Valve Releases Linux Betas for Half-Life 2 and its Episodes

Valve's been working hard to pad up its game collection for Linux on Steam, last week having released betas for Portal (not 2... yet) and Left 4 Dead 2. When those were ushered out, the first thing I thought of was, "Where on earth are the Half-Life 2 titles?" I sure didn't need to wait long for the answer to that one, as the company today made the announcement all Linux Half-Life fans have been waiting for.

Because I'm a bit of a pessimist, I figured that when Half-Life 2 hit the platform, its two episodes would be released later, and we'd likely never see Lost Coast, given it was more of an HDR tech demo than anything else. But this is one of those times when I like being wrong: Valve's released all of these... even Lost Coast.

With these releases, the list of what's left from Valve's catalog that's not on Linux is dwindling. Main omissions include Dota 2, Portal 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and all of the "Source" titles (Half-Life: Source for example). It's worth noting that Mac doesn't have Valve's complete catalog either, but with the way Valve is rolling-out these betas, it seems likely that both platforms will share 1:1 collections in time.