Steam and Source Engine Linux support ‘underway’

A project team at Valve, which includes Gabe Newell, is building a Linux port of its Steam games portal and Source Engine, a new report claims.

Software engineer Michael Larabel claims to have been told of the plan during a recent visit to Valve’s Bellevue studio.

He said Gabe Newell, the company’s managing director, “sounded more like a Linux saint than an ex-Microsoft employee”.

Further discussing the matter on his Phoronix website, Larabel said both Steam and the Source Engine will run natively on Linux, and is working on porting Left 4 Dead 2 across to the open-source operating system.

“Valve has plans to bring their other titles to Linux,” he claimed, adding that Valve is “lobbying” other game developers to support Linux.

In a separate podcast interview with Seven Day Cooldown, Newell confirmed he was working with a Linux team at this studio.

Valve is thought to be hiring Linux OpenGL programmers.