Valve is one of the big reasons why gaming on Linux has seen such a massive surge in recent years. One of the biggest pushes came not from specially created Linux builds of games, but from Proton, a fork of Wine that Valve released to allow for games to become playable on Linux that may not have native Linux support. At present, there are over 5,400 games that work through Steam on Linux thanks to Proton.
Over the years, Valve has recommended that those looking to get into using Linux try out Ubuntu Linux. Last Friday, that all changed. Valve said that they will no longer offer support Steam on Ubuntu 19.10 and later. The reason is because Canonical, the company that owns and develops Ubuntu, announced that Ubuntu 19.10 will not include any 32-bit packages.
This means that any applications that rely on 32-bit libraries or drivers will no longer work. Naturally, this means that a ton of games on Steam will no longer work. To be very clear here: Valve is not dropping support for Linux. They are looking for alternatives to Ubuntu, which used to be their "go to" recommendation for quite some time now.
In response to this incredibly short-sighted move by Canonical, the company released a statement just this morning. They now say that they will continue to update "selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 10.10 and 20.04 LTS." They also say that they want to work with the gaming community on long-term solutions.
Nobody from Valve has issued another statement since Canonical walked back a bit on their original plans. As far as we know, they are still looking for alternatives for Ubuntu ahead of 19.10's release this October. Keep in mind that the proposed change and removal of 32-bit support in Ubuntu would also impact all of the other Linux distributions that are based on Ubuntu, of which there are literally dozens upon dozens of them.
