Valve breaks with Canonical because Ubuntu 19.10 stops offering 32-bit support
Following Canonical's decision not to support 32-bit packages in Ubuntu 19.10, Valve has decided that its Steam store will no longer be compatible with it.
It was recently announced that Ubuntu in its version 19.10 will stop supporting the 32-bit package. A decision that has not been well received by the community that has been supporting this operating system for years. Canonical, who is in charge of Ubuntu development, assures that this is to improve security and protect against vulnerabilities. But this has turned against them, because they have lost the Valve support, losing its Steam store.
Valve and Canonical have long had excellent working relationships. The video game platform has worked hard to get more games developed for Linux. They have even released Steam OS, a 'gamer' operating system that was based on Ubuntu and did not succeed. A relationship broken by this decision.
Valve breaks relations with Ubuntu for not supporting 32 bits
Microsoft with Windows 10 no longer offers 32-bit support. Recently NVIDIA has also stopped supporting 32 bits in its drivers. A trend in the industry that is given by security. The problem is that 86-bit x32 systems are more vulnerable than 64-bit ones. Hence the Canonical decision.
This decision in the offices of Valve has not sat at all well. This is reflected in a tweet from a Valve employee, Pierre-Loup Griffais. This Valve worker says Canonical is lying.
Apparently Valve and Canonical were working on removing the 32bit / Multiarch library in Ubuntu 19.10. The talks have failed, as these instructions will not be compatible with Ubuntu in the future. Now it seems that Valve is studying other distributions to be adopted.
Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases will not be officially supported by Steam or recommended to our users. We will evaluate ways to minimize breakage for existing users, but will also switch our focus to a different distribution, currently TBD.
- Pierre-Loup Griffais (@ Plagman2) June 22th, 2019
Problems when playing classic games
On the other hand Alan Pope (Popey), developer at Canonical, tries to make the user understand the security risks of 32 bits. For this he has carried out an experiment on game launches in Good Old Games (GOG) in Ubuntu 19.10 versions without 32-bit libraries with Wine64.
The result of six randomly chosen games running 32-bit Winte, on Wine64 they didn't work. Specifically Theme Hospital, Queke The Offer and Shadow Warrior could not be installed, GOG Braid did not run and FTL Advanced Edition and GOG Surgeon Simulator 2013 left the screen black after running.
Therefore, it is clear that GOG titles in Ubuntu 19.10 do not work. It seems that no one has tested what would happen when 32-bit support was discontinued in Canonical.
