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Yesterday, it was announced that Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY edition was officially released on Linux and MacOS. This is one of the first truly great games in its prime to see the light of day on Linux in recent years. This is largely due to the influence of Valve and it's gaming machine push. It is largely to be seen if Valve can continue this trend and make Steam machines viable enough for the masses upon release. Here is some great Linux specific coverage of the release. If you wish to support Linux gaming and the porting house directly responsible, you should buy it directly from them (and receive a steam key to redeem). With the state of gaming on Linux being one reason many have given for years regarding the lack of Linux desktop acceptance, this excuse may be starting to disappear. If Valve sees its dream come to fruition, we will see whether that point has been valid all along or not.
From a Gamasutra article:
Feral Interactive today announced that the open-world action adventure game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition is out now on Mac and Linux via Steam, and will be released on the Mac App Store by early August. Developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for consoles and Windows, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor received high praise for its innovative gameplay and immersive setting. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor delivers a dynamic game environment where the player orchestrates their personal plan of vengeance as they bend Mordor to their will. The game begins on the night of Sauron's return to Mordor, as his Black Captains brutally execute the Rangers of the Black Gate. Players become Talion, a ranger who loses his family and everything he holds dear, only to be returned from death by a mysterious Spirit of vengeance.
(Score: 2) by khedoros on Saturday August 01 2015, @07:11PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Saturday August 01 2015, @09:50PM
I saw somewhere that it's "not supported" because they don't guarantee good, playable framerates on those GPUs. Same situation for Borderlands 2 on Linux, and most every other ported game so far. Currently, anything not nvidia is uncharted territory and you're on your own, probably in part because Valve's GPU support with SteamOS was originally nvidia-only.
The good news is that Valve implemented a refund policy for Steam recently. If you determine the performance is unacceptable, you can get a refund within two weeks if your play time is low enough (less than two hours, I think).
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday August 02 2015, @10:30AM
It seems they're following Valve's lead in declaring Nvidia pretty much the only graphics chipset manufacturer to have drivers that are up to scratch for gaming. When SteamOS beta first came out, a lot of questions were raised about why only Nvidia graphics cards were officially supported by the OS. Quite simple, AMD [steamcommunity.com] had neglected to write proper Linux drivers for their kit - that's something I can personally vouch for, although recent driver releases have dramatically improved the situation, with quality and performance both getting much better since the 15.7 Catalyst release (the one that claims to be 15.20 once it's installed). While Intel have had good OSS drivers for their graphics systems for a while, gaming performance has never been their strong suit, so I guess they've officially said they don't support them so they don't have to field questions from folks with underpowered chips wondering why graphics feature X doesn't work or makes the game freak out or whatever.