Data Breach, Cannot Report on Microsoft Staff Strangling Women
- The story of super injunction (in the British media this week, years late)
- Under the Guise of "MIT Technology Review Insights" the Site MIT Technology Review Posts Corporate Spam as 'Articles'
- Some of the articles aren't even articles but 'hit pieces' against Free software and some are paid advertisements
- Brett Wilson LLP Has Track Record in Scam Coin Cases (e.g. Craig Wright and More), Now It Works for 'Crypto' Scam Purveyors
- But wait, it gets worse
-
- Gemini Links 17/07/2025: "Goodreads for Gemini" and Defence of "The Small Web"
- Links for the day
- Links 17/07/2025: Anger and Morale Issues at Microsoft, Wars and Conflicts Get Digital
- Links for the day
- CALEA / CALEA2 is the Real Problem, Not Chinese Operatives Exploiting CALEA / CALEA2 (as Any Other Nation Can)
- CALEA / CALEA2 is more of a front door than a back door
- Nils Torvalds and Anna "Mikke" Torvalds (née Törnqvis) Hopefully Use GNU/Linux by Now
- "Torvalds Family Uses Windows, Not Linus’ Linux"
- Attack of the Slopfarms
- FUD-amplifying bots with slop images, slop text (LLM slop)
- Not My Problem, I Don't Care
- Context/inspiration: Martin Niemöller
- Honest Journalism About the European Patent Office Ceased to Exist After SLAPPs and Bribes to the Media
- The EPO is basically a Mafia
- Life Became Simpler When I Stopped Driving and I Don't Miss Driving When I See "Modern" Cars
- Gee, wonder why car sales have plummeted...
- Why I Believe Brett Wilson LLP and Its Microsoft Clients Are All Toast
- So far our legal strategy has worked perfectly
- EPO Jobs Are Very Toxic and Bad for One's Health
- Health first, not monopolies
- Response to Ryo Suwito Regarding the Four Freedoms
- the point of life isn't to make more money
- Microsoft's Morale Circling Down the Drain
- Or gutter, toilet etc.
- Tech Used to be Fun. To Many of Us It's Still Fun.
- You can just watch it from afar and make fun of it all
- Links 17/07/2025: "Blog Identity Crisis" and Openwashing by Nvidia
- Links for the day
- Greffiers and the US Attorney of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
- The lawsuit can help expose extensive corruption in the American court system as well
- The People Who Promoted systemd in Debian Also Promote Wayland
- This is not politics
- Victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, Wanted to Sue Him But Lacked the Funds (He Attacked Their Finances)
- Having spoken to victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
- Links 17/07/2025: Science, Hardware, and Censorship
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/07/2025: Staying in the "Small Web" and Back on ICQ
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 16, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 16, 2025
- Exclusive: corruption in Tribunals, Greffiers, from protection rackets to cat whisperers
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Will Brett Wilson LLP Handle Its Own Winding Up Petition or be Struck Off for Overt Abuse of Process?
- Today we sue not only the first Microsofter
- Links 16/07/2025: Chip Bans and Microsoft’s “Digital Escort” Program
- Links for the day
- Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
- You're hopeless, Canonical
- Revolving Doors: One Day You're a Judge, the Next Day You're an Attorney Paying Public Officials and Working for Violent and Dangerous Microsoft Employees
- how the US justice system works
- Sharing Code and Recipes
- It helps explain the triviality of software freedom
- Slopwatch: Noise, Plagiarism and Even Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation
- What are we meant to do to prevent a false association or misleading connotations? Game the LLMs? No. Boycott slopfarms.
- How Many Women Has Microsoft's Alex Balabhadra Graveley Already Strangled and Where Does That End?
- If you too are a victim of this man and wish to share information, contact us
- Gemini Links 16/07/2025: BaseLibre Numerical System and Simple Web Browsing with TLS
- Links for the day
- Links 16/07/2025: Fascist Slop Takes "Intelligence" Clothing, New Criminal Case Against MElon
- Links for the day
- "We Might Save Somebody's Life"
- I follow the example of my father
- Why I am Suing the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, in the UK High Court This Week
- Out of respect to the process and to the Court, I shall not share any pertinent details about the case
- Links 16/07/2025: China’s Economy Grows Steadily, France Takes Action Regarding Harm to Children by GAFAM and Fentanylware (TikTok)
- Links for the day
- It is Not About Politics
- Beware the people who try to make this about politics
- Good Journalism Saves Lives
- a shocking number of women die or get seriously hurt every day due to violence from a partner
- Recognition of Women's Contributions to Free Software
- Being passive is not an option when bad things are happening
- Slopfarms Are Going to Perish Because Public Opinion is Changing
- Many slopfarms will simply go offline
- 19 Years of Standing Up for Justice, Equality, and Truth
- This week we shall take it up a notch
- Gemini Links 16/07/2025: Tmux and OCC25 Working TLS
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 15, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 15, 2025
- Links 15/07/2025: LLM Pollution and Pushback in Ukraine
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/07/2025: xkcd, New Cert, and Alhena Gemlog
- Links for the day
- Links 15/07/2025: Press Freedom at Risk and New Facebook Blunders
- Links for the day
- Reboots Should Never be Necessary
- "BUT WHAT ABOUT SECURITY!!"
- There's Still Hope for the World Wide Web
- Let's hope that the trajectory of the Web won't be leading us to over-reliance on Google, nor will it reward worthless slopfarms
- Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Smolweb and Alhena 5.1.7
- Links for the day
- The Danes Want GNU/Linux
- David Heinemeier Hansson recently moved to GNU/Linux
- Cory Doctorow Explains Why Software Freedom Matters, Whereas "Open Source" Misses the Point and Helps Monopolies
- It's a very long article
- BillPR (EpsteinGate-Bribed NPR) is Turning Into a Partial Slopfarm that Promotes Slop
- "I went on a date with a chatbot!"
- Two Weeks Passed Since Latest Large Wave of Microsoft Layoffs, More Expected Next Month
- Blaming the debt on "AI" is just self-serving storytelling
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 14, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, July 14, 2025
- Gemini Links 15/07/2025: Gemini "Style Sheets" and Switching From Microsoft GitHub to Codeberg
- Links for the day