Steam will no longer be officially supporting Ubuntu for future updates

Valve‘s video game megastore Steam will no longer be supported for Linux operating systems after October of this year.

Announced by Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais on Twitter, the company will officially be dropping support for future versions of the Linux distro.

Those who frequently use Ubuntu will have until the OS’ next update, 19.10, to move another OS before Valve’s services become unsupported. The update is planned to release on October 17th, just four months away.

“Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases will not be officially supported by Steam or recommended to our users,” Griffais said. “We will evaluate ways to minimize breakage for existing users, but will also switch our focus to a different distribution, currently TBD.”

Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases will not be officially supported by Steam or recommended to our users. We will evaluate ways to minimize breakage for existing users, but will also switch our focus to a different distribution, currently TBD.

— Pierre-Loup Griffais (@Plagman2) June 22, 2019

The announcement is due to Ubuntu’s abandonment of 32-bit libraries for future updates. While a lot of Ubuntu-supported titles on Steam are playable under 64-bit, there are a lot of 32-bit games that would remain unsupported.

Valve has certainly put a lot of work into Linux gaming over the years. Their failed Steam Machine push was built entirely on their own specialised SteamOS, an optimized Linux distro that didn’t see the adoption rate Valve wanted. Valve wouldn’t do this without reason, but it’s still a sad day for Ubuntu users.