Despite the rocky launch, the divisive fallout between fans and the developers over the bugs, missing features and broken gameplay mechanics, Creative Assembly has undertaken a task to restore the faith that the community once had in them by unleashing new DLC, new patches, new fixes and a pledge of allegiance to Valve's new SteamOS.
As noted on an official Steam community post, Valve employee Greg Coomer made it clear that Creative Assembly is on board with the new SteamOS, which is part of Valve's three-point stance to overthrow Microsoft and bring open-source systems to mainstream PC gaming.
Creative Assembly's Rob Bartholomew let the community know that...
At Creative Assembly we want our customers to be able to play on as many platforms and in as many locations as possible, so today we are announcing future support for both SteamOS and the Steam Controller.We’ve always wanted the Total War franchise to be enjoyed by living room gamers, but the limitations of traditional hardware made our style of game play impossible. Last month, when Valve invited us to test out the new Steam Controller and unveiled their plans for SteamOS - we were impressed.ROME II will be launching on Linux early next year, with full Steam Controller and Big Picture support to be added as soon as Valve gets us a controller dev kit.
This is pretty great news. Despite some gamers still having issues with Creative Assembly over the launch of Rome II, we still have to admit that it's a fairly powerful series and commands a lot of weight in the PC gaming community. In addition to this, one of the big concerns from gamers is that SteamOS is a great venture by Valve but could potentially hit hang-ups do to the lack of support, especially by established brands and publishers.
Creatively Assembly stepping forward to offer support for the SteamOS is a great sign of goodwill toward their fanbase, and during these turbulent times it's nice to see something like this pop up in the news to ease some of the tension that's been bloating up like a giant white, puss-filled pimple on a pencil-necked teen's face.
For the most part, the Reddit community, the forum community and the Steam community seem to be responding with quite a bit of positive feedback regarding the game arriving on SteamOS.
Much of the vitriol that took flight like a kite being swept up in the autumn winds across the flat plains of Cumbernauld, Scotland have died away. Thankfully the pent up rage of gamers subsided as Creative Assembly rolled out more patches and now it's a matter of fans easing back into the cuddle of CA's arms. The blood and gore DLC is still questionable, though, but I digress.
As noted in Bartholomew's post, Rome II will be available on Linux and SteamOS supported platforms in early 2014. This weekend the game will be 25% off and those who purchase early will gain instant access to the Linux version once it becomes available.
