Unity says official Steam and native Linux support are expanding
Unity says it is expanding official support for Steam, native Linux, Steam Deck, and the upcoming Steam Machine. According Unity James Stone developers have long shipped Unity games on Steam, but Steam support itself was never officially supported by Unity and was instead handled by developers through their own Steamworks integration.
Stone also said Unity plans to provide build targets not just for Steam, but also for Steam Deck and the upcoming Steam Machine. He added that Unity will make targeted enhancements to its Linux runtime to improve native performance and reduce the need to rely on Windows builds running through Proton.
Unity further said some native improvements to the Linux player aimed at Steam Deck hardware are already available today. Stone described those changes as offering a potential performance gain over Proton in some cases, though Unity did not publish benchmark data alongside the announcement.
Source: Unity Engine
The update builds on Unity’s existing Platform Toolkit for Steamworks. Unity’s documentation for Platform Toolkit for Steamworks 1.0.1 shows dedicated Steamworks packages, build target associations under the Steam section, and support tested against Steamworks SDK 1.62. That means the GDC announcement is not the start of Steam support in Unity tooling, but an expansion toward first-party support for native Linux and SteamOS-related targets.
For developers, this could remove some of the extra platform work around Steam and Linux deployment. For Steam Deck and future Steam Machine users, the bigger question is whether studios will ship native builds instead of continuing to lean on Proton, which remains the default path for many Windows games on SteamOS today. Also there’s a question of how many developers still use Unity after the last controversy.
Source:
We’re excited to announce that we are bringing official Steam support to Unity 🤝 pic.twitter.com/RCnNqRYz3G
— Unity for Games (@unitygames) March 11, 2026
