In September 2013, Valve founder Gabe Newell gave a rare, 20-minute presentation at LinuxCon. He called Linux "the future of gaming," predicting that as the industry became more user-driven and connected across both distances and devices, an open-source foundation would be the only way to keep pace with coming innovations. With the standard, proprietary operating systems powering Windows, Mac and consoles, Newell argued, all control over content, pricing and change rested in the hands of billion-dollar corporations. Linux offered a chance for all players and developers to shape the marketplace.

Last week’s big story in gaming was the decision taken by Deep Silver/Koch Media (and supported by parent company THQ Nordic) to make Metro Exodus exclusive to the Epic Games Store for one year. This made lots of PC gamers unhappy, mostly with Epic, which forced Tim Sweeney to defend the aggressive exclusivity deals made for the new store.

A newly-discovered bit of developer documentation suggests Valve has big plans in mind for third-party developers of multiplayer games. Most notably, it looks like Valve is working toward letting developers host their games through the company’s own dedicated servers. Exactly how this will work in practice remains to be seen, but the feature is currently in beta among some some number of developers.

Steam, unquestionably, needs a sizeable competitor. With a significant monopoly on the PC games market, such that present rivals like GOG and Humble barely take a dent out of its audience, Valve is able to take an infuriatingly lackadaisical approach to many aspects of Steam. Something to scare them into action would be marvellous. And while not optimistic, I’d hoped that maybe Epic, with their lorries full of money, might be able to try. Except, with yet another exclusivity announcement today regarding Metro: Exodus, they’re going about it entirely the wrong way.

The Resident Evil 2 remaster released last night, and the PC version took just a few hours to become one of Capcom’s most-played Steam games ever. Last night, the game’s player count peaked at more than 55,000 players, and is still performing well this morning. According to Steam’s own game stats, Resident Evil 2 reached a concurrent player peak of 55,164, making it the ninth most-played game on the platform last night, just behind Team Fortress 2 (which is somehow still pulling in the best part of 60,000 players ten years after its release).

Small developers are losing confidence that Valve is earning its 30% of Steam sales, according to a new survey. In 2017, 39% of developers agreed that Valve had earned its share, but that number has dropped to 11% in this year’s survey. Lars Doucet, who has run this survey for three years, is quick to note that these results are not scientific – but they do put numbers to issues developers have lately been in heated discussions over.

Atlas has become one of the biggest disappointments of 2018, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. It has an abysmal rating on Steam and Valve are now refunding the game even if someone played it for more than two hours, which doesn't occur often. Atlas has been called a cheap reskin of ARK: Survival Evolved and it pretty much is just an asset flip by Grapeshot Games. The start is identical, UI looks just about the same and gameplay seems to be pasted from ARK.

Valve has revealed that the Steam Winter Sale 2018 begins later today. Players will be able to purchase great titles that will be on sale for a limited time. In a post on its site, Valve has revealed that the Steam Winter sale 2018 will start on 20 December. In addition, Valve also revealed their annual Steam Awards, the 2018 nominees have been announced and voting begins today and lasts till 3 January 2019. The winners will be announced in February 2019.

Upcoming open-world RPG Rage 2 was present at The Game Awards this week, offering up a new trailer and a release date. However, this isn’t the only new information about the game that has just been confirmed. Bethesda has also shared details about its launch plans for the title but not all fans are happy about it.

Valve has changed the way it shares revenue with developers on Steam—and it's good news for games that make a lot of money. Currently, revenue for Steam games is split 70/30 between the developer and Valve. But from now on, Valve will only take a 25% cut of any earnings over and above $10 million, and only 20% of earnings beyond $50 million. The first $10 million will still be split 70/30, and the change will impact any revenue earned after October 1 this year.

When Steam announced support for the Australian dollar, it came with the same pre-existing condition as every other currency: if developers didn't set a region specific price for that currency, their games couldn't be sold in those regions. Front-facing support for the AUD went live on Steam this morning. Naturally, quite a few developers forgot.

There I am, in bed about to fall asleep when my phone lights up as I forgot to put it on silent. Thankfully so, as it turns out Valve just expanded the Steam Play whitelist and that's always a bit exciting. What is the whitelist? These are titles that Valve are confident enough that work out of the box with no additional configuration required. You don't need to turn any extra options on, they should just be click and play like any other Linux game on Steam.

Somewhere deep inside Valve’s labyrinthine compound of Steam-sustaining tubes, wires, and pipes, somebody is thanking their lucky stars for Artem Moskowsky. The self-described “bug hunter” came across a glitch that allowed him to generate thousands of free keys for any game on Steam. A lesser person might have kept that knowledge to themselves. He reported it.

Download it in that time and it's yours to keep.

Become the captain of a stellar cruiser and cross the galaxy to save the Interestellar Republic. During your journey you will have to make important decisions, improve the weaponry of your ship and fight against numerous enemies.

Beat Saber has climbed to the #7 spot among best rated games on Steam—VR or otherwise—and continues to hold the #1 spot among VR titles. For a few days following its Early Access launch back in May, Beat Saber basked in the #1 spot of top rated titles on Steam as the only game on Steam with a 99% positive rating. A few weeks into release, a handful of negative reviews dropped the game down to 98%. With just 19 other games on Steam holding a 98% positive rating...

Valve’s Steam platform moderators will start responding to flagged posts on game discussion boards.

Steam is trying to gain back their good faith that they’ve lost from game developers, mainly adult game developers, with a new filter system. And what does this new filter do to help adult video game developers? Well it let’s them post full on nudity in their games on Steam without needing players to go download a 18+ patch. You heard me right! Steam is allowing 100% uncensored H games onto their platform now.

Steam's dream of Linux-powered Steam gaming machines never came to fruition, but the company has returned to Linux by bringing Windows-based games to Linux with a software-only approach.

Valve announced today that Artifact, the Dota 2-themed card game that gave Tim a splitting headache and an exhausted grin in March, is scheduled for release on November 28. Artifact will deliver "the deepest gameplay and highest fidelity experience ever in a fantasy card game," Valve promised. It will ship with more than 280 cards, and players will be able to buy and sell cards on the Steam Community Market. Mobile versions are planned for 2019, and the up-front purchase price will be $20.