Steam is really going all out to increase it's market share. A statement was made by Gabe Newell, boss of Valve, that Windows 8 is bad for gaming (Windows 8 is a catastrophe), and later came the announcement that Steam plans to sell software other than games, will be on Linux and has a 'console mode' in big picture and the rumoured Steam Hardware.
But people are suspecting that the main reason that they said Windows 8 is bad for gaming is probably because of the App Store set-up that will be used in the upcoming operating system which will interfere with Steam's business as well as compete for sales of software. Interestingly, Linux, or more specifically, Ubuntu has a store like in the form of Ubuntu Software Centre. And frankly, even if Microsoft decide to move into sell software, which it already does, we all know how that will probably turn out (check out the disaster which is Games for Windows Live if you want to see how successful they are).
So is the statement made by Gabe Newell valid? I guess it's up to consumers to decide after testing out the OS. But I've always believed competition is good for the consumers, so Linux coming up as a gaming OS is a good thing, but then again, Steam being everywhere now makes it a kind of monopoly; and having too many games on the client means it's a huge risk should something happen to the account. I'm glad there are distributors for Linux and Mac games like Desura, but most games aren't made for those Operating Systems, yet. Making games for Linux is understandingly difficult because of the different distros, however, for Mac, it should be rather straight forward since not only is the OS more or less the same on all machines, but configurations for hardware is much less diverse than that of the PC, so optimizing should actually be simpler, which makes it strange why there aren't more games on that.
Like it or not, Steam is one of the major distributors in gaming, so bringing that over to Linux is a great thing. Hopefully, more developers will move into supporting more Operating Systems so Windows won't be the only one gamers have to work with.
For further reading in support or against Windows 8 gaming:
You're being lied to, Windows 8 isn't bad for gaming
The Windows 8 gaming defense
Windows 8 is not good for gamers
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