A sign that Steam as a release platform and store continues to grow, over the weekend two big concurrent user records were totally smashed.

When it comes to concurrent users online on Steam at any one time, the record has been broken multiple times over this year, most likely boosted by the numbers of people staying at home due to the COVID19 pandemic. Around 20 hours ago Steam hit a new peak of 24,804,148 people.

Looking over SteamDB , the lifetime concurrent users on Steam shows pretty clear growth. You can also see the clear surge in April, dipping down in August and now surging again:

The other record that was smashed across this weekend is players actually in game. For the first time, ever, Steam had over 1 million players in 2 games at the same time. This was Cyberpunk 2077 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, both rather different games making it clear that singleplayer and online multiplayer can existing together peacefully. Well, sort of anyway, until you look at the rest of the top most played games on Steam being multiplayer titles too.

I actually thought there we more games that hit 1 million together before, but nope , this was a first.

Canonical (Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE) developer Martin Wimpress has announced a fresh PPA for Linux gamers.

For users on Ubuntu-based distributions, PPAs are often needed for you to get the latest and greatest software since if you're not using Snaps or Flatpaks (and sometimes they don't work due to the containers), a lot of software is stuck in place until a newer version of Ubuntu.

What's the fuss here then? Well, Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distribution users can now grab the excellent MangoHud gaming overlay, the vkBasalt Vulkan post processing layer and the GOverlay application for managing them both in a tidy UI all nicely up to date from this PPA . The build of MangoHud included also has NVML (NVIDIA Management Library) enabled, meaning out of the box it should allow showing GPU metrics from NVIDIA GPUs.

Pictured - Black Ice with MangoHud and some of the newer options you can try.

This was all enabled thanks to Debian Linux maintainer Stephan Lachnit , who has been sorting out the packages for Debian itself (which Ubuntu is based upon) and offered some tips to Wimpress on the packaging. Wimpress mentioned that the PPA will be kept up to date too.

Nice to see grabbing some really useful open source software made even easier for Ubuntu fans.

Find the PPA here .

Always sad when a Linux-focused business fails. ZaReason announced recently that they're no longer in business.

ZaReason aren't even a name that was heard all that often, which is part of the problem. You hear a lot about System76, TUXEDO, Slimbook, Star Labs and other Linux vendors but ZaReason gradually reduced their output and now we know why.

In the statement they sent out it mentioned how their product line was getting smaller and their tech support was "slowing down to a crawl". So what happened? Well, "the pandemic has been the final KO blow" they said with their "little town" being hit hard and they've been unable to recover from it. They officially shut on November 24, 2020. No other reasons were given but it's likely increased competition from the previously mentioned vendors plus the likes of Dell, Lenovo and others in the Linux space also not helping them.

Thankfully, we do have plenty of hardware support now in 2020 so it's not a big problem.

Their website is now just a blank page. You can see the full statement they sent out to people below:

For developers who are building all sorts of software, you now have another choice to get them running on Linux with the release of Uno Platform 3.1.

What is it? The Uno Platform (Pronounced 'Oono' or 'Ouno') is a Universal Windows Platform Bridge that allows UWP-based code (C# and XAML) to run on iOS, Android, macOS, WebAssembly, Linux and Windows 7.

Along with the brand new release, it brings with it Linux support available in preview. This was demonstrated with the Uno Calculator for Linux, which is a port of the Windows Calculator to Linux using the Uno Platform which they did to show as a proof of concept type of thing.

Watch video on YouTube.com

On Linux, they're relying on Skia to draw the UI on canvas and Shell support with Gtk3. They say it offers up the same consistent look across all platforms, with Uno doing the "heavy lifting for pixel-perfect look". You can develop with it on Linux, with the example they give in their documentation using VS Code.

Always good to see more options.

See the release announcement here .

GNOME is a lot more than a Linux desktop environment, and the GNOME Foundation are now trying to entice a few more developers to take a look with GNOME Circle. This is part of their attempt to redefine what is and isn't official GNOME software, something they talked about back in May 2020 as it can at times be confusing.

With the announcement of GNOME Circle, this is their new official branding for partner initiatives that are no longer required to be hosted by GNOME or follow their development rules. The idea is to lower some barriers, and get more people working together and form new relationships. To be part of it projects need to be open source and use the GNOME platform.

Circle projects end up with some sweet benefits like promotion from GNOME, membership into the GNOME Foundation which can provide developers with sponsorship and funding for various activities and lots more .

Commenting on the initiative, GNOME Foundation Executive Director Neil McGovern said "Independent developers do fantastic work using the GNOME platform, and I’m thrilled that the GNOME Foundation is going to be supporting more of them than ever before. With GNOME Circle, we’re excited to be growing the GNOME community and building a stronger and more vibrant developer ecosystem."

You can see the new GNOME Circle website here .

Valve contractor Joshua Ashton, who originally created the Direct3D9 to Vulkan layer D9VK which was eventually merged with DXVK, is now working to help VKD3D-Proton for Direct3D 12 to Vulkan.

If you didn't understand much of that: DXVK and VKD3D-Proton translate Windows games Direct3D calls into Vulkan so that they can work on Linux with the Wine compatibility layer which is all part of Steam Play Proton .

Ashton wrote up a blog post detailing all the work they've been doing, which has recently involved getting the APITrace tool hooked up and working with Direct3D 12. Ashton mentions that the work "may be useful for people who are developing games or working on implementing a D3D12 driver or translation layer for debugging purposes" and that the primary use here is to aid the VKD3D-Proton translation layer.

Speaking to Ashton myself last night to clear up some things including this being funded by Valve, Ashton mentioned how "debugging games these days is hard because of anti cheat and drm" and that this will enable developers to record the API calls. This means those calls can debugged, enabling them to inspect everything and then play it back with VKD3D-Proton to see where it crashes so they can fix the Vulkan translation.

The blog post mentions that so far they've seen success with some big games like Ghostrunner, Resident Evil 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Control working with it.

Full blog post can be seen here for those interested.

Ever tried or heard of the Budgie Desktop? It's a modern and feature rich Linux desktop environment from the Solus Linux team and they need a little help.

I'm quite a big fan of Budgie despite not using it directly myself, as their focus on keeping it clean really shows. That along with the slick sidebar to show off various applets like a calendar and media controls looks really good when you start using it. Developer Joshua Strobl who is the Experience Lead of the Solus project has issued a " Call To Action " as they're looking to get translations done for Budgie.

Pictured - the Budgie Desktop and Raven sidebar. Credit - Solus.

If you've wanted to dip your toes into helping a FOSS project, this could be a good starting point. Not everything is hacking away at code or doing graphics, there's tons of other areas to contribute like documentation and in this case translating your native language.

The release of Budgie 10.5.2 is "around the corner" and they're looking to get help with these languages:

• Belarusian (for Belarusian (latin))
• Bosnian
• Chinese (Hong Kong) and Chinese (Traditional): Same team as Chinese (Traditional)
• Croatian
• Esperanto
• Finnish
• Galician
• Japanese
• Latvian
• Malay
• Norwegian (Nyorsk): Same team as Norwegian (Bokmål)
• Punjabi
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Chile), Spanish (Mexico): Same team as Spanish and Spanish (American)
• Tatar
• Urdu
• Vietnamese

If you think you might be able to spend some time doing translations, you can head over to this linked forum topic to find out how you can get involved.

Want to learn more about Solus Linux and the Budgie Desktop environment? Check out the Solus website .

Valve are committed to Linux and Linux gaming with Steam, that much is currently clear. They're working with so many contractors on various things, and it seems not everything is as people think.

Recently, Collabora, one of the companies they're contracting with went over a bunch of details like their upcoming Linix Kernel work coming to Linux 5.11 and then a quick overview of everything . Many people thought that a lot of the ongoing work, like the Kernel work was to help things like anti-cheat with Steam Play Proton and it was mentioned by Collabora however it seems that's not exactly the case. Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais commented on Reddit to clear up on some speculation, mentioning that Collabora did some speculating of their own.

Griffais mentioned the Kernel work is "nothing to do with anti-cheat" and is instead for anti-tamper and DRM to function properly while also mentioning proper anti-cheat support "is still a long ways out and will need vendor support". That alone is going to be a sore spot for a long time for multiplayer titles run through the Proton compatibility layer, which is why we have an FAQ entry for Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye (the most popular) on our dedicated Proton site .

Other points mentioned are that the Steam Linux Runtime Container has nothing to do with security, OpenXR for SteamVR was done by Valve directly (Collabora's own VR work like Monado is unrelated), and the "image-based updater work" is actually towards improving live USB media to update them without losing user data.

After a three day event to show off new games for Stadia, along with three special demos now live you would think Google was having a good time. Unfortunately for them, one developer derailed it all.

For a quick recap of the Stadia event you can see day 1 here with PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle, day 2 here with the HUMANKIND demo and as for day 3: you can now play a free demo of the upcoming Immortals Fenyx Rising free, they announced a new exclusive 'First on Stadia' title Young Souls and the strategy game Phoenix Point is coming to Stadia in 2021. Additionally, they expanded their invite system so that if you do invite a friend to Stadia, they will get two months of Stadia Pro free and if they continue with it you then get a month free to. See the Stadia community post for all the info on that.

So that all sounds pretty reasonable, some nice games coming to Google's Linux-powered streaming service Stadia. Where did it go wrong then? Well, they're currently enjoying a serious round of bad press and Stadia ended up trending all across Twitter, and not for positive reasons.

The problem was Alex Hutchinson, who according to their Twitter bio was the "Creative Director for Google Stadia" that tweeted out these thoughts :

Streamers worried about getting their content pulled because they used music they didn't pay for should be more worried by the fact that they're streaming games they didn't pay for as well. It's all gone as soon as publishers decide to enforce it.

As a bit of context here, Twitch has caused a lot of issues lately due to DMCA take-downs due to copyrighted music. You can see an overview on The Verge .

Hutchinson followed that tweet with :

The real truth is the streamers should be paying the developers and publishers of the games they stream. They should be buying a license like any real business and paying for the content they use.

Of course, that's not really a good look but they doubled down on it in another follow up tweet :

Amazing to me that people are upset at someone saying that the creators of content should be allowed to make some of the money from other people using their content for profit.

Not exactly a good look, coming from a person who works for a currently not exactly popular service streaming games. Even worse when they posted these up with what their Twitter bio said they were. However, they're not the Creative Director of Stadia as their profile originally said. They actually worked for Typhoon Studios, which Google acquired and then became part of Stadia Games and Entertainment. So they work for a smaller game studio that Google happens to now own to make games for Stadia. Hutchinson has since changed their Twitter bio to reflect that more clearly.

The problem though, is that their comments have been widely ridiculed and it caused Stadia to enjoy thousands of angry gamers, developers and publishers all calling out Hutchinson's comments. Their original tweet has been quote-tweeted over four thousand times.

It's an easy argument to deconstruct for how ridiculous it is too. Showing off a game is nothing like playing music, or a movie. It's not static content, it's transformed by the person playing it and it's free advertising for the developer and publisher. You need only look at some of the most popular PC games around to see how livestreaming has caused massive surged in people buying those games like Among Us ( source ):

Care to guess when livestreamers picked it up? As another very quick example, here's what happened to Freehold Games with their roguelike Caves of Qud when a single video was done on it, to be clear this is their "whole sales history" ( source ):

There's plenty of other examples of this but you get the idea. There's a reason why so many developers have blanket statements up approving the use of their games in videos. Most understand it's important, and plenty directly pay streamers to take a look at their game. When talking about huge games from big publishers, most developers involved likely never see a penny from the games doing well anyway - only the people at the top do, which makes it even more ridiculous to want to see more money from people showing it off.

What Hutchinson said doesn't even match up with how Google are working with Stadia either. Google are building in streaming features to Stadia, gave out early access to livestreamers to show off Stadia and more. Google aren't dumb and they've distanced themselves very clearly from Hutchinson in a statement to 9to5Google :

The recent tweets by Alex Hutchinson, creative director at the Montreal Studio of Stadia Games and Entertainment, do not reflect those of Stadia, YouTube or Google.

As someone who personally purchased the Stadia Founders Edition, I have been watching in horror.