Enlarge / macOS Mojave's wallpaper. (credit: Apple)

Valve Software's Steam gaming marketplace and app will drop support for macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and 10.14 (Mojave), according to a support page post . The change will go into effect on February 15, 2024.

What will happen exactly? Valve writes:

After that date, existing Steam Client installations on these operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.

macOS 10.14 (dubbed Mojave by Apple) shipped more than five years ago, and time has a way of marching on, so this might not seem that momentous at first glance. But there's a reason it's particularly noteworthy as these things go: this change means the end of support for the last versions of macOS that could run 32-bit games.

Valve is celebrating the first year of official availability for the Steam Deck with the hardware's first-ever official sale. Those looking to buy Valve's portable hardware can get a unit for 10 percent off until March 23 as part of Steam's regular spring software sale.

In the US, that translates to the following price reductions for the various Steam Deck configurations:

• 64GB eMMC: $399.00 down to $359.10
• 256GB NVMe: $529.00 down to $476.10
• 512GB NVMe: $649.00 down to $584.10

Even a temporary price drop would have been hard to picture for the Steam Deck just a few months ago, when the hardware was still enjoying a months-long run atop Steam's top-sellers list and Valve was still struggling to fulfill launch-day preorders in a timely manner. But Steam Deck units have been available without a preorder since October and are now set to be delivered one to two weeks after an order is placed.

Enlarge / Epic Games Store Epic Games Store Epic Games Store Epic Games Store Epic Games Store Epic Games Store... (credit: Epic)

Epic has just made it much easier for small and individual developers to get their titles on the Epic Games Store. The company's self-publishing tools, which came out of closed beta Thursday , allow any developer to submit their game to Epic's platform for a $100-per-game fee.

Since its late-2018 launch with a small, curated selection of games , the Epic Games Store has slowly expanded to include nearly 2,000 titles . But those games have been selected by Epic for inclusion based on a "high quality standard," as Epic's Tim Sweeney put it to Ars in 2019 , leading to the publication of a number of "how to get published on the Epic Games Store" tutorials.

"We're not going to be that sort of venue [that accepts everything] because we don't think we can help those games to reach users," Sweeney told Ars in 2019. "So it's going to be driven by quality."

Enlarge / Calendar Man is marking the many, many days until a more powerful Steam Deck shows up.

If you're waiting for a more powerful version of the Steam Deck before diving in on Valve's Linux-based portable hardware, you may find yourself waiting a little while longer. In a recent interview with Rock Paper Shotgun , Valve designer Lawrence Yang says it will be "a few years" before the company releases "a true next-gen Deck with a significant bump in horsepower."

A look at the Steam Deck's performance over its first year of availability helps show why Valve might not be in a hurry to release a more powerful portable. The current Steam Deck now supports over 8,000 titles that are either rated Playable or Verified by Valve's official Compatibility program . And that list isn't just low-end indie games, either; heavy hitters like Cyberpunk 2077 , Elden Ring , and the recent Dead Space remake run great on the handheld, and the device can even handle ray tracing on slightly older games like Doom Eternal .

That said, the Steam Deck hardware is already beginning to show its age on some recent releases. Games like Wild Hearts and Returnal will technically run on the Deck but reportedly show some significant frame rate and performance issues on the portable. While future software or OS patches could help a bit for these bleeding-edge games, the Steam Deck's unchanging hardware may start to look increasingly dated as PC gamers continue to upgrade their rigs with plentiful graphics cards (and PC game makers continue to target those high-end desktop users with their newest titles).

Valve / CodeWeavers have releases another update to the current stable Proton series with the 6.3-4 release.

If you're not clear on what Proton and Steam Play are, be sure to check out our constantly updated dedicated page . It's a special compatibility layer for running Windows games and apps from Steam on Linux.

Proton 6.3-4 is a small update that just focuses on fixing up a few annoyances including:

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Valve and CodeWeavers have once again updated Proton Experimental, bringing with it a needed fix for Resident Evil Village running on Linux.

It was only a few days ago Proton Experimental was updated to get RE Village working but it came with one big drawback. Previously you couldn't change any graphics settings in-game but as of the latest May 12 build, this has now been solved with Proton Experimental. So that marks another AAA Windows-supported game working nicely on Linux thanks to the Proton compatibility layer - such fast paced improvements!

The latest build of Proton Experimental also fixed up the latest 2K Games launcher, to give even more titles a better experience when played on Linux.

If you're not clear on what Proton and Steam Play are, be sure to check out our constantly updated dedicated page . It's a special compatibility layer for running Windows games and apps from Steam on Linux.

Need to know how to actually use Proton Experimental? Make sure it's installed by searching for it in your Steam Library, then select it from the Compatibility menu in the Properties section of a game. See our quick video below:

You can buy Resident Evil Village from Humble Store and Steam .

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Ready for some intense Dota 2? The Aegis of Champions is in play once more! Valve has confirmed that The International 10 shall return officially begin in August.

In a fresh blog post Valve mentioned The International 10 will take place this August in Stockholm, Sweden. Beginning with the Group Stage which takes place between August 5 - 8 with the big main event kicking off on August 10 and lasts until August 15.

This is quite a historic event too. Not just because it's Valve and Dota 2, and because of all the delays with this marking something of a return to normalcy for esports - but because of the prize pool. The total has been set at $40,018,195 - which makes it the single biggest prize pool in esports history (beating their own previous record). An absolutely staggering amount of money, one I can't even imagine ever seeing 1% of.

Going along with all this, Valve reiterated their plan to have content released on a more regular schedule, rather than drop everything big in one go for the Battle Pass. They will be shipping two separate events with the first in "mid-to-late June" and the next sometime after The International 10 ends. However, since the Battle Pass funding has already been done, they've added in special Supporters Clubs.

Supporters Clubs are the new way to support your favourites by buying up bundles of badges and seasonal equippable items - 50% of the sales goes to the teams and the content is directly provided by the teams.

Play Dota 2 free on Steam .