Prior to Valve's official announcement of Steam Machines, rumors of Valve's plan to get into the hardware market developed in the industry throughout 2012, based on aspects such as the emphasis on the Linux operating system and the introduction of features like the 10-foot user interface "Big Picture Mode" for Steam which would be a necessary feature for a video game console. Valve worked to assure that users' game libraries would be portable, including offering Steam Play whereby purchase of a title for one platform automatically allows that user to play the title on other supported platforms, and cross-platform multiplayer features. An official Linux client for Steam was released in July 2012, along with developer tools to help port games to the platform. Newell recognized that games would need to be a significant part of the push for Linux. Valve has indicated displeasure with the approaches that both Microsoft and Apple are taking with their respective operating systems, limiting what applications could be run, and upon the release of Windows 8 in 2012, Valve's CEO Gabe Newell called it "a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space", and discussed the possibility of promoting the open-source operating system Linux that would maintain "the openness of the platform". Steam, a large digital store-front for video games supporting many third-party developers and publishers, was developed by Valve primarily for Microsoft Windows and accounts for an estimated 75% of digitally purchased games on that platform.
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