I'm fine with this, but it is a bit annoying to see a developer not deal with 64-bit builds. I wonder if it's only because Windows allows them to be lazy while it generates more money for them?

Either way I think valve's Linux team should rethink this. They depend on 32-bit libs, but Surely they can find alternatives for the 64-bit build and who knows it might even make the experience on Linux even better.

My guess is that there are a lot of third party developed games which only work on 32-bit compatible systems and Valve either doesn't know exactly which ones are which or simply doesn't want to put the effort into organising them such that users are warned about which specific games have incompatibilities. The other option is just letting the games that would only work on 32-bit compatible systems fail with cryptic error messages and have to field masses of complaints about it while looking extremely unprofessional in the process. In this case it's not that surprising that they would just decide to drop support, especially considering that Ubuntu is a relatively small chunk of the market to begin with.

It's pretty unfortunate. I totally get Canonical's desire to get rid of the seemingly unnecessary bloat and maintenance burden from having to support 32-bit applications but this is the consequence and it's a big blow to gaming on Ubuntu, especially seeing as Steam has only been supported on Ubuntu since 2013.

Ubuntu makes its money from server and enterprise clients. If Valve needs to support 16/32 bit for its customers then it's up to them to do it. I expect Valve is a much bigger company than Ubuntu, maybe Valve can contract out this work to ... Ubuntu instead of just freeloading.

Valve has contributed a ton of work to Ubuntu/Linux. They’ve pretty much single handedly turned around Linux gaming to the point where I can safely expect most windows-exclusive games on steam will run smoothly on Ubuntu. Freeloading couldn’t be farther from the truth.

> They’ve pretty much single handedly turned around Linux gaming to the point where I can safely expect most windows-exclusive games on steam will run smoothly on Ubuntu.

Wait... What? When did this happen?