--- title: Valve Games and Steam on Ubuntu 12.04 description: Yesterday, the Valve Linux team publicly announced their ongoing work to bring Steam to Linux. A major part of that announcement is the choice of Ubuntu 12.04. Valve has been a major force in gaming since 1996. Gabe Newell and the Valve team have created some of the best game series EVER. Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Day […] url: https://canonical.com/blog/valve-games-and-steam-on-ubuntu-12-04 --- 1. [Blog](https://canonical.com/blog) 2. Article --- [Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical "More about Canonical") 17 July 2012 # Valve Games and Steam on Ubuntu 12.04 --- Share the article Yesterday, the Valve Linux team [publicly announced](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/) their ongoing work to bring Steam to Linux. A major part of that announcement is the choice of Ubuntu 12.04. Valve has been a major force in gaming since 1996. Gabe Newell and the Valve team have created some of the best game series EVER. Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and most recently Portal are extremely popular, and quite addicting. The one thing missing early on was a good distribution mechanism. Valve learned early on that retail physical box distribution can only go so far and was expensive. The Steam client came out of hiding in 2003 and has been a driving force ever since. Many game platforms have tried to create what Steam provides from multiplayer communication and community features but none are as strong. The linux gaming community has been very vocal in trying to get more support in the gaming community. With the growth in numbers of independent developers, the number of indie games supporting Linux growing exponentially, and quite popular game engines such as Unity3D supporting Ubuntu, Valve finally came to the conclusion that even their game engine Source has to come to Ubuntu. The announcement states there is a 11 person team working on bringing the Steam client to Ubuntu and the first game will be Left 4 Dead 2. This is yet another huge development in the gaming space for Ubuntu users. [Get in touch Interested in running Ubuntu in your organization?](https://ubuntu.com/about/contact-us/form) ## Sign up for our newsletter Get the latest Canonical news and updates in your inbox. Work email: \*I agree to receive information about Canonical's products and services. In submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to [Canonical's Privacy Notice](https://canonical.com/legal/data-privacy/contact) and [Privacy Policy](https://canonical.com/legal/data-privacy). Sign up ## Share on --- ## Related posts [### AI infrastructure for telcos](https://canonical.com/blog/ai-infrastructure-for-telcos) Why moving from pilots to production changes the platform Artificial intelligence has moved beyond the demonstration phase. Telco operators are already exploring it for fault... [Benjamin Ryzman](https://canonical.com/blog/author/benjaminryzman) 2 October 2026 [### Canonical named a Challenger in the 2026 GartnerⓇ Magic Quadrant™ for Server Virtualization Platforms](https://canonical.com/blog/canonical-a-challenger-in-2026-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-server-virtualization-platforms) Canonical has been recognized as a Challenger in the 2026 GartnerⓇ Magic Quadrant™ for Server Virtualization Platforms. The inaugural edition of the report provides an... [Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical) 1 October 2026 [### Canonical announces the alpha release of Charmed OpenShell to help secure autonomous AI agent fleets](https://canonical.com/blog/charmed-openshell-alpha-release) To streamline enterprise deployment and lifecycle management, Canonical is announcing the alpha release of Charmed OpenShell. [Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical) 28 September 2026 [### Ubuntu coming soon to Snapdragon X2 Series platforms, unlocking more Linux PCs for the agentic world](https://canonical.com/blog/ubuntu-coming-soon-to-qualcomm-snapdragon-x2-series-platforms) Canonical and Qualcomm Technologies announce upcoming native Ubuntu support for Qualcomm’s flagship laptop silicon, delivering multi-day battery life, 80 TOPS NPU acceleration,... [Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical) 23 September 2026