Beta testing within the company started back in September, and the first users have started to receive invitations last month. Due to the frequent feedback that Valve gets from players they were able to correct numerous errors and development of the Linux client is progressing well. Valve has decided to invite even more users to the beta testing;  5000 new testers will receive or have received an invitation, so check your e-mails and see if you are among the lucky ones.

It is interesting to see how Valve succeeds in making players happy when they are working in their favor, but the same goes for all the other things related to the gaming industry. Just remember what madness the alpha and beta testing of major AAA games can cause. Especially that feeling that you are amongst the special group of the invited people on a mission to test the product before anyone else can even get it.

[Ed – we have a feeling that Gabe Newell’s annoyance with the Windows 8 platform is going to create a big push toward alternate operating systems for PC gaming. It is has always been known that for Linux or OSX to gain real market traction it needed the gaming industry onboard (or at least a few of the major players. Now we are seeing this happen and with the most logical Linus Distro; Ubuntu. Although we are not claiming that Linux will replace Windows in the foreseeable future (the ease of use of Windows over Linux is still too great) we do expect to see a slight increase in the number of systems sold with Ubuntu Linux next year… It will be interesting indeed…]

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