Another big event is happening on Steam now with the Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition and there's plenty of new and improved demos to check out until October 13.

Long gone are the days where a demo would be a given, as they're often replaced with paid-for Betas where you get access if you pre-order and all sorts like that. Still a few appear but not a whole lot and that's why events like this are so good for us, although it is a lot to take in with such a short amount of time.

There's obviously a lot there and picking what to play in this time is difficult. If you're after titles that will offer Linux support, here's 10 I think are worth keeping an eye on and trying out:

1. Aloof
2. Bonfire Peaks
3. Bots & Belts
4. Elteria Adventures
5. Fractal Space
6. Groove Gunner - VR only
7. Hadean Tactics
8. Hybrid Beasts
9. Tenderfoot Tactics
10. Unspottable

If any of them really stand out, or we have something to say about them we will let you know across other articles.

The event ends October 13 around 5PM UTC. See the special event page here on Steam , and you can find all the developer livestreams at this link .

Note: currently, the Linux icon is broken on the event page and Valve seems to have removed all platform icons from the demo banner on store pages. We assume that's all unintentional and have let them know.

Love your digital adaptions of board games, or those that got turned into some form of real-life board game? Well, Valve are going to run a festival dedicated to all that.

Starting on October 21 and running until October 26 there will be all sorts going on. Talks, sales and more. Here's some of the panels they've mentioned:

• Plague Inc: Evolved - Where James Vaughan, game designer of the digital and physical version plays the digital game's boardgame scenario while discussing the design of both versions.
• Othercide - The tactical-RPG blending strong art style, unique lore and challenging tactical gameplay, presented by its Art Director and Lead Game Designer.
• Gloomhaven - llivestream, featuring the developers, will discuss the upcoming content for the next major update of Gloomhaven’s Early Access on Steam.
• Virtual panel on games about Mars - Where game creators will be joined by actual space agency staff and scientists to ask what games get right and wrong about Mars.
• Virtual panel on Cthulhu games - Where some of the most notable Cthulhu-themed designers from digital and physical ask about the cultural impact of such titles and more.

This event is being done in collaboration with Auroch Digital and Valve confirmed that games involved in the event and sale will include those that "run across the lines between digital and physical games; this can be a digital port of a physical game, a game which has produced a physical version from the digital one, a game that simulates the physical play experience, or a digital game whose aesthetics are inspired by tabletop games" - so it sounds like that's a pretty broad definition of what will be in.

Anyway, you can follow it on the dedicated page here .

Megan Fox of Glass Bottom Games announced that SkateBIRD has a demo up again, to celebrate being included in the Tokyo Game Show 2020 and you can play until September 28.

SkateBIRD is a game that doesn't need much of an introduction. It's skateboarding, with birds. Funded on Kickstarter in July 2019 with thanks to 2,526 backers giving the team $67,220 it's not actually due to release until later in 2021, so this small slice gives a quick look at what to expect from it.

What's different to the original demo? According to Fox, quite a lot behind the scenes. It's the same map but they've given it all new skating physics, "We iterated on momentum, top speed, pushing behavior, and grind friction. It's also a new iteration of the camera. Goal was to address prior feedback and see how folks felt about it now." and they also improved the balancing behaviour and lots of other little things.

A very unique take on skateboarding of course, a little silly but adorable at the same time. There's even a button in the menu that gives you a new random bird with a different little outfit and it's a bit hilarious.

There's a few birds scattered around which give you little quests to do too. Otherwise, just skate around and enjoy sweet little birds doing tricks.

You can try the SkateBIRD demo on Steam . Live until September 28.

Want to learn more about Arch Linux? In October they've confirmed Arch Conf 2020 is happened and there's going to be plenty of interesting talks. All of which will be online of course, especially with COVID19 still raging on.

The dates set for it are between October 10-11 and the talks will be quite varied starting with a talk about the past, present and future of Arch Linux as the first which starts on October 10, 10:00am UTC.

For Linux gaming enthusiasts, a lot of this won't be all that interesting unless you really want to know the ins and outs of Arch Linux and the ecosystem surrounding it. However, one talk in particular did manage to catch my eye and it could prove to be interesting. On October 11, 15:00 UTC there's a talk from Alesh Slovak , the founder of the Arch-based and SteamOS-like distribution GamerOS which we've written about a few times . This talk will cover:

An overview of GamerOS, an Arch Linux based distro that provides an out of the box couch gaming experience. Find out what GamerOS is, how it came to be, and what makes it unique.

Since currently GamerOS is probably the best out of the box experience for a big-screen console-like setup, especially as Valve aren't currently doing anything with SteamOS (they may return to it though ), GamerOS a Linux distribution that's certainly worth keeping an eye on.

We'll be watching it and highlighting anything interesting.

You can find the full event info here . The first revision of the talk schedule can be found here .

Today the X.Org Developers Conference (XDC 2020) begins and there's a couple of interesting talks worth checking out, especially if you like to follow OpenGL and Vulkan. What is the event? The X.Org Developers Conference is the event for developers working on all things open graphics related including in the Linux kernel, Mesa, DRM, Wayland, X11 and so on.

Due to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, it's going to be quite a streamlined virtual event spread across three days from September 16 to September 18. There's not a lot of presentations being done, however, all of them sound really interesting. Here's a quick overview of what events are coming:

• Overview of the open source Vulkan driver for Raspberry Pi 4
  • September 16 @ 1:20pm CEST / 11:20am UTC
• About OpenGL and Vulkan interoperability
  • September 17 @ 5:05pm CEST / 3:05pm UTC
• Ray-tracing in Vulkan: A brief overview of the provisional VK_KHR_ray_tracing API
  • September 17 @ 5:35pm CEST / 3:35pm UTC
• Quick GL and Vulkan tests with shader_runner and Amber
  • September 17 @ 6:30pm CEST / 4:40pm UTC
• How the Vulkan VK_EXT_extended_dynamic_state extension came to be
  • September 18 @ 1:50pm CEST / 11:50am UTC

You can see the full schedule here with more info and all of the videos from this year's conference will be up on YouTube . They usually split each one into a dedicated video, along with each full day having it's own livestream video. Watch each one right here on GOL, we're making it easy for you below.

Day 1

Watch video on YouTube.com

If you prefer direct links to each livestream, here they are:

1. Day one
2. Day two
3. Day three

You can still get involved even though it's virtual, as they will be chatting and taking questions on IRC. You can join these if you're interested on freenode .

• ##xdc2020 for general discussion
• ##xdc2020-QA for questions directed to presenters

You can also view the official event site here .

Are you a huge Minecraft fan? Get ready for a big load of news to come in as Mojang have announced a new Minecraft Live event happening on October 3.

Previously called MINECON and other names, this is the yearly Minecraft event which they're now sticking with calling Minecraft Live. Their plan is to go live on 12 ET / 4PM UTC at minecraft.net/live - it's going to be a bit different to other celebrations since the global pandemic is still very much a thing. The Minecraft team are calling it amusingly just "an event that will happen" because they can't do everything they originally wanted. Still you can expect info on updates, new mob votes and the usual excitement.

Watch video on YouTube.com

As a parent to a Minecraft-obsessed smaller version of myself, I will be watching along so you can expect GOL to have a write-up of anything interesting announced for the Java Edition which is cross-platform for Linux, macOS and Windows. You can buy Minecraft on the official site .

Mojang also announced that their planned 'Minecraft Festival' is delayed until 2022.

After a brief announcement on the Steamworks Development group a week ago , Valve have now properly announced the next three Steam Game Festivals. This is where Steam users get to play through a ton of limited-time demos, which originally started back in December 2019 to go along with The Game Awards.

Not just demos, as there are also livestreams, Q&A sessions with developers and a whole lot more. It's interesting but there's so much crammed in that it can be hard to follow it all. You're not expected to be able to look at everything though but it may perhaps give you a chance to demo a game or two you've been waiting on. You can see a little overview here of the last one if you missed it, which was a lot of fun.

The first is the 2020 Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition , which happens between October 7th at 10am PST, to Tuesday, October 13th at 10am PST. We also now know the next two will happen in February 2021 and June 2021. To be eligible, developers can only opt into one of the events, as their game needs to be releasing within six months of the festival. I see where Valve are going with that, as to make the demos have more of an impact any longer and the feel and excitement over a demo might have greatly diminished. It is, after all, marketing in the form of a fun event.

A new dedicated page is up on Steam here .

Developers: if you're going to have a Linux demo for this event, please reach out to us to let us know.