Half Life Now Available on Steam for Linux and Mac

I already have all of the Half Life games on Steam. Does this mean I can use HL games on my Linux box? Or do I have to buy them for Linux?

That is an excellent question. I think if you own them on Steam, no matter where your account is, your Steam games will follow.

Dave_HH:

That is an excellent question. I think if you own them on Steam, no matter where your account is, your Steam games will follow.

Good news indeed. I have a lot of Steam games, so as they port them to Linux I can just use them. I'm good with that.

Valve's thought process is that if you already own the game, you shouldn't have to re-purchase it just because it's been released for a new platform. There might be some exceptions, but I haven't seen one yet.

I gave the game a go last night for about an hour, and it ran great. I did run into an issue where each time I picked up the Crowbar, it shot me back to the main menu, but that issue was remedied later in the evening, somehow. I also dabbled in some quick MP action, and it worked without a hitch.

I am kind of holding off of going further in the game in hopes that Valve will continue to port over all of its Source games. I'd rather enjoy the game with the updated visuals / improved engine.

I sure hope Valve is planning to port over the Portal games soon :D

realneil:

Dave_HH:

That is an excellent question. I think if you own them on Steam, no matter where your account is, your Steam games will follow.

Good news indeed. I have a lot of Steam games, so as they port them to Linux I can just use them. I'm good with that.

That is great news and one of the things  I really like about Steam is that the games continue to follow on different rig and boots.>>might even find the time to actually  finish a few of them too lol :)

I'm so excited I love linux and also Ubuntu!! Its so awesome!!! OH! And by the way, no you don't get all your games I have the orange box and I only get to play team fortress, none of the other games are there for me to play.

The other games don't appear because they've not yet been ported over to Linux. The only games to make the journey so far are Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life.

If Steam has the Linux install for the game then you can always play it for free if you own it in Windows. I have a little over 30 games that I bought before Steam Linux that I now have in my Steam Linux library.

Some of the others have been ported (like L4D2), but they haven't been released to the beta users. It looks like Valve's getting people to concentrate on TF2 and trying to get every bug out of the engine. It's a pretty smart way to prevent different people from reporting the same bug in 4 different games that turns out to be the same bug in Source, and makes their bug reports more manageable.

I'll bet the others start getting released at a faster and faster pace once the common TF2 issues are squashed.

Yep - I have 31 in my list already showing up. And I'll probably another 20 or so, after the rest of the Linux ports are posted... all without paying a dime. I think I'll use that money to buy some indie and Valve games via Steam. :)