Do you mean just support SteamOS? The biggest problem is, as a few other commenters have mentioned, there's no further break-down in categories other than "SteamOS + Linux" (and the url is .../linux). So you can't tell the Steam Store "I only support distro x, y and not z". I can't hide it for those who I am not actually supporting, Steam will advertise it to them regardless.

No, Steam runtime: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime

When your game runs under Steam runtime, the real distribution is (almost) irrelevant - everything in your address space is supplied by the runtime, the things you get from the host system is the kernel/kernel modules and services you talk to via IPC (i.e. X11/Wayland, Pulseaudio).

It solves the problem of what version of what library is installed (if at all, maybe user removed it as "bloat") on the host system. You get known set of binaries that you can test against / coherent SDK target like with Windows or Mac.

Doesn't "X11/Wayland, Pulseaudio" include almost all the surface where my game's bugs will arise? It certainly includes the full-screen bug described by the GGGGP.

That bug would be there with Wine/Proton too. They would run the same display server.

I believe that GOG.com doesn't accept games that rely on the steam runtime; I know some games which have Linux ports aren't available on GOG.com because of this.

Whether this matters is up to the developer. But it's a potential downside.

Yes, this is downside.

Gog is quite contend with just Ubuntu being supported; they are not that different.

Not sure whether that is the only reason why some games are not on Gog though; often Mac ports are missing too. It seems more like missing rights for the ports than technical reasons.

> Not sure whether that is the only reason why some games are not on Gog though; often Mac ports are missing too. It seems more like missing rights for the ports than technical reasons.

I don't know; probably not. But this was the response I got back from the devs of "Expeditions: Conquistador" when I asked if they could release the Linux version on GOG (when I bought it originally I still had a Windows machine).

But Steam only really supports the latest stable Ubuntu. It works on most distros because package maintainers put a bit of work into make it but it isn’t officially supported on them,

That doesn't stop people from making support requests, though, which is the entire problem OP is talking about.

TBF isn't this going to happen no matter what? As a linux user I have absolutely no problem with the OP saying "we don't support that distro, sorry" and closing the ticket.

I don't think so. If Linux isn't natively supported, even if it runs fine via Proton, you're much less likely to receive bug reports directly, because there's less of an expectation that things work without issues. And closing tickets doesn't help with negative reviews—in fact, some users may use that as a reason to give you a "thumbs down" on Steam.

Maybe but he’s talking about having to deal with the requests. Since Steam only supports Ubuntu LTS you can push the blame on them and say something like, “Sorry we develop for Linux via Steam and they only support Ubuntu x.04, feel free to open a ticket with them if you have further trouble.

Which is the sane thing to do.

Valve should just partner with Canonical and release Ubuntu support.

Let the other distros figure out how to get it working there.

Please not Canonical. OG Steam OS was Debian, which was a wiser choice.

Ubuntu is the most common, most widely used Linux based OS. It's the "Windows" of Linux, for good or ill.

Most hardware and software vendors primarily target it.

It might not be hip, but it's what everyone knows.

From the company that leaked data to Amazon through ads in your search? Yeah, no, pass.

Valve could probably buy Canonical outright if it wanted.