The end of the year is usually the time for self reflection and assessment. It’s a good time to pause between a couple of news to consider what’s been achieved so far, mainly on the Steam distribution platform. It’s all encompassed in the following chart.

Beyond the simple numbers, the trend is significant. Starting from almost nothing back in 2013, Steam for Linux/SteamOS count now more than 1700 games, and more importantly there is no sign that ports are decreasing or slowing down. If anything, the pace seems to accelerate a little.

Obviously, it’s all relative. I’m always for going beyond celebrating the sheer numbers, because there’s still a bunch of shovelware coming our way too – but numbers matter to bring a variety of different games on the platform. The more you have, the more likely it is the library will cover many genres and satisfy more audiences.

Many big AAA ports were delayed in the end of 2015, yet there’s no reason not to be optimistic at this stage. It’s hard to provide accurate models for the future, since many things can change, but if the trend follows what it’s been so far, SteamOS/Steam for Linux should hit about 2200 games by June 2016. That’s more than 30% of the games that we already have so far.

Let’s reconnect then and see how good or bad that estimation proved to be.

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