[CorvusCrypto]

I'm fine with this, but it is a bit annoying to see a developer not deal with 64-bit builds. I wonder if it's only because Windows allows them to be lazy while it generates more money for them?

Either way I think valve's Linux team should rethink this. They depend on 32-bit libs, but Surely they can find alternatives for the 64-bit build and who knows it might even make the experience on Linux even better.

[captainbland]

My guess is that there are a lot of third party developed games which only work on 32-bit compatible systems and Valve either doesn't know exactly which ones are which or simply doesn't want to put the effort into organising them such that users are warned about which specific games have incompatibilities. The other option is just letting the games that would only work on 32-bit compatible systems fail with cryptic error messages and have to field masses of complaints about it while looking extremely unprofessional in the process. In this case it's not that surprising that they would just decide to drop support, especially considering that Ubuntu is a relatively small chunk of the market to begin with.

It's pretty unfortunate. I totally get Canonical's desire to get rid of the seemingly unnecessary bloat and maintenance burden from having to support 32-bit applications but this is the consequence and it's a big blow to gaming on Ubuntu, especially seeing as Steam has only been supported on Ubuntu since 2013.

[sunstone]

Ubuntu makes its money from server and enterprise clients. If Valve needs to support 16/32 bit for its customers then it's up to them to do it. I expect Valve is a much bigger company than Ubuntu, maybe Valve can contract out this work to ... Ubuntu instead of just freeloading.

[badsectoracula]

Steam being 64bit is minor issue really, the problem is that the vast vast vast vast vast vast vast majority of games on both Steam and Windows/Proton and everywhere else are 32bit. 64bit being the majority of new stuff is really mainly a Linux/Mac thing.

On Windows (and thus Wine and Proton) most stuff (i'm including everything here, not just popular applications) is either 32bit only or 32bit/64bit hybrid - 64bit only is very rare. Even in games where you are more likely to see 64bit, it is often something you see on big AAA games that need it - most smaller games are 32bit, even stuff released recently.

As an example here are some recently released games on GOG from my account: "Corpse Party: Sweet Sachiko's Hysteric Birthday Bash", "Tsioque", "Dex" and "Pillars of Eternity". I'd list more but i do not have much free disk space to check the exe files (and my current computer is weak so i do not buy new games much), but these are games released the last 3-4 years or so (the first one was released just a couple of months ago) and they are available only in 32 bits.

In terms of non-gaming software, almost everything out there on Windows is 32bits. In general if a program doesn't benefit from being 64bit (that is, need to use a lot of memory), chances are it'll be a 32bit executable.

And of course these are just recent things. On games alone, just my GOG library is ~550 games of which only a tiny few provide 64bit binaries (and i expect my Steam library to be similar).

On a personal note, whenever i release something on Windows, unless i have a reason for it to be 64bit, then i release it as 32bit - it will run in more systems (be it natively in older computers - note that netbooks/ultrabooks with 32bit Windows were sold until recently - or via VMs) and use less RAM (i think i read recently that there was an attempt to make something like x32 on Windows that would solve this, but i can't find it anywhere and anyway that would only work in future Windows versions whereas a 32bit program will work practically everywhere).

32bit code, at least on Windows, will be here for pretty much as long as a CPU on the 8086 lineage exists. And for as long as you want to run Windows code on non-Windows OSes, you'll also need those OSes to support 32bit code.

[cheez]

I think Ubuntu needs to rethink this. I am a software vendor and ship software on Linux and I had to switch to 64-bit because 32-bit was too much of a pain in the ass.

I couldn't afford to let go of 10% of the users who are on Linux, but Valve can. Which means I will use Ubuntu less for fun, and more for just work.

[snvzz]

>I'm fine with this, but it is a bit annoying to see a developer not deal with 64-bit builds.

The developers have often just moved on. And when these games were made, 64bit didn't even exist or it wasn't worth considering. Deadline constraints and such mean corners are cut, and portability across architectures often isn't considered a priority.