Hogwarts Legacy 5th on the Top Selling Games List as Valve Brings New Updates to Steam Deck, HDR Support to Linux

Hogwarts Legacy remains highly anticipated by Harry Potter fans and gaming enthusiasts in general, as the February 10 release date inches closer. And judging by the looks of things, it seems like the game has already become a hit even before its release.

On Steam, Hogwarts Legacy has secured the top spot on the best-selling games list. As the game can be pre-ordered, it appears that many fans have gone with that option. Pre-ordering also gives early access to Avalanche Software’s title, as it will become available to play on February 7, three days before the base game’s release.

Steam Deck’s new updates

The Steam Deck received a Beta update on January 5 which includes new features and bug fixes. The update fixes a reboot loop when failing to update a broken Steam install, adding an option to turn off controllers when exiting BPM, and implementing Steam Controller dongle pairing. The Linux section of the update includes fixes for instances of Steam freezing or crashing in desktop mode, and closing non-Steam shortcuts via the overlay when two or more are running.

In other news, Steam has announced the Steam Mystery Fest, a sale on mystery titles that will run from February 20 to 27. This month, the Steam platform also surpassed 10 million concurrent in-game players for the first time after reaching 32 million concurrently online users.

HDR support on Linux

Gaming on the Linux operating system is also getting an upgrade. The alternative to Windows supports quite a few games officially and is even able to run many titles unofficially. But, one of the most pressing problems has been the OS’s incompatibility with High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology. However, it looks like the issue may soon be gone altogether, as teased by a Valve developer.

Pierre-Loup, a developer on Valve’s Steam Deck development team, recently took to Twitter to reveal that he was able to run games such as Death Stranding, Halo Infinite, and Deep Rock Galactic on an AMD desktop with HDR enabled. This advancement in Linux’s compatibility with HDR was made possible by the efforts of programmer Josh Ashton, he revealed.

New Linux gaming milestone: with the latest work from Josh Ashton, HDR can now be enabled for real games! Tested it tonight on my AMD desktop with Halo Infinite, Deep Rock Galactic, DEATH STRANDING DC. Very early and will still need some time to bake to be useful to most. pic.twitter.com/S7DzLMe6Ng

— Pierre-Loup Griffais (@Plagman2) January 3, 2023

Ashton has made significant contributions to the open-source community, specifically with his work on DXVK and VKD3D. DXVK is a Vulkan-based implementation of D3D9, D3D10, and D3D11 for Linux, while VKD3D is Proton’s Direct3D 12 implementation. Furthermore, Ashton has been working on Gamescope, a micro-compositor that is used to display games on the Steam Deck and can also be used on the desktop.

The breakthrough in Linux’s HDR compatibility is a result of the efforts by AMD, who announced its intention to further incorporate Linux into its hardware earlier this year. As part of this effort, the company made open-source code available for its hardware “enablement” along with other user-space features. This made it possible for Linux engineers to address many compatibility issues with AMD hardware, ultimately leading to the recent development in HDR support.