A month after launch, Cronos: The New Dawn now has a native Linux build, with devs Bloober Team announcing in a post on Steam, "Today, we’ve released a native build of the game for Steam’s handheld console, which means even better performance on this platform. Enjoy Cronos on Steam, wherever you are!"
Cronos: The New Dawn was already Deck Verified at launch, but now Steam Deck and Linux players won't have to run the game through a compatibility layer. More and more games are getting native Linux support, largely due to the popularity of the Steam Deck. For instance, Hollow Knight: Silksong had native Linux support at launch last month, while one hero engineer at Larian delivered us a native version of Baldur's Gate 3.
Cronos: The New Dawn joins a growing list of over 42,000 games on Steam with Linux support. At the time of writing, over 9,000 games are Deck Verified. Currently six out of the top ten games on Steam's U.S. Top Sellers list (not including the Steam Deck itself) are either "Playable" or "Verified" on Steam Deck. Only two have native Linux support, but that's better than none.
The September Steam Hardware Survey puts Linux usage at 2.68%, up from 1.92% in September 2024. While that's still a small percentage of Steam users, Linux adoption is on the rise, which some developers are clearly taking notice of, like Bloober Team.
Of course, there are still major issues that make SteamOS and Linux in general a non-starter for certain games, particularly support for kernel-level anti-cheat. Most games that require it, like Fortnite or Valorant, can't run on Linux, even with compatibility layers.
There are exceptions, such as Halo Infinite and Smite, but for the most part, competitive online multiplayer games often can't run on Linux. That also means there are many players who would never consider switching to SteamOS or any other Linux distribution as long as those games aren't supported.
So, in that context, even a 2.68% share of Steam players is admirable for Linux. Regardless of your OS of choice, it's always nice to see games playable on as many platforms as possible, like Cronos: The New Dawn, even if PC Gamer news writer Elie Gould didn't exactly love it in their 58% review of the game.
