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Unity announce expanded support for Steam, Native Linux, Steam Deck and Steam Machine
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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Cool. Native Linux support from a big name like Unity likely means they see Linux as a real player in the market.
Now if only Unreal would do the same, but we'll have to wait for Tim Sweeny to get his head out of his ass first.
That said, fuck unity for trying to pull some bullshit with their licensing before the deserved shitstorm. Godot all the way. I hope they expand on the 3D capabilities.
They will, but they have a lot fewer people and they need to deal with slop PRs now. I do not envy them.
I strongly suspect over the long term a smaller team is going to get more shipped than what unity was flailing at - for all the things that get delivered how much is implemented accessibly (ecs etc) or rolled back because it never worked? For example, their URP consolidation on the unity side.
Also, would predict Bastiaan is going to deliver more XR stuff on Godot than Unity will manage in the next few years as well.
The slop contributor problem is real but my money is on Godot long term.
Fun story, I know some of the engineers who worked on that exact Unity item. They were trying to make a very flexible billing system, so that it could be configured by business/marketing at a more personal level, and built it in a way that hopefully it would make it easier on users of Unity. For engineers here, think a purely config/DB driven way to bill, so if they wanted to say apply discounts or anything it would be a flip of an admin panel. It was a rules engine that you had any number of data points that you could use. From an engineering standpoint, it was a noble goal.
However, they handed it over to business, and yup, you guessed it, the MBAs and marketers saw it and immediately went to worst case scenarios. Engineers had no idea it'd be used that way. Installation was one of many metrics that billing could be tied to but it was never designed to. It didn't matter. The rest of the story is known. Those in charge took something that was meant to ease things for small developers and decided to use it against them. Unity lost all credibility, and my friends, the ones who helped build it, were all laid off.
Moral of the story. If you're an engineer, never go above and beyond. Never build more than what you are required to. You may have the best intentions, but there are people who will only see the worst ways to use what you build.
Fascinating insight. I do wonder how many of those mba/marketers were influential vs.... fucking John Riccitello.
Riccitello smelled money and no matter how many people explained in small words and crayon diagrams it would kill them, he pursued it anyway.
We gotta get that bread somehow :/
UE hat excellent Linux support. They need it for VFX production because that world runs on RHEL. Epic and their licensors just don't care for Linux games.
Both UE and Unity have supported both native Linux builds and developing on Linux for as long as I can remember. Has something changed recently? It's been a couple years since I've done this.
I've been doing my VRChat avatars (Unity 2019 and now 2023) on Linux for years. Not sure what changes here as Unity Editor had a Linux native version for quite some time, as well as being able to make Linux native games
Given that Unity and Unreal have the same owners, their asset stores have been consolidated, and Unity discontinued its HDRP branch/render pipeline...
Yeah, Unity is now Unreal Engine, Little Bro Edition.
That does not appear to be correct. Unity is owned by Unity Technologies (CEO Matthew Bromberg), whereas Unreal is owned by Epic Games (CEO Tim Sweeny).
Care to clarify what you mean?
lolol wtf are you talking about?
how did I miss this, please, explain.
~~Unreal Engine 5 has a Linux native version though, unless you're talking about things like feature parity with Windows~~
I've been corrected in a reply
Its broken as fuck and doesn't really work.
If you mean trying to run the engine, to do game development, on linux.
Its a half-baked after thought.
O3DE arguably more fully actually 'works', on linux now, than UE 5 does.
Btw Tencent has a 40%(and other companies) in Epic Games so its not just Tim Sweeney.
He's explicitly been against Linux adoption. Tencent has not made any aggressive comments against Linux that I'm aware of, but it you know of any, do share!
i think i also seen Tencent not allow Linux users to play their Video Games(through Riot games)
I'm literally using unreal on Linux daily my dude. And you can see export on Linux package from the windows editor too.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/linux
I hope both engines rot.
Works for me, but I'd also like to see more Linux adoption, and Unity offering native support might mean businesses will shift away from Microsoft.
I agree.