I'm guessing that the majority of developers currently don't support Linux gamers who use Wine/Proton, but most haven't been been asked or haven't responded when asked. I assume the general attitude is that if their games work flawlessly with Proton, great (and some will even recommend Proton even though they don't actually support its use, just like Frozenbyte); if there are issues, customers are entitled to refunds so long as they meet the terms and conditions, and if customers are outside the refund window, well, the company never advertised Linux support in the first place. Perhaps Valve is more lenient with refund requests for games with Proton issues.

Proton is a net gain for gaming on Linux, but I don't think it is a stretch to say that in most cases Proton currently remains off-label use for games (that is to say, in most cases its use isn't currently officially supported), and that porters have been impacted to some degree (to be clear, I'm not suggesting Proton disincentivized Frozenbyte from providing Linux ports of their last few games, it's clear that is not the case). With Valve supporting the games it whitelists instead of the IP owners who oversee the source code (unless something has changed in that regard), and many, if not most, gamers willing to buy games irrespective of whether the developers support Linux, I'm not sure I see enough incentive for change to the support status quo in an industry where "underdeliver" often seems to be the mantra.

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If Linux gaming takes off (for example, because Steam Deck becomes a huge success)

Too nebulous a comment for me to put much stock in it. What is a ballpark numerical target for "huge success"? In the same thread it is mentioned that currently they don't test against Proton, don't plan on doing so upon the Steam Deck's release, and don't provide or plan on providing support for Linux gamers in the event any encounter issues. The only thing that will change that is "if Linux gaming community gets significant".

Frozenbyte hasn't provided macOS ports of Nine Parchments or Trine 4 either. Starbase does not appear to be getting a macOS port either: "Suffice it to say here that the size of Mac gaming market is not large enough."

I'm assuming Linux would need to approach near double digits in terms of percentage of Steam users, and even that, while historic, might be deemed insufficient.

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The first generation Steam Deck looks to be a great device, and I think it will sell reasonably well, but if the publishers of Baldur's Gate 3, Control Ultimate Edition, Disco Elysium - The Final Cut, Doom Eternal, Hades, Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch Remastered, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (amongst others) don't officially support Proton (not to be confused with Valve or the community supporting those games in the publishers' stead) or otherwise offer and support native Linux ports once the Steam Deck has been released, I won't feel like the needle has truly moved that much.

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Quoting: EhvisIt's not really relevant. It's a VR game. It's for owner of VR hardware.

An alternative way of looking at this is that it is relevant, it's a Half-Life game (the first new entry in the series in a dozen years, no less), but it isn't easily accessible to all Half-Life fans.

Quoting: EhvisAs for the price. It may seem expensive, but compared to other hobbies that people have it's actually not that bad. I took my holiday money for last year to buy the Index. Many people have that option but not many are willing to take it.

I'm not starving or homeless, but the vast majority of my earnings is put towards covering my mother's annual $100,000 out-of-pocket expense for 24-hour in-home care. I have just enough to cover my basic living expenses, with the occasional entertainment splurge (e.g. buying a video game on sale or watching a film at the cinema), but even that modest splurge carries the risk of then not having enough to cover other potential expenditures that always seem to crop up at the worst possible time (e.g. appliance repair).

Given the current situation, I can't afford new releases, but video games usually go on fairly deep discount within a few years. However, coupled with the need for select VR hardware, the likelihood of me being able to play Half-Life: Alyx looks like a decade off if not never.

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From all accounts that I've read, Half-Life: Alyx is a very good game. But all these reviews are also very nonchalant about VR accessibility as if it's a nonissue, and I am left wondering, am I the only person operating on an extremely tight budget and essentially priced out of the VR hardware market? Even the Oculus Rift S (when it's actually being sold at MSRP) is more than I am comfortable spending on a limited-use luxury peripheral.

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Well, I'm going to chime in with a GOG refund story. I purchased Sudden Strike 4 [External Link] and its available DLC on GOG.com. As with many games, SS4 was later given a definitive/gold edition called Sudden Strike 4: Complete Collection [External Link]. The Complete Collection includes a Battle of Kursk skirmish map, which had previously only been available to those who preordered the original release. I contacted Kalypso Media to see if the Battle of Kursk DLC would be made available for purchase to those who neither preordered the original release nor purchased the Complete Collection. I was informed it wouldn't be.

I then contacted GOG support and explained the situation, and I asked for a refund to my GOG Wallet for SS4 and the DLC, which would be put towards the purchase of SS4: Complete Collection. GOG support stated that while they "treat orders made more than 30 days ago as final and non-refundable", given the circumstance, they were willing to make an exception even though it had been over two months since my purchase. I was quite pleased with GOG's customer support, not just in terms of the outcome, but also the diligence and affable disposition of the representative with whom I communicated (thanks Irrehaare).

I considered this a win-win outcome. As a customer, I was able to purchase the goods I wanted. Kalypso Media made a little bit more money from my purchase of the Complete Collection (the Complete Collection was more expensive than the refund I received for SS4 and the DLC), GOG got its cut, and I was so pleased with the experience that during the transaction I went ahead and purchased an additional video game on GOG.com which I hadn't planned on purchasing at the time.

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Quoting: ArdjeI think the container thing is a real answer actually saying they are not supporting any specific distro's, but actually saying they want to support as much as possible.

Like you, I assumed Plagman was alluding to containerization in the first sentence of the second to last paragraph of the post I quoted. What I'm not confident assuming is that it means any given general purpose / desktop Linux distribution would be officially supported. I am quite interested in where this goes, and I am hoping for more details soon. It would be wonderful from a user perspective if Valve expanded their official support footprint to all actively maintained desktop Linux distributions, but that may be a bridge too far.

There are a lot of interesting (e.g. NixOS), shiny (e.g. elementary OS), and venerable (e.g. Slackware) distributions out there, and I intend absolutely no disrespect to any other distributions, but if I had to limit official support to a short list, I wish official support coverage included Arch Linux, Debian,[1] Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, and Ubuntu (the latter of which already receives official support). I don't care if SteamOS is carried forwards by Valve or not.

Nothing is guaranteed, but I feel those six distributions would be fairly safe bets, and Valve wouldn't be tethered to a single third-party distribution. Six might be more than Valve would prefer.

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1. The fact that SteamOS is based on Debian doesn't automatically confer official support status on Debian itself, and in so far as I can hazard a conclusion from dated documentation [External Link], Debian isn't officially supported at this time.

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Tangential to this article, but with regard to https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1640915206447625383/ [External Link]:

There has been a lot of news and discussion over the weekend on the topic of Steam on Linux and officially supported and recommended distributions.

Given the information we have on this new approach so far, it seems likely that we will be able to continue to officially support Steam on Ubuntu.

The Linux landscape has changed dramatically since we released the initial version of Steam for Linux, and as such, we are re-thinking how we want to approach distribution support going forward. There are several distributions on the market today that offer a great gaming desktop experience such as Arch Linux, Manjaro, Pop!_OS, Fedora, and many others. We'll be working closer with many more distribution maintainers in the future.

That all being said, we don't have anything specific to announce at this time regarding what distribution(s) will be supported in the future; expect more news on that front in the coming months.

Half a year later and with Windows 7 reaching EOL, any recent communication from Valve on expanding the list of officially supported Linux distros for Steam?

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You will be able to use the Soundtrack checkbox when searching too (try this) like you could for DLC, Demos, Software and so on.

I expect this will be corrected fairly shortly (probably in the next few hours), but currently using the "Soundtrack" checkbox also returns a couple of DLC soundtracks in the results.

As of now (2020-Jan-9, 6:57 UTC) I couldn't buy the following (without owning the base games):
• Firewatch Original Soundtrack [External Link]
• QuestEvent OST [External Link]

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Quoting: elmapulcan i play with any player or just the steam player?

Any player.

Quoting: elmapulso you can buy any sound track, regardless of if the game is avaliable for linux?

If the publisher sets the app type [External Link] as "Music [External Link]" rather than "DLC [External Link]", you can buy the soundtrack separately. If you try to buy a soundtrack categorized as "DLC" for a game you don't own, you will get a message like "Your transaction failed because you are trying to buy <game soundtrack> which requires ownership of '<game>'. Please correct the error and try again."

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