11 ms·

It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

239 points by underscore_ku 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago
Steam really has done an amazing job making Linux systems viable gaming platforms. The manner in which they've done so shows a delightful understanding of the "unix philosophy" in so many ways, too. Last month I was doing hardware changes on our home systems, my daughter's steam install and mine copied to new systems with a quick "tar" and no fuss; which was a very pleasant discovery. They've rarely if ever (that I've seen) gone to extra effort to introduce warts the user has to deal with. Opening up the new deck hardware to show us how to do so, etc... Good eggs there.
- thioordc 5y ago
  Yeah I rarely ever “like” a company but Valve has done so much it’s honestly amazing. The 30% they take is soooo worth it for developers who don’t have natural Linux support.
  - smallpipe 5y ago
    Reaching a single digit percentage larger user count in exchange for 30% of your revenue is questionable accounting
    - burnished 5y ago
      Anecdote: some one else's account of this was that it was really helpful because the Linux portion of the community (while much smaller than other segments) provided consistently high quality feedback/bug reports.
      - hn8788 5y ago
        That was just one company though. Other devs have said it isn't worth supporting Linux because the majority of the bug reports they get are distro specific edge cases.
      - zinekeller 5y ago
        That anecdote is in part due to the fact that the engine that was used was already Linux-friendly and was already ironed-out, so it made sense that more agnostic bugs are reported, whereas other developers resent (native) Linux support due to distros not even fully following LSB or outdated libraries, which in Windows has at least the concept of side-by-side libraries.
    - gravypod 5y ago
      Valve does quite a bit more than just proton. 0. They manage the most popular games store in the western world. 1. They provide a community forum for your users. 2. Host downloads of games (sometimes 100s of GBs). They distribute the content all across the world and handle region specific laws about what can be sold, etc. They host content at edge so downloads are super fast. 3. Process refund requests. 4. Have one of the better VR abstraction layers for game devs. 5. Provide networking and social integration (chat, anti-cheat, friends, etc). 6. They allow you to generate steam keys (at no cost to you) and sell them on your own website. 7. They process payments (PayPal charges ~3% for this, Stripe is 2.9%) 8. Achievements, time tracking, etc. These are useful for game devs who iterate on their formula (most use achievements to see what percent of a user base does X). That's what I can think off the top of my head benefits the game developers. The list of things that benefits the users is also pretty big (steam sales). I don't think any company is good or bad but Valve's offer to game devs is a pretty decent one. > Anecdote: some one else's account of this was that it was really helpful because the Linux portion of the community (while much smaller than other segments) provided consistently high quality feedback/bug reports.
      - burnafter185 5y ago
        They've also got a network of servers to help reduce latency in P2P games, which is actually pretty impressive to me. I don't know how effective it is, but as a GAMER any solution to latency is a great boon.
      - DeathArrow 5y ago
        >0. They manage the most popular games store in the western world. I do not like the app store model. I rather buy from the developer.
        I_Byte 5y ago
        From my point of view the store model simply is more convenient for consumers and worth the extra price. I know that I stopped pirating games, music and movies when I started using Steam, Spotify and Netflix.
    - thioordc 5y ago
      Yes but that’s not what I said! If you make a game that doesn’t have native support I will not buy it. 70% is much bette than 0%! I’m sure if they had the choice between no fees or 30% fees and Linux support they would take the zero but they don’t.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - milesvp 5y ago
      I saw an RPG maker who’s been making games for over 20 years on GDC recently. He talks about steam’s 30% cut. His basic takeaway, is that he used to need to employ an entire fulltime employee to handle all the things that steam now does for him. For him, the steam tax pays for itself for support and distribution alone.
      - yvdriess 5y ago
        Jeff Vogel, his talks are all very much worth watching.
  - bartwe 5y ago
    In that case i'd like a refund as we ship a native linux version ourself
    - thioordc 5y ago
      Maybe I wasn’t clear but if you dont have native support then it’s really worth the 30%! If a game does it’s more debatable. I also always try to buy the DRM free version if it’s available!
rjzzleep 5y ago
Now if only AMD didn't treat ROCm as an afterthought the graghics card landscape could see an interesting shift. Steamdeck with ML capabilities wolud be pretty cool.
pjmlp 5y ago
A whooping 1% in 9 years, great achievement.
- DeathArrow 5y ago
  In 891 years, Linux gaming will reach 100%. :)
  - 0des 5y ago
    That's a little optimistic, don't you think?
    - erikpukinskis 5y ago
      If it’s an s-curve, then yes: it will never reach 100%. But if it’s an s-curve it will reach 70% much sooner than 891 years. In my opinion 1% of the Earth in 9 years is a triumph. Electric cars are not there yet and people are quite optimistic.
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        I understand your point, but I just want to say that electric cars are well beyond 1% in markets where they are for sale.
        labster 5y ago
        But electric cars have existed since the 1880s, so it’s still a pretty slow growth rate overall.
        speedgoose 5y ago
        True, but the technology has improved a lot recently. Perhaps Linux on desktop needs to improve a lot too.
MaxGanzII 5y ago
Steam is a trap though, no? You buy software, but if you leave, you lose it all. Is that correct? there's no way to retain what you've bought?
- vadfa 5y ago
  Yes, it's like netflix/etc in that regard.
  - ohyeshedid 5y ago
    Steam is not like Netflix in any meaningful way to the end user.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    Its not a subscription service, so that's a strange analogy.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      I'm kind of surprised it doesn't have a subscription service yet. Seems like an obvious way to go, and Game Pass seems to have been fairly successful.
      - nicolaslem 5y ago
        Is Microsoft actually making money with Game Pass? I'm guessing many users just subscribe for a month or two when a new interesting game is released and cancel just after they are done with it.
- mdoms 5y ago
  What you're saying is absolutely true, not sure why people are trying to bury your comment.
- messe 5y ago
  It depends. Some games are DRM free, and those can be backed up and kept wherever you wish. I can copy my Kerbal Space Program directory anywhere, for example, and it works fine. I use this to have several differently modded installs.
DeathArrow 5y ago
>Steam on Linux after opening up access to everyone was seeing around a ~2% marketshare prior to falling with the setbacks in Linux gaming. But ever since Steam Play (Proton) was introduced in 2018, it's begun rebounding. This past month it set a new multi-year high with a 1.13% marketshare for Steam on Linux after surpassing the 1.0% mark this summer. From 1% to 1.13%. Isn't it glorious?
- indymike 5y ago
  You have to start somewhere.
- MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  Since Linux only has between 1-2% market share of desktop operating systems in total, that 0.13% increase is a reasonable proportion of the Linux users out there. So not too bad I'd say.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    Quite a few people cite games (and software) as the reason they don't switch, so hopefully that 0.13% are converted people and not work-only users that started gaming.
mazone 5y ago
Play only on linux since the last year or so and got away from the dedicated windows machine i had to have for only gaming. I had some bugs in the beginning but with recent versions of proton it feels a lot more stable. I don't have any bugs anymore in any games and don't notice any slowdowns or degraded performance. It is quite amazing.
EamonnMR 5y ago
Something I always told myself I'd get around to. I've been meaning to set up Ubuntu on my desktop so I can use it for development, anyone have a good tutorial for setting up steam/proton?
- mazone 5y ago
  You basically just install steam from within your linux distributions package manager. I use and recommend some arch based distro but for Ubuntu it should be apt-get or some gui tool like synaptic. After you installed steam it will probably just work. You might need to go into settings -> steam play and enable proton. that's it.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  It's basically set-and-forget. Just download Steam from your preferred package manager, and all of the verified Proton titles should be playable without manual intervention. If you want to open up Proton to all your Windows games, you have to enable it in Settings > Steam Play. ProtonDB is your best friend, but besides that it's fairly easy to get up and running. Props to Valve for removing the friction, here!
deng 5y ago
Yes, that's why you still have these 'ubuntu_12' folders in the Steam installation, since they have never updated this in the past 9 years. So in reality, native Linux development has pretty much failed, and they have put all their money on Proton. That is probably the right decision from a business perspective, but it's pretty much a defeat nonetheless.
- edflsafoiewq 5y ago
  What's wrong with it? Having the Windows APIs turn into a portable abstraction layer is certainly amusing, but having wine sitting underneath the program is really nice (essentially for the same reason a VM is). For one thing, winedevs are way better at linux support than random gamedevs.
  - gpderetta 5y ago
    Yesterday my son wanted to play Overlord II that I had purchased ages ago. It has a native linux version, and I remember 3-4 years and a few distro/steam updates ago it worked fine. Yesterday it would hang on startup. I didn't want to spend an evening debugging it, so I flipped the proton override on steam. After a quick reinstall, it worked immediately and flawlessly. So, I don't care whether a game is native [1] or run on an emulation layer as long as it works and performs reasonably well and, most importantly, it is supported. [1] the reality of course is that many, but not all, native ports still run on some sort of buggy, proprietary translation layer.
  - deng 5y ago
    One has to remember what Valve tried to achieve. If I remember correctly, Microsoft back then announced that the Microsoft Store would be an integral part of the upcoming Windows 10. Seeing the huge amounts of money Apple/Google/Valve were making with their stores, they openly played with the idea to only allow application installations through the Microsoft Store, most importantly games. So Valve tried to break the Windows monopoly on games by creating a native Linux SDK and releasing the Steam Machine, which was based on Ubuntu. The goal was to make Linux a first class citizen as a gaming development platform, not just something to run an emulation layer. The Steam Machine failed, because it simply wasn't very good. Valve quickly lost interest in native Linux and let the native SDK rot away into obsoletion. Fortunately, Microsoft being Microsoft, the Windows Store was (and still is) a terrible platform, so pretty much nobody is buying games there (except for Minecraft), and you can still install anything you want on Windows. So of course you can say that you don't care if it runs natively or in an emulation shim. It would have been nice if Linux had become a game development platform and not just a kernel with a Windows API layer on top. So in a way, Linux' success here is similar to Android's: Yes, it's technically Linux, but not really.
arendtio 5y ago
This past week, I witness Steam/Proton making it possible to play Age of Empires 4 just 4 days after its official release (and 2 of those days were Saturday and Sunday). That is just awesome.
- capableweb 5y ago
  A bit off topic, but what you think of the game itself? Big AoE 2 fan here, and a bit on the edge if I should try it or not.
  - arendtio 5y ago
    Being a big AoE2 fan myself (pre-ordered the original version back in the day), I think you should try it. For me, there is one major downside: The camera. I really don't like the 3D camera. I think it could be worse. So you can actually play the game without turning the camera, but what I don't like is the perspective. Sometimes you have to move to camera to another position, just to be able to click on a unit. I found that much better with the classic dimetric projection [1]. In addition, I like the art-style of AoE2 a bit better. However, after putting these things aside, I love how they have adapted the AoE2 concepts. It still feels like an Age of Empires. But then again different enough to be AoE4. So if you like the changes from AoE1 to AoE2 then you might like AoE4 ;-) The civilizations play more diverse than those of AoE2 so even with just 8, there is a lot to learn. The story telling of the campaigns is also a bit different, but it still has the concept of teaching some history. AoE4 actually has some nice videos about armor and weapons of the time. The fortress building in AoE4 feels a bit more like Stronghold with the ability to move units on the walls and I think that is a good thing :-) So much after playing AoE4 for about 13 hours. [1]: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/16757 https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/16757
  - mdoms 5y ago
    It's more like AoE2 than 3, and in my opinion it's excellent.
- mAritz 5y ago
  To be fair the public stress test beta already showed some problems that needed to be fixed and people started working on it back then. But the point still stands, for big titles you don't have to wait long for Proton support nowadays.
thrower123 5y ago
I think it is incredible that after all these years the best target for Linux gaming is still a Windows compatibility shim.
- no_time 5y ago
  You would be writing linux-to-linux compatibility shims instead. Desktop linux is forever stuck in the "move fast and break things" mindset that just isn't compatible with the release-and-forget style of proprietary software.
- alex_smart 5y ago
  Why wouldn't it be? What were you hoping would happen?
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Presumably, they were hoping for native Linux support.
    - edflsafoiewq 5y ago
      Going through a shim is better. It allows you to modify the open-source shim to analyze and patch the closed source game. This is why Proton can release fixes so fast. It also lets each party care about the natural thing for them: gamedevs care about windows and do a good job writing windows code; winedevs care about linux and do a good job writing linux code. Gamedevs don't care about linux so their native linux code is crap.
      - arendtio 5y ago
        But in some cases it is also the reason why anti-cheat software is such a pain and for multiplayer it sucks :-/
        Siira 5y ago
        “Cheating,” also known as modifying user facing software to better satisfy the user needs. Perhaps sealing the user is net-positive for games (I personally don’t think so), but any OS with such a capability will get abused (e.g., look at iOS).
assbuttbuttass 5y ago
Between lutris and steam I don't even run Windows anymore.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
Why there isn’t a Linux gaming module to make gaming for Linux simpler for the developers is beyond me.
oblak 5y ago
Valve has proven to me that a wildly profitable company's interests can very much aligned with my own. Guess I should be thanking MS for prompting this amazing development. Part of me can't wait for the winter to come so that I can start using my Index again without feeling like I am wasting my time at home instead of enjoying a nice day outside.

239 points by underscore_ku 5y ago

Steam really has done an amazing job making Linux systems viable gaming platforms. The manner in which they've done so shows a delightful understanding of the "unix philosophy" in so many ways, too. Last month I was doing hardware changes on our home systems, my daughter's steam install and mine copied to new systems with a quick "tar" and no fuss; which was a very pleasant discovery. They've rarely if ever (that I've seen) gone to extra effort to introduce warts the user has to deal with. Opening up the new deck hardware to show us how to do so, etc... Good eggs there.

thioordc 5y ago
Yeah I rarely ever “like” a company but Valve has done so much it’s honestly amazing. The 30% they take is soooo worth it for developers who don’t have natural Linux support.
- smallpipe 5y ago
  Reaching a single digit percentage larger user count in exchange for 30% of your revenue is questionable accounting
  - burnished 5y ago
    Anecdote: some one else's account of this was that it was really helpful because the Linux portion of the community (while much smaller than other segments) provided consistently high quality feedback/bug reports.
    - hn8788 5y ago
      That was just one company though. Other devs have said it isn't worth supporting Linux because the majority of the bug reports they get are distro specific edge cases.
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      That anecdote is in part due to the fact that the engine that was used was already Linux-friendly and was already ironed-out, so it made sense that more agnostic bugs are reported, whereas other developers resent (native) Linux support due to distros not even fully following LSB or outdated libraries, which in Windows has at least the concept of side-by-side libraries.
  - gravypod 5y ago
    Valve does quite a bit more than just proton. 0. They manage the most popular games store in the western world. 1. They provide a community forum for your users. 2. Host downloads of games (sometimes 100s of GBs). They distribute the content all across the world and handle region specific laws about what can be sold, etc. They host content at edge so downloads are super fast. 3. Process refund requests. 4. Have one of the better VR abstraction layers for game devs. 5. Provide networking and social integration (chat, anti-cheat, friends, etc). 6. They allow you to generate steam keys (at no cost to you) and sell them on your own website. 7. They process payments (PayPal charges ~3% for this, Stripe is 2.9%) 8. Achievements, time tracking, etc. These are useful for game devs who iterate on their formula (most use achievements to see what percent of a user base does X). That's what I can think off the top of my head benefits the game developers. The list of things that benefits the users is also pretty big (steam sales). I don't think any company is good or bad but Valve's offer to game devs is a pretty decent one. > Anecdote: some one else's account of this was that it was really helpful because the Linux portion of the community (while much smaller than other segments) provided consistently high quality feedback/bug reports.
    - burnafter185 5y ago
      They've also got a network of servers to help reduce latency in P2P games, which is actually pretty impressive to me. I don't know how effective it is, but as a GAMER any solution to latency is a great boon.
    - DeathArrow 5y ago
      >0. They manage the most popular games store in the western world. I do not like the app store model. I rather buy from the developer.
      - I_Byte 5y ago
        From my point of view the store model simply is more convenient for consumers and worth the extra price. I know that I stopped pirating games, music and movies when I started using Steam, Spotify and Netflix.
  - thioordc 5y ago
    Yes but that’s not what I said! If you make a game that doesn’t have native support I will not buy it. 70% is much bette than 0%! I’m sure if they had the choice between no fees or 30% fees and Linux support they would take the zero but they don’t.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - milesvp 5y ago
    I saw an RPG maker who’s been making games for over 20 years on GDC recently. He talks about steam’s 30% cut. His basic takeaway, is that he used to need to employ an entire fulltime employee to handle all the things that steam now does for him. For him, the steam tax pays for itself for support and distribution alone.
    - yvdriess 5y ago
      Jeff Vogel, his talks are all very much worth watching.
- bartwe 5y ago
  In that case i'd like a refund as we ship a native linux version ourself
  - thioordc 5y ago
    Maybe I wasn’t clear but if you dont have native support then it’s really worth the 30%! If a game does it’s more debatable. I also always try to buy the DRM free version if it’s available!

rjzzleep 5y ago

Now if only AMD didn't treat ROCm as an afterthought the graghics card landscape could see an interesting shift. Steamdeck with ML capabilities wolud be pretty cool.

pjmlp 5y ago

A whooping 1% in 9 years, great achievement.

DeathArrow 5y ago
In 891 years, Linux gaming will reach 100%. :)
- 0des 5y ago
  That's a little optimistic, don't you think?
  - erikpukinskis 5y ago
    If it’s an s-curve, then yes: it will never reach 100%. But if it’s an s-curve it will reach 70% much sooner than 891 years. In my opinion 1% of the Earth in 9 years is a triumph. Electric cars are not there yet and people are quite optimistic.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      I understand your point, but I just want to say that electric cars are well beyond 1% in markets where they are for sale.
      - labster 5y ago
        But electric cars have existed since the 1880s, so it’s still a pretty slow growth rate overall.
        speedgoose 5y ago
        True, but the technology has improved a lot recently. Perhaps Linux on desktop needs to improve a lot too.

MaxGanzII 5y ago

Steam is a trap though, no? You buy software, but if you leave, you lose it all. Is that correct? there's no way to retain what you've bought?

vadfa 5y ago
Yes, it's like netflix/etc in that regard.
- ohyeshedid 5y ago
  Steam is not like Netflix in any meaningful way to the end user.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  Its not a subscription service, so that's a strange analogy.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    I'm kind of surprised it doesn't have a subscription service yet. Seems like an obvious way to go, and Game Pass seems to have been fairly successful.
    - nicolaslem 5y ago
      Is Microsoft actually making money with Game Pass? I'm guessing many users just subscribe for a month or two when a new interesting game is released and cancel just after they are done with it.
mdoms 5y ago
What you're saying is absolutely true, not sure why people are trying to bury your comment.
messe 5y ago
It depends. Some games are DRM free, and those can be backed up and kept wherever you wish. I can copy my Kerbal Space Program directory anywhere, for example, and it works fine. I use this to have several differently modded installs.

DeathArrow 5y ago

>Steam on Linux after opening up access to everyone was seeing around a ~2% marketshare prior to falling with the setbacks in Linux gaming. But ever since Steam Play (Proton) was introduced in 2018, it's begun rebounding. This past month it set a new multi-year high with a 1.13% marketshare for Steam on Linux after surpassing the 1.0% mark this summer. From 1% to 1.13%. Isn't it glorious?

indymike 5y ago
You have to start somewhere.
MattPalmer1086 5y ago
Since Linux only has between 1-2% market share of desktop operating systems in total, that 0.13% increase is a reasonable proportion of the Linux users out there. So not too bad I'd say.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  Quite a few people cite games (and software) as the reason they don't switch, so hopefully that 0.13% are converted people and not work-only users that started gaming.

mazone 5y ago

Play only on linux since the last year or so and got away from the dedicated windows machine i had to have for only gaming. I had some bugs in the beginning but with recent versions of proton it feels a lot more stable. I don't have any bugs anymore in any games and don't notice any slowdowns or degraded performance. It is quite amazing.

EamonnMR 5y ago

Something I always told myself I'd get around to. I've been meaning to set up Ubuntu on my desktop so I can use it for development, anyone have a good tutorial for setting up steam/proton?

mazone 5y ago
You basically just install steam from within your linux distributions package manager. I use and recommend some arch based distro but for Ubuntu it should be apt-get or some gui tool like synaptic. After you installed steam it will probably just work. You might need to go into settings -> steam play and enable proton. that's it.
smoldesu 5y ago
It's basically set-and-forget. Just download Steam from your preferred package manager, and all of the verified Proton titles should be playable without manual intervention. If you want to open up Proton to all your Windows games, you have to enable it in Settings > Steam Play. ProtonDB is your best friend, but besides that it's fairly easy to get up and running. Props to Valve for removing the friction, here!

deng 5y ago

Yes, that's why you still have these 'ubuntu_12' folders in the Steam installation, since they have never updated this in the past 9 years. So in reality, native Linux development has pretty much failed, and they have put all their money on Proton. That is probably the right decision from a business perspective, but it's pretty much a defeat nonetheless.

edflsafoiewq 5y ago
What's wrong with it? Having the Windows APIs turn into a portable abstraction layer is certainly amusing, but having wine sitting underneath the program is really nice (essentially for the same reason a VM is). For one thing, winedevs are way better at linux support than random gamedevs.
- gpderetta 5y ago
  Yesterday my son wanted to play Overlord II that I had purchased ages ago. It has a native linux version, and I remember 3-4 years and a few distro/steam updates ago it worked fine. Yesterday it would hang on startup. I didn't want to spend an evening debugging it, so I flipped the proton override on steam. After a quick reinstall, it worked immediately and flawlessly. So, I don't care whether a game is native [1] or run on an emulation layer as long as it works and performs reasonably well and, most importantly, it is supported. [1] the reality of course is that many, but not all, native ports still run on some sort of buggy, proprietary translation layer.
- deng 5y ago
  One has to remember what Valve tried to achieve. If I remember correctly, Microsoft back then announced that the Microsoft Store would be an integral part of the upcoming Windows 10. Seeing the huge amounts of money Apple/Google/Valve were making with their stores, they openly played with the idea to only allow application installations through the Microsoft Store, most importantly games. So Valve tried to break the Windows monopoly on games by creating a native Linux SDK and releasing the Steam Machine, which was based on Ubuntu. The goal was to make Linux a first class citizen as a gaming development platform, not just something to run an emulation layer. The Steam Machine failed, because it simply wasn't very good. Valve quickly lost interest in native Linux and let the native SDK rot away into obsoletion. Fortunately, Microsoft being Microsoft, the Windows Store was (and still is) a terrible platform, so pretty much nobody is buying games there (except for Minecraft), and you can still install anything you want on Windows. So of course you can say that you don't care if it runs natively or in an emulation shim. It would have been nice if Linux had become a game development platform and not just a kernel with a Windows API layer on top. So in a way, Linux' success here is similar to Android's: Yes, it's technically Linux, but not really.

arendtio 5y ago

This past week, I witness Steam/Proton making it possible to play Age of Empires 4 just 4 days after its official release (and 2 of those days were Saturday and Sunday). That is just awesome.

capableweb 5y ago
A bit off topic, but what you think of the game itself? Big AoE 2 fan here, and a bit on the edge if I should try it or not.
- arendtio 5y ago
  Being a big AoE2 fan myself (pre-ordered the original version back in the day), I think you should try it. For me, there is one major downside: The camera. I really don't like the 3D camera. I think it could be worse. So you can actually play the game without turning the camera, but what I don't like is the perspective. Sometimes you have to move to camera to another position, just to be able to click on a unit. I found that much better with the classic dimetric projection [1]. In addition, I like the art-style of AoE2 a bit better. However, after putting these things aside, I love how they have adapted the AoE2 concepts. It still feels like an Age of Empires. But then again different enough to be AoE4. So if you like the changes from AoE1 to AoE2 then you might like AoE4 ;-) The civilizations play more diverse than those of AoE2 so even with just 8, there is a lot to learn. The story telling of the campaigns is also a bit different, but it still has the concept of teaching some history. AoE4 actually has some nice videos about armor and weapons of the time. The fortress building in AoE4 feels a bit more like Stronghold with the ability to move units on the walls and I think that is a good thing :-) So much after playing AoE4 for about 13 hours. [1]: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/16757 https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/16757
- mdoms 5y ago
  It's more like AoE2 than 3, and in my opinion it's excellent.
mAritz 5y ago
To be fair the public stress test beta already showed some problems that needed to be fixed and people started working on it back then. But the point still stands, for big titles you don't have to wait long for Proton support nowadays.

thrower123 5y ago

I think it is incredible that after all these years the best target for Linux gaming is still a Windows compatibility shim.

no_time 5y ago
You would be writing linux-to-linux compatibility shims instead. Desktop linux is forever stuck in the "move fast and break things" mindset that just isn't compatible with the release-and-forget style of proprietary software.
alex_smart 5y ago
Why wouldn't it be? What were you hoping would happen?
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Presumably, they were hoping for native Linux support.
  - edflsafoiewq 5y ago
    Going through a shim is better. It allows you to modify the open-source shim to analyze and patch the closed source game. This is why Proton can release fixes so fast. It also lets each party care about the natural thing for them: gamedevs care about windows and do a good job writing windows code; winedevs care about linux and do a good job writing linux code. Gamedevs don't care about linux so their native linux code is crap.
    - arendtio 5y ago
      But in some cases it is also the reason why anti-cheat software is such a pain and for multiplayer it sucks :-/
      - Siira 5y ago
        “Cheating,” also known as modifying user facing software to better satisfy the user needs. Perhaps sealing the user is net-positive for games (I personally don’t think so), but any OS with such a capability will get abused (e.g., look at iOS).

assbuttbuttass 5y ago

Between lutris and steam I don't even run Windows anymore.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

Why there isn’t a Linux gaming module to make gaming for Linux simpler for the developers is beyond me.

oblak 5y ago

Valve has proven to me that a wildly profitable company's interests can very much aligned with my own. Guess I should be thanking MS for prompting this amazing development. Part of me can't wait for the winter to come so that I can start using my Index again without feeling like I am wasting my time at home instead of enjoying a nice day outside.