Left 4 Dead 2 is Valve's first Linux game

Last year Valve began hiring Linux developers. Everyone was wondering "why for?" Well, actually nobody was asking that because it is, apart from being poorly phrased, obvious. But just in case you were confused, Valve began a new blog today with Steam'd Penguins announcing that they have 11 Linux developers focusing on three main objectives listed as -

getting the Steam client onto Linux with full functionality
optimizing a version of L4D2 running at a high frame rate with OpenGL
porting additional Valve titles

The team's mission is to strengthen the gaming scene on Linux - traditionally a sparse platform for gaming. While there are quite a few indie games with excellent Linux flavours, the operating system is generally ignored by bigger publishers in favour of Windows and (occasionally) Mac. The Valve Linux team are hoping to change that and are interested in how the use of open source software will benefit both developers and gamers.

Beginning with Left 4 Dead 2 and Ubuntu and following it up with further Valve titles, they hope to get the games running as good as the Windows versions in OpenGL - the multi-platform software library. Check out the full blog post for more details. Are you excited about this news, or is Linux too much hassle for you? Let us know in the comments below!