The news that Steam just crossed the 1,500 games natively available on Linux is great news not only for Steam itself, but the whole Linux ecosystem.
While it still lags far behind the number of games available for Windows and OS X, that the mark is significant in itself. It means that Steam is viewed as a viable gaming platform by developers, since it has been adding about a 100 new games a month for a while now.
And while Steam still has some pains due to the lack of driver support for some graphic cards, the fact that there people developing and buying games for Linux helps the ecosystem as a whole. Since it gives a reason to GPU manufactures to start supporting their cards on Linux, they are going to have to make available their drivers on the OS if they want to have a piece of the market for themselves.
With this, all the Linux ecosystem wins as a whole. The game developers working to make their games on Steam, and the people buying those games, are a driving force to make AMD and NVIDIA to take Linux seriously and make drivers that run as well as they do on Windows and OS X.
While some people using Steam aren't conscious about it being a FLOSS system, or being FLOSS in itself, that they use it is something that helps all the FLOSS community. While it would be far better for people actually choose Steam fully knowing the reasons why they should, the first step is making Steam a viable option for all gamers.
So that Steam passed the 1,500 games mark, is something that should make us happy and hopeful that the counter will continue to grow.
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