38 ms·

Steam Deck reports are here

215 points by bdefore 5y ago

buzzwords 5y ago
I am a big Linux fan but not a gamer. Let me ask all the gamers here, what is currently making Linux not suitable for your gaming?
- emdowling 5y ago
  Amongst other reasons, lack of support for anti-cheat systems (like EAC and BattleEye) have stopped big-name games like Destiny 2, Fortnite and others from easily porting to Linux. The Steam Deck has started to change that, prompting the ecosystem to slowly come around.
  - saltminer 5y ago
    Both BattlEye and EAC support Linux (https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/02/proton-7-easy-anti-cheat-improvements-more-games-for-linux-a-steam-deck/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/02/proton-7-easy-anti-che...), it's up to the companies using it to allow it.
    - Closi 5y ago
      I think the point is that they have supported it for about 2 weeks rather than 2 years, so the picture on compatibility is changing but not there yet.
- 1_player 5y ago
  Nothing. Elden Ring is here, it's the new big thing, and I'm playing it on my Fedora box. The future is now. All of the games I play or want to play are running great, and I play a lot. Truthfully, hacks might be needed, it's not grandma time yet for Linux gaming, but the hard part (Windows translation layer) is working really well.
- badwriter32 5y ago
  Anticheat software/DRM
- martijnvds 5y ago
  Nvidia drivers.
  - trey-jones 5y ago
    Yeah, if you plan on playing games on (or running) Linux at all, you need to get an AMD card. Pretty much non-negotiable at the current time.
    - CodeAndCuffs 5y ago
      Steam and protondb really helps mitigate this. My Nvidia card that could run games well on Windows ran them acceptably on Ubuntu on steam. No extra setup or work, steam did it all. I believe via vulkan drivers and proton but I'm not 100% sure. And this was a few years ago
    - ASalazarMX 5y ago
      Maybe non-negotiable a few years ago. I've been playing just fine with a laptop and its builtin Intel GPU.
    - deadbunny 5y ago
      I hear this constantly but have been using Nvidia cards (with proprietary drivers) for years on Linux with zero problems.
    - Arkanosis 5y ago
      If you want to ((use open-source drivers OR use wayland) AND play demanding games), that's true, AMD hardware is probably a better choice, but: - if you're fine with the proprietary Nvidia drivers and Xorg, Nvidia hardware works great; - if you play less demanding games, Intel hardware works great.
    - tgmatt 5y ago
      3080 using nvidia's 510 drivers work just fine here.
  - buzzwords 5y ago
    I wonder if rise of Linux gaming will force Nvidia to change its ways
- TeamXe 5y ago
  Nothing. Been using arch (and ubuntu previously) exclusively for years. Recently finished darksouls 1 and 2. Been playing elden ring this week. The vast majority of games I want to play either just work or require a one time config change.
  - trey-jones 5y ago
    I agree, but I do think performance is worse in general compared to Windows. I have exactly zero data to back this up, just the "what it feels like".
    - doubled112 5y ago
      I'm about there with my Proton experience. There are tons of reports on Proton DB (and my experience agrees) where there are slow downs and stutters that just don't happen on Windows. Spyro: Reignited and Batman Arkham City are some recent examples for me. I've played a few games that I can run at 4K with frame rates I don't notice any problem in, where with Proton it isn't the same experience.
- shmerl 5y ago
  Nothing, I'm using Linux for all of my gaming.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Anti cheat. Games without anti cheat almost always work. I use Linux for everything except unsupported gaming.
- robrtsql 5y ago
  I am very impressed by what Proton brings to the table (even though it's just standing upon the shoulders of Wine, it brings a whole new level of convenience to something which used to be rather hacky), but I've still experienced a few issues when using it. For example, one game I tried (Wargroove) had pretty substantial input lag when using it (which makes using your mouse feel really bad) and I tried Elden Ring on Linux yesterday. I'm very impressed that it launched at all, but it detected tampering and wouldn't let me online, and the game appeared to perform noticeably worse than it does on the same hardware when playing on Windows.
  - 1_player 5y ago
    Here's how to run Elden Ring with actually better performance than Windows: - Use the latest Proton-GE or Proton Experimental (and switch to its bleeding edge branch). That fixes the anticheat and it includes patches to work around the shoddy DX12 logic in the game. - If you're running on RDNA2, you might want to install mesa 22 or the latest git version. This is crucial for the best performance. - On most AMD cards, it's worth trying to force the GPU frequencies to max. For some reason the GPU doesn't stay in high perf mode and it's a cause of frame drops. The game stutters a bit on Windows and frame rate is inconsistent, while I have stable 60 fps on 4k Maximum quality on Linux. I've played 6h non stop today.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      There's actually a surprising amount of games that run better on Linux: - Overwatch averages more stable framerates than equivalent hardware playing on Windows - Apex Legends seems to run head-and-shoulders above what I experienced on Windows - Half Life, Garry's Mod, and all of the Source engine games have wonderful native ports - Older games like Diablo 2 are actually playable on Linux, where they're almost completely broken and dead on Windows - This one is purely anecdotal, but MMOs seem to be much lighter on Linux. Games like Warframe, Diablo 3, and Final Fantasy 14 are light as a feather with accommodating hardware. YMMV, but I'd say the state of gaming on Linux is very good right now. Maybe not as competitive as Windows is in market share and title compatibility, but it's far surpassing the selection (and performance) of PC games on Mac in it's glory days, and well outpacing the state of gaming on Mac now. If Valve continues to focus on their core competencies, we might finally have the gaming duopoly that we've rumored of for decades.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  With steam on Linux, I can happily play Bioshock Infinite, but not Bioshock 1 or 2. I can play The Witcher 2, but not The Witcher 1 or 3. I tend to play open-world RPGs, so one of my pet peeves is not being able to play any of the Elder Scrolls games on Linux. Without frequent crashes, I mean.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    Have you tried OpenMW? https://openmw.org/ https://openmw.org/
    - ASalazarMX 5y ago
      Yes, it freezes or crashes every 10-15 minutes for me.
  - neurostimulant 5y ago
    Your experience is different from mine. I have played the witcher 1, 2 and 3, and skyrim, oblivion and morrowind on proton without much crash. In fact, I never encountered any crash when playing the witcher 1, 2 and 3 under proton. Elder scroll and fallout games are sometimes crashy, but they're no more crashy than on windows and console.
    - ASalazarMX 5y ago
      The Witcher 2 and Bioshock Infinite never crashed in my setup, and I played them for hours a day last year! I'll have to try again with the others, they're the only reason I double boot to Windows.
  - mixedCase 5y ago
    All of those games run on Linux, without any more crashes than Windows. Some Elder Scrolls mods however will cause trouble.
  - mzi 5y ago
    I played Witcher 3 on Linux yesterday evening, it runs perfectly and it's listed as Platinum on Protondb (to be back on topic). I haven't played Bioshock in a while but according to reports it should work well,as with the Elder Scroll games.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  It’s a lot easier to just use Windows for gaming. It takes some amount of extra effort for many game types on Linux, including making sure you have all the pre requisite packages installed for wine and whatnot. Granted, that’s not hard, but it is extra effort to ensure everything will work. But my personal gaming is dictated a lot by what my friends are playing, which means I prefer being ready to start a new game quickly without much hassle. And plenty of competitive multiplayer games are unsupported entirely on Linux. I’m super excited for the future, but it just doesn’t fit my needs yet.
  - johnny22 5y ago
    If you use steam, the only extra package you have to install are the 32bit graphics drivers if nvidia and mesa (if not nvidia) for 32bit native linux games and wine itself. Although sometime in the nearish future you won't have to do that for wine either.
- dgunay 5y ago
  I daily drive Linux and attempt to game on it when I can. The biggest obstacles (at least for Proton) keeping me from deleting my Windows partition: - Online multiplayer games with anti-cheat (solved or soon to be solved by EAC + Proton integration) - The fact that not every game "just works". I frequently run into games (most recently, Elden Ring) which don't even launch, and the error/bug reporting experience is terrible. I'm a relatively technical person, and yet even after going through the trouble to get logging set up and figure out what is even going on when the game doesn't launch, there is still often not a clear path to fixing my problem. Obviously some of this is just inherent in the combinatoric explosion of problematic cases you get from running a DX -> Vulkan compatibility shim for an OS with 100s of distros, but it's a big obstacle. - I recently got a top of the line GPU, but before that the performance difference was occasionally enough that I would just switch to Windows for a game that otherwise worked OK on Linux.
- Duralias 5y ago
  Primarily just because I couldn't use my VR headset then (Quest 2). The volunteers behind ALVR are working on it. However, when something like ALVR works on Linux and SteamOS 3.0 releases universally I I'll at least make a partition for it and try to use it as my primary gaming OS. (Flex ahead) Not had very many gaming related problems with my Steam Deck, so I am hopeful for the universal release.
- always2slow 5y ago
  Lack of HDMI 2.1 support in amdgpu to enable 4K @ 120hz on displays that don't have DisplayPort.
- arepublicadoceu 5y ago
  Whenever I ask online about linux gaming a lot of people say that they have better or equal performance on linux than on windows. My experience does not replicate that. My theory so far is that people that have better or equal performance on linux have powerful machines. For instance, my GPU have low DRAM and it's on a laptop, I got a solid 60 fps Dark Souls III on Windows, whereas I face 50 ~ 30 fps on linux with micro stutters every now and then. Besides that, my experience with Linux gaming is that it was absolutely not plug and play, it required me a lot of experimenting, changing proton versions, keeping myself up-to-date on the latest env variable to fix issues with my games, disabling composition on your DE, etc etc and etc. I used to have fun tinkering with this stuff, nowadays I don't have the time/energy/will to educate myself on the latest tools to run a game, so I just keep a windows partition for gaming purposes.
  - johnny22 5y ago
    the composition thing should be automatic shouldn't it? Not discounting your other concerns though.
- ajvs 5y ago
  WINE lacks support for FiveM and Space Station 13, which prevents a ton of multiplayer roleplaying servers from being played.
  - 1_player 5y ago
    > FiveM I've heard it might be playable "soon": https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/t07q1g/shared_texture_resources_will_be_coming_to_proton/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/t07q1g/shared...
    - _piif 5y ago
      Actually it's already playable right now https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=39283 https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI... (Given you don't want to join any public servers due to the anti cheat not working yet)
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  There was a post today discussing the Nvidea breach (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30550028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30550028) where people were discussing the Nvidea driving making their linux machines unbootable. That kind of thing, where a normal user would have trouble recovering from, that's a pretty big deal.
- coryrc 5y ago
  Still can't get my recent Thinkpad to use the NVIDIA graphics card.
- yxhuvud 5y ago
  One, relatively minor issue is that the discord client for Linux don't include sounds in the screen share, so playing with friends watching is worse.
- stuu99 5y ago
  The real reason is vendor lockin, aka no support by nvidia, amd or intel because they are part of the trusted computing initiatve. The last 20 years Intel, AMD have been planning to lock down our PC's and close the platform. PC's from 1970's to the mid 90's were "honest" cpu's, or general computers. Newer CPU's post 2008, have the elements of hardware drm Microsoft, intel, amd and the game and content industries have been testing. To get rid of local file access. See here on the patent 20 years ago, aka windows 10/11 are the implementations of research that had been going on for 20 years to get rid of honest file access: https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_pc_ms/ https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_... Basically when you open a file on a normal PC you get honest hex values (instructions) that made cracking copyprotection on software easy because you have access to the raw CPU instructions. It's hard to make eletronics that don't allow piracy because all a file is, is electric charges in memory, and the computer industry knows this. AKA electricity is not scarce so supply can always meet demand trivially. So they needed to come up with bullshit to justify breaking CPU circuits without killing performance (aka "Security or drm"), has a negative impact on performance and there's also the worry of bugs bricking your system if you do it wrong at the hardware level... this is why it's taken them 23+ years since the advent of trusted computing research that began in the mid 90's to finally get rid of honest executables. When you compile a program in c, or any other programming language for 99% of computing history you'd get honest instructions in the resulting executable and files for the program. The computer industry wants to change this for their clients, the movie, game, and music industry. So they can enforce copyright at the hardware level. This is hard without breaking a computer, and they don't want a repeat of the pentium fdiv bug that caused a massive recall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug That is why mirosoft and intel/amd have been very very careful their trusted computing research and testing with certain big enterprise companies and consoles. Consoles is where trusted computing experiments in order to prevent game piracy. All this to prevent you form getting honest files. To give you an example of what's been goin on for 23 years... Ultima 9 was cancelled (but then later restarted), AKA EA was planning on making Ultima 11, 12, 13, as local applications (you get complete files on your computer) WITH multiplayer embedded in the EXE, but the success of UO, changed the entire direction of PC Gaming. They wanted to kill piracy, this is the attitude of the game industry: https://www.theregister.com/2012/08/22/ubisoft_says_over_90_per_cent_of_pc_gamers_are_pirates/ https://www.theregister.com/2012/08/22/ubisoft_says_over_90_... Basic computer science 101, two or more computers networked together become and behave as a single computer. AKA every program can be divided into two or more subprograms and run over a network, that means you lose control of your PC if you take up any client-server exe. AKA there is no program that can't be turned into a client-server app, why would you want all your applications dependent on a 2nd computer in microsoft or other companies office when there is no rational reason for this? Since that means you no longer own your pc. We already had infinity multiplayer games in the 90's in quake 2, go listen here at John carmacks comment. (somewhat paraphrasing) "No limit to the number of players inside a multiplayer world" https://youtu.be/TfeSMaztDVc?t=96 https://youtu.be/TfeSMaztDVc?t=96 So no ultima online, everquest, guild wars 1 ad wow are literally just RPG's with network multiplayer removed and dumped into a seperate exe file and sold back to the public as if it were some new type of game. It isn't, it's the same game with fraudulently coded network code. They wanted to kill us getting complete games with multiplayer that were infinitely copyable like quake 2. That is why modern Unreal engine FPS games like Transformers fall of cybertron have their multiplayer "shut down" because the general public bought into the MMO scam that led to steam. Steam was valves attack on game ownership and undermining local binaries. Note as steam grew, they started allowing devs to force update games to tie them to steams backend, aka many games won't work without steam loading, all pre-steam games work just fine minus "mmo's" which were the first drm games. So yes the general gaming public were scammed and lead to the stolen PC game apocalypse we've been suffering for the last 23+ years. So we have an unreal engine game (Transformers FoC) (2014) https://imgur.com/a/RxGQWdq https://imgur.com/a/RxGQWdq And we got UT2004 a game from 2004 that has more features then modern incarnations, how did we end up going backwards in time in PC gaming? They want to kill honest binaries (aka, access to raw hex instructions of programs allowing them to be cracked). UWP games on windows 10 was a trial run of trusted computing tech where windows update disabled cracked exe's, that's why UWP games can only run on certain verisons of windows 10. Windows 11 is that on steroids, Microsoft is lying because they know the average person using windows is clueless and tech illiterate. They learned that in 1997 with ultima online, everquest in 99 and wow in 2004. Client-server software is the same as buying a program with missing files. It's literally a broken application. This is who they are designing it for, big media companies: https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_ https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_... What is trusted computing? TC provides for a monitoring and reporting component to be mounted in future PCs. The preferred implementation in the first phase of TC emphasised the role of a `Fritz' chip - a smartcard chip or dongle soldered to the motherboard. The current version has five components - the Fritz chip, a `curtained memory' feature in the CPU, a security kernel in the operating system (the `Nexus' in Microsoft language), a security kernel in each TC application (the `NCA' in Microsoft-speak) and a back-end infrastructure of online security servers maintained by hardware and software vendors to tie the whole thing together. The initial version of TC had Fritz supervising the boot process, so that the PC ended up in a predictable state, with known hardware and software. The current version has Fritz as a passive monitoring component that stores the hash of the machine state on start-up. This hash is computed using details of the hardware (audio card, video card etc) and the software (O/S, drivers, etc). If the machine ends up in the approved state, Fritz will make available to the operating system the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt TC applications and data. If it ends up in the wrong state, the hash will be wrong and Fritz won't release the right key. The machine may still be able to run non-TC apps and access non-TC data, but protected material will be unavailable. The operating system security kernel (the `Nexus') bridges the gap between the Fritz chip and the application security components (the `NCAs'). It checks that the hardware components are on the TCG approved list, that the software components have been signed, and that none of them has a serial number that has been revoked. If there are significant changes to the PC's configuration, the machine must go online to be re-certified: the operating system manages this. The result is a PC booted into a known state with an approved combination of hardware and software (whose licences have not expired). Finally, the Nexus works together with new `curtained memory' features in the CPU to stop any TC app from reading or writing another TC app's data. These new features are called `Lagrande Technology' (LT) for the Intel CPUs and `TrustZone' for the ARM. Once the machine is in an approved state, with a TC app loaded and shielded from interference by any other software, Fritz will certify this to third parties. For example, he will do an authentication protocol with Disney to prove that his machine is a suitable recipient of `Snow White'. This will mean certifying that the PC is currently running an authorised application program - MediaPlayer, DisneyPlayer, whatever - with its NCA properly loaded and shielded by curtained memory against debuggers or other tools that could be used to rip the content. The Disney server then sends encrypted data, with a key that Fritz will use to unseal it. Fritz makes the key available only to the authorised application and only so long as the environment remains `trustworthy'. For this purpose, `trustworthy' is defined by the security policy downloaded from a server under the control of the application owner. This means that Disney can decide to release its premium content only to a media player whose author agrees to enforce certain conditions. These might include restrictions on what hardware and software you use, or where in the world you're located. They can involve payment: Disney might insist, for example, that the application collect a dollar every time you view the movie. The application itself can be rented too. The possibilities seem to be limited only by the marketers' imagination. https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
- aseipp 5y ago
  Honestly Proton is catching up a lot and the compatibility is impressive but I've had my fair share of problems with it, e.g. on Ice Lake graphics it performed really badly for some simple games without running experimental branches, input was laggy on a few games, simply busted rendering, etc. This can be fixed with time, patches, experimental branches and bug reports, but if you want to play the latest stuff it's all a bit of a chore to some extent. So, more or less, the usual complaints you read about Linux and have been reading about for years, if you're a Linux fan. I think a lot of the old adage "post your specs" applies here; drivers and graphics cards alone will have a massive impact on compatibility, so it's hard to "guestimate" how valid some reports or issues really are without trying the game. For some older titles though I've been relatively impressed by Proton and e.g. CrossOver. Like Shadow of the Tomb Raider or Witcher 3. You can't play simple 2D games released this year but a 5 year old AAA game can run mostly OK, stuff like that. There is also a flip side to the billion knobs thing which is that Linux might actually be a reasonable route to run some older games in the future, e.g. games like Deus Ex HR had some fun mods but some of them eventually became incompatible with newer Windows versions. It's not a guarantee (some of these games/mods do insane things) but for some classes of games, things like patched proton/wine builds may be a valid way to preserve them more easily into the future.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Some games use proprietary microsoft video codecs for cutscenes that are not supported by linux libraries. Proton was patched recently so that it just shows a TV test card. Before that it just crashed.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Ah; they've added questions specific to steam deck, like battery impact. That makes more sense - I was confused why it would be any different than any other machine using Proton.
- kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
  At least for battery impact, wouldn't that also help laptop users?
  - johnny22 5y ago
    it probably would, but still more useful to steam deck users since battery usage can be dependent on hardware (and drivers for that hardware) specific to the deck.
  - Duralias 5y ago
    Depends a lot on components, for example, the Steam Deck only has 4 physical cores, a laptop might have more and that is ignoring if you have a different architecture than Zen 2. You can do a lot to optimize the battery life on a Steam Deck, but it also does a few things automatically, which a laptop doesn't (like capping framerate in a very efficient way).
  - chaorace 5y ago
    Probably! In that sense, this may be the first time anyone has attempted to maintain a large index of games by power consumpion. I do find it somewhat amusing that the existence of the Deck inadvertently creates a universal benchmark. I wonder how useful that data will prove to be over time as units age and new SKUs are released?
    - sbarre 5y ago
      I watched a video earlier today that touched on this, and suggested that the amount of metrics and data that Valve is allowing folks to pull out of their Steam Decks will 100% be useful when the Deck 2.0 comes out because we'll all be able to see real-world benchmarks on how it compares to the previous unit, for a lot more use-cases and types of games. Consoles traditionally hide this stuff...
bdefore 5y ago
ProtonDB creator here and solo dev (with a huge hat tip to the tens of thousands writing reports). It's been a wild three and a half years keeping this ship sailing. Happy to answer questions.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chaps 5y ago
  (deleted my old comment, I actually have a question now ;)) Are there plans to make proton support anti-cheat engines? Part of me hopes yes, but another equal part hopes you don't.
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    I'm hoping for NO too, mainly because this kind of software tends to become extremely aggressive.
    - teawrecks 5y ago
      When it comes to my PC, I agree. But I think I would be ok with a device dedicated to gaming having anti-cheat. Not because I trust it, but because there's nothing on that device I need to trust it with. Except maybe my account login and network access.
  - bdefore 5y ago
    Valve has recognized this is a threat to the success of the Steam Deck and helped Proton support at least two prominent anti-cheat tools (EAC and BattlEye). But it remains to be seen if we'll see widespread acceptance from developers. Fortnite in particular has come out that they won't enable it. Free-to-play games have a more sensitive threat perception. On the site, you can review games that are known to use anti-cheat here: https://www.protondb.com/explore?selectedFilters=antiCheat https://www.protondb.com/explore?selectedFilters=antiCheat And to clarify, I'm not a dev on any of the underlying Proton technologies. I just run a community site for it.
  - 5y ago
tencentshill 5y ago
Your mobile site is having a bit of an issue on Safari and Chrome on iOS https://imgur.com/a/hFUEDVb/ https://imgur.com/a/hFUEDVb/
- bdefore 5y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out. I'll have a look.
bartwe 5y ago
We knew our windows version wasn't going to work with proton so we made a native linux version that works on steamos. Sadly we remain listed as Unsupported on steamdeck as it seems to really want to use the broken windows version through proton instead of the working linux native version.
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  What game is it? Always interested in checking out games by those who care to release Linux builds.
  - jpgleeson 5y ago
    Probably Staxel. Bartwe works on that and is active in FNA, a cross platform XNA reimplementation.
    - Scramblejams 5y ago
      Thanks. Wishlisted!
- bdefore 5y ago
  This is a minority situation but an important one for the exceptions. Under the shadow of the rise of Proton it's getting harder to surface that sometimes you want to force Steam to use the native version. Something something the turn tables. I recently changed the report questions to allow specifying 'Native. No Proton' as an an answer to 'Which Proton do you use'. It's gotten a few grumbles ('this is a site for Proton') but I think it's worth doing for cases like yours. Given enough samples, the site will be able to highlight games that have a significant amount of users preferring native over Proton for some games and I think it'll be a curious enough set to warrant its own filter or highlight section. Thanks for describing your case. I've linked to it in my todo notes to keep in mind.
- tormeh 5y ago
  Hm... Presumably this is a setting Valve can change on a per-game basis. Have they said anything?
jokoon 5y ago
I think Microsoft will not sit idly and let valve make money thanks to an emulation tool. I hope they will let it go, but if they see an opportunity to sue, they will. Not to mention that they could change a few things in their toolchain or direct x to make proton's like difficult...
- vyrotek 5y ago
  I'm planning to install Windows. It seems like you don't really lose anything doing so. If Linux can catch up someday, great! Until then, I just want a device that works.
  - SixDouble5321 5y ago
    Congrats on being part of the problem. It does Just Work for the majority of cases.
- beepbooptheory 5y ago
  Aw geez I didn't even realize that was a concern! Really thought proton was an above board implementation. That would definitely be disappointing.
  - BaseballPhysics 5y ago
    > Really thought proton was an above board implementation. It is. This is just fear mongering. I can't think of a good reason why Microsoft would want to get in the way, here. Maybe if Windows was a major revenue stream for them, but they make most of that money through OEM licensing and the Deck is very unlikely to cut very deeply into gaming laptop or PC sales. Beyond that, maybe Microsoft might view the Deck as a competitor to XBox itself, but the Deck is just such a niche product targeting different audience/use case that I don't see why they'd do anything anti-competitive to get in the way. It simply isn't worth the trouble. Frankly, this just smells of anti-Microsoft sentiment that dates back to the 90s and early 2000s. But Microsoft is a very different company today. Besides, in the absolute worst case (which I truly don't believe would ever happen), Valve could just start shipping Windows on these things.
sundvor 5y ago
Off topic: Each and every time I see this product mentioned I first think it's about (my) Stream Deck. They're a wonderful piece of kit for desktop productivity, it's just fantastic how one may automate lighting, camera, web meeting joins etc. Edit: Steam Deck itself looks phenomenal, I can't wait for it to become available in Australia. Huge kudos on the work done to help verify what titles are the most accessible on this new platform!

215 points by bdefore 5y ago

I am a big Linux fan but not a gamer. Let me ask all the gamers here, what is currently making Linux not suitable for your gaming?

emdowling 5y ago
Amongst other reasons, lack of support for anti-cheat systems (like EAC and BattleEye) have stopped big-name games like Destiny 2, Fortnite and others from easily porting to Linux. The Steam Deck has started to change that, prompting the ecosystem to slowly come around.
- saltminer 5y ago
  Both BattlEye and EAC support Linux (https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/02/proton-7-easy-anti-cheat-improvements-more-games-for-linux-a-steam-deck/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/02/proton-7-easy-anti-che...), it's up to the companies using it to allow it.
  - Closi 5y ago
    I think the point is that they have supported it for about 2 weeks rather than 2 years, so the picture on compatibility is changing but not there yet.
1_player 5y ago
Nothing. Elden Ring is here, it's the new big thing, and I'm playing it on my Fedora box. The future is now. All of the games I play or want to play are running great, and I play a lot. Truthfully, hacks might be needed, it's not grandma time yet for Linux gaming, but the hard part (Windows translation layer) is working really well.
badwriter32 5y ago
Anticheat software/DRM
martijnvds 5y ago
Nvidia drivers.
- trey-jones 5y ago
  Yeah, if you plan on playing games on (or running) Linux at all, you need to get an AMD card. Pretty much non-negotiable at the current time.
  - CodeAndCuffs 5y ago
    Steam and protondb really helps mitigate this. My Nvidia card that could run games well on Windows ran them acceptably on Ubuntu on steam. No extra setup or work, steam did it all. I believe via vulkan drivers and proton but I'm not 100% sure. And this was a few years ago
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    Maybe non-negotiable a few years ago. I've been playing just fine with a laptop and its builtin Intel GPU.
  - deadbunny 5y ago
    I hear this constantly but have been using Nvidia cards (with proprietary drivers) for years on Linux with zero problems.
  - Arkanosis 5y ago
    If you want to ((use open-source drivers OR use wayland) AND play demanding games), that's true, AMD hardware is probably a better choice, but: - if you're fine with the proprietary Nvidia drivers and Xorg, Nvidia hardware works great; - if you play less demanding games, Intel hardware works great.
  - tgmatt 5y ago
    3080 using nvidia's 510 drivers work just fine here.
- buzzwords 5y ago
  I wonder if rise of Linux gaming will force Nvidia to change its ways
TeamXe 5y ago
Nothing. Been using arch (and ubuntu previously) exclusively for years. Recently finished darksouls 1 and 2. Been playing elden ring this week. The vast majority of games I want to play either just work or require a one time config change.
- trey-jones 5y ago
  I agree, but I do think performance is worse in general compared to Windows. I have exactly zero data to back this up, just the "what it feels like".
  - doubled112 5y ago
    I'm about there with my Proton experience. There are tons of reports on Proton DB (and my experience agrees) where there are slow downs and stutters that just don't happen on Windows. Spyro: Reignited and Batman Arkham City are some recent examples for me. I've played a few games that I can run at 4K with frame rates I don't notice any problem in, where with Proton it isn't the same experience.
shmerl 5y ago
Nothing, I'm using Linux for all of my gaming.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Anti cheat. Games without anti cheat almost always work. I use Linux for everything except unsupported gaming.
robrtsql 5y ago
I am very impressed by what Proton brings to the table (even though it's just standing upon the shoulders of Wine, it brings a whole new level of convenience to something which used to be rather hacky), but I've still experienced a few issues when using it. For example, one game I tried (Wargroove) had pretty substantial input lag when using it (which makes using your mouse feel really bad) and I tried Elden Ring on Linux yesterday. I'm very impressed that it launched at all, but it detected tampering and wouldn't let me online, and the game appeared to perform noticeably worse than it does on the same hardware when playing on Windows.
- 1_player 5y ago
  Here's how to run Elden Ring with actually better performance than Windows: - Use the latest Proton-GE or Proton Experimental (and switch to its bleeding edge branch). That fixes the anticheat and it includes patches to work around the shoddy DX12 logic in the game. - If you're running on RDNA2, you might want to install mesa 22 or the latest git version. This is crucial for the best performance. - On most AMD cards, it's worth trying to force the GPU frequencies to max. For some reason the GPU doesn't stay in high perf mode and it's a cause of frame drops. The game stutters a bit on Windows and frame rate is inconsistent, while I have stable 60 fps on 4k Maximum quality on Linux. I've played 6h non stop today.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    There's actually a surprising amount of games that run better on Linux: - Overwatch averages more stable framerates than equivalent hardware playing on Windows - Apex Legends seems to run head-and-shoulders above what I experienced on Windows - Half Life, Garry's Mod, and all of the Source engine games have wonderful native ports - Older games like Diablo 2 are actually playable on Linux, where they're almost completely broken and dead on Windows - This one is purely anecdotal, but MMOs seem to be much lighter on Linux. Games like Warframe, Diablo 3, and Final Fantasy 14 are light as a feather with accommodating hardware. YMMV, but I'd say the state of gaming on Linux is very good right now. Maybe not as competitive as Windows is in market share and title compatibility, but it's far surpassing the selection (and performance) of PC games on Mac in it's glory days, and well outpacing the state of gaming on Mac now. If Valve continues to focus on their core competencies, we might finally have the gaming duopoly that we've rumored of for decades.
ASalazarMX 5y ago
With steam on Linux, I can happily play Bioshock Infinite, but not Bioshock 1 or 2. I can play The Witcher 2, but not The Witcher 1 or 3. I tend to play open-world RPGs, so one of my pet peeves is not being able to play any of the Elder Scrolls games on Linux. Without frequent crashes, I mean.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  Have you tried OpenMW? https://openmw.org/ https://openmw.org/
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    Yes, it freezes or crashes every 10-15 minutes for me.
- neurostimulant 5y ago
  Your experience is different from mine. I have played the witcher 1, 2 and 3, and skyrim, oblivion and morrowind on proton without much crash. In fact, I never encountered any crash when playing the witcher 1, 2 and 3 under proton. Elder scroll and fallout games are sometimes crashy, but they're no more crashy than on windows and console.
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    The Witcher 2 and Bioshock Infinite never crashed in my setup, and I played them for hours a day last year! I'll have to try again with the others, they're the only reason I double boot to Windows.
- mixedCase 5y ago
  All of those games run on Linux, without any more crashes than Windows. Some Elder Scrolls mods however will cause trouble.
- mzi 5y ago
  I played Witcher 3 on Linux yesterday evening, it runs perfectly and it's listed as Platinum on Protondb (to be back on topic). I haven't played Bioshock in a while but according to reports it should work well,as with the Elder Scroll games.
noahtallen 5y ago
It’s a lot easier to just use Windows for gaming. It takes some amount of extra effort for many game types on Linux, including making sure you have all the pre requisite packages installed for wine and whatnot. Granted, that’s not hard, but it is extra effort to ensure everything will work. But my personal gaming is dictated a lot by what my friends are playing, which means I prefer being ready to start a new game quickly without much hassle. And plenty of competitive multiplayer games are unsupported entirely on Linux. I’m super excited for the future, but it just doesn’t fit my needs yet.
- johnny22 5y ago
  If you use steam, the only extra package you have to install are the 32bit graphics drivers if nvidia and mesa (if not nvidia) for 32bit native linux games and wine itself. Although sometime in the nearish future you won't have to do that for wine either.
dgunay 5y ago
I daily drive Linux and attempt to game on it when I can. The biggest obstacles (at least for Proton) keeping me from deleting my Windows partition: - Online multiplayer games with anti-cheat (solved or soon to be solved by EAC + Proton integration) - The fact that not every game "just works". I frequently run into games (most recently, Elden Ring) which don't even launch, and the error/bug reporting experience is terrible. I'm a relatively technical person, and yet even after going through the trouble to get logging set up and figure out what is even going on when the game doesn't launch, there is still often not a clear path to fixing my problem. Obviously some of this is just inherent in the combinatoric explosion of problematic cases you get from running a DX -> Vulkan compatibility shim for an OS with 100s of distros, but it's a big obstacle. - I recently got a top of the line GPU, but before that the performance difference was occasionally enough that I would just switch to Windows for a game that otherwise worked OK on Linux.
Duralias 5y ago
Primarily just because I couldn't use my VR headset then (Quest 2). The volunteers behind ALVR are working on it. However, when something like ALVR works on Linux and SteamOS 3.0 releases universally I I'll at least make a partition for it and try to use it as my primary gaming OS. (Flex ahead) Not had very many gaming related problems with my Steam Deck, so I am hopeful for the universal release.
always2slow 5y ago
Lack of HDMI 2.1 support in amdgpu to enable 4K @ 120hz on displays that don't have DisplayPort.
arepublicadoceu 5y ago
Whenever I ask online about linux gaming a lot of people say that they have better or equal performance on linux than on windows. My experience does not replicate that. My theory so far is that people that have better or equal performance on linux have powerful machines. For instance, my GPU have low DRAM and it's on a laptop, I got a solid 60 fps Dark Souls III on Windows, whereas I face 50 ~ 30 fps on linux with micro stutters every now and then. Besides that, my experience with Linux gaming is that it was absolutely not plug and play, it required me a lot of experimenting, changing proton versions, keeping myself up-to-date on the latest env variable to fix issues with my games, disabling composition on your DE, etc etc and etc. I used to have fun tinkering with this stuff, nowadays I don't have the time/energy/will to educate myself on the latest tools to run a game, so I just keep a windows partition for gaming purposes.
- johnny22 5y ago
  the composition thing should be automatic shouldn't it? Not discounting your other concerns though.
ajvs 5y ago
WINE lacks support for FiveM and Space Station 13, which prevents a ton of multiplayer roleplaying servers from being played.
- 1_player 5y ago
  > FiveM I've heard it might be playable "soon": https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/t07q1g/shared_texture_resources_will_be_coming_to_proton/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/t07q1g/shared...
  - _piif 5y ago
    Actually it's already playable right now https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=39283 https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI... (Given you don't want to join any public servers due to the anti cheat not working yet)
RHSeeger 5y ago
There was a post today discussing the Nvidea breach (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30550028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30550028) where people were discussing the Nvidea driving making their linux machines unbootable. That kind of thing, where a normal user would have trouble recovering from, that's a pretty big deal.
coryrc 5y ago
Still can't get my recent Thinkpad to use the NVIDIA graphics card.
yxhuvud 5y ago
One, relatively minor issue is that the discord client for Linux don't include sounds in the screen share, so playing with friends watching is worse.
stuu99 5y ago
The real reason is vendor lockin, aka no support by nvidia, amd or intel because they are part of the trusted computing initiatve. The last 20 years Intel, AMD have been planning to lock down our PC's and close the platform. PC's from 1970's to the mid 90's were "honest" cpu's, or general computers. Newer CPU's post 2008, have the elements of hardware drm Microsoft, intel, amd and the game and content industries have been testing. To get rid of local file access. See here on the patent 20 years ago, aka windows 10/11 are the implementations of research that had been going on for 20 years to get rid of honest file access: https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_pc_ms/ https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_... Basically when you open a file on a normal PC you get honest hex values (instructions) that made cracking copyprotection on software easy because you have access to the raw CPU instructions. It's hard to make eletronics that don't allow piracy because all a file is, is electric charges in memory, and the computer industry knows this. AKA electricity is not scarce so supply can always meet demand trivially. So they needed to come up with bullshit to justify breaking CPU circuits without killing performance (aka "Security or drm"), has a negative impact on performance and there's also the worry of bugs bricking your system if you do it wrong at the hardware level... this is why it's taken them 23+ years since the advent of trusted computing research that began in the mid 90's to finally get rid of honest executables. When you compile a program in c, or any other programming language for 99% of computing history you'd get honest instructions in the resulting executable and files for the program. The computer industry wants to change this for their clients, the movie, game, and music industry. So they can enforce copyright at the hardware level. This is hard without breaking a computer, and they don't want a repeat of the pentium fdiv bug that caused a massive recall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug That is why mirosoft and intel/amd have been very very careful their trusted computing research and testing with certain big enterprise companies and consoles. Consoles is where trusted computing experiments in order to prevent game piracy. All this to prevent you form getting honest files. To give you an example of what's been goin on for 23 years... Ultima 9 was cancelled (but then later restarted), AKA EA was planning on making Ultima 11, 12, 13, as local applications (you get complete files on your computer) WITH multiplayer embedded in the EXE, but the success of UO, changed the entire direction of PC Gaming. They wanted to kill piracy, this is the attitude of the game industry: https://www.theregister.com/2012/08/22/ubisoft_says_over_90_per_cent_of_pc_gamers_are_pirates/ https://www.theregister.com/2012/08/22/ubisoft_says_over_90_... Basic computer science 101, two or more computers networked together become and behave as a single computer. AKA every program can be divided into two or more subprograms and run over a network, that means you lose control of your PC if you take up any client-server exe. AKA there is no program that can't be turned into a client-server app, why would you want all your applications dependent on a 2nd computer in microsoft or other companies office when there is no rational reason for this? Since that means you no longer own your pc. We already had infinity multiplayer games in the 90's in quake 2, go listen here at John carmacks comment. (somewhat paraphrasing) "No limit to the number of players inside a multiplayer world" https://youtu.be/TfeSMaztDVc?t=96 https://youtu.be/TfeSMaztDVc?t=96 So no ultima online, everquest, guild wars 1 ad wow are literally just RPG's with network multiplayer removed and dumped into a seperate exe file and sold back to the public as if it were some new type of game. It isn't, it's the same game with fraudulently coded network code. They wanted to kill us getting complete games with multiplayer that were infinitely copyable like quake 2. That is why modern Unreal engine FPS games like Transformers fall of cybertron have their multiplayer "shut down" because the general public bought into the MMO scam that led to steam. Steam was valves attack on game ownership and undermining local binaries. Note as steam grew, they started allowing devs to force update games to tie them to steams backend, aka many games won't work without steam loading, all pre-steam games work just fine minus "mmo's" which were the first drm games. So yes the general gaming public were scammed and lead to the stolen PC game apocalypse we've been suffering for the last 23+ years. So we have an unreal engine game (Transformers FoC) (2014) https://imgur.com/a/RxGQWdq https://imgur.com/a/RxGQWdq And we got UT2004 a game from 2004 that has more features then modern incarnations, how did we end up going backwards in time in PC gaming? They want to kill honest binaries (aka, access to raw hex instructions of programs allowing them to be cracked). UWP games on windows 10 was a trial run of trusted computing tech where windows update disabled cracked exe's, that's why UWP games can only run on certain verisons of windows 10. Windows 11 is that on steroids, Microsoft is lying because they know the average person using windows is clueless and tech illiterate. They learned that in 1997 with ultima online, everquest in 99 and wow in 2004. Client-server software is the same as buying a program with missing files. It's literally a broken application. This is who they are designing it for, big media companies: https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_ https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_... What is trusted computing? TC provides for a monitoring and reporting component to be mounted in future PCs. The preferred implementation in the first phase of TC emphasised the role of a `Fritz' chip - a smartcard chip or dongle soldered to the motherboard. The current version has five components - the Fritz chip, a `curtained memory' feature in the CPU, a security kernel in the operating system (the `Nexus' in Microsoft language), a security kernel in each TC application (the `NCA' in Microsoft-speak) and a back-end infrastructure of online security servers maintained by hardware and software vendors to tie the whole thing together. The initial version of TC had Fritz supervising the boot process, so that the PC ended up in a predictable state, with known hardware and software. The current version has Fritz as a passive monitoring component that stores the hash of the machine state on start-up. This hash is computed using details of the hardware (audio card, video card etc) and the software (O/S, drivers, etc). If the machine ends up in the approved state, Fritz will make available to the operating system the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt TC applications and data. If it ends up in the wrong state, the hash will be wrong and Fritz won't release the right key. The machine may still be able to run non-TC apps and access non-TC data, but protected material will be unavailable. The operating system security kernel (the `Nexus') bridges the gap between the Fritz chip and the application security components (the `NCAs'). It checks that the hardware components are on the TCG approved list, that the software components have been signed, and that none of them has a serial number that has been revoked. If there are significant changes to the PC's configuration, the machine must go online to be re-certified: the operating system manages this. The result is a PC booted into a known state with an approved combination of hardware and software (whose licences have not expired). Finally, the Nexus works together with new `curtained memory' features in the CPU to stop any TC app from reading or writing another TC app's data. These new features are called `Lagrande Technology' (LT) for the Intel CPUs and `TrustZone' for the ARM. Once the machine is in an approved state, with a TC app loaded and shielded from interference by any other software, Fritz will certify this to third parties. For example, he will do an authentication protocol with Disney to prove that his machine is a suitable recipient of `Snow White'. This will mean certifying that the PC is currently running an authorised application program - MediaPlayer, DisneyPlayer, whatever - with its NCA properly loaded and shielded by curtained memory against debuggers or other tools that could be used to rip the content. The Disney server then sends encrypted data, with a key that Fritz will use to unseal it. Fritz makes the key available only to the authorised application and only so long as the environment remains `trustworthy'. For this purpose, `trustworthy' is defined by the security policy downloaded from a server under the control of the application owner. This means that Disney can decide to release its premium content only to a media player whose author agrees to enforce certain conditions. These might include restrictions on what hardware and software you use, or where in the world you're located. They can involve payment: Disney might insist, for example, that the application collect a dollar every time you view the movie. The application itself can be rented too. The possibilities seem to be limited only by the marketers' imagination. https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
aseipp 5y ago
Honestly Proton is catching up a lot and the compatibility is impressive but I've had my fair share of problems with it, e.g. on Ice Lake graphics it performed really badly for some simple games without running experimental branches, input was laggy on a few games, simply busted rendering, etc. This can be fixed with time, patches, experimental branches and bug reports, but if you want to play the latest stuff it's all a bit of a chore to some extent. So, more or less, the usual complaints you read about Linux and have been reading about for years, if you're a Linux fan. I think a lot of the old adage "post your specs" applies here; drivers and graphics cards alone will have a massive impact on compatibility, so it's hard to "guestimate" how valid some reports or issues really are without trying the game. For some older titles though I've been relatively impressed by Proton and e.g. CrossOver. Like Shadow of the Tomb Raider or Witcher 3. You can't play simple 2D games released this year but a 5 year old AAA game can run mostly OK, stuff like that. There is also a flip side to the billion knobs thing which is that Linux might actually be a reasonable route to run some older games in the future, e.g. games like Deus Ex HR had some fun mods but some of them eventually became incompatible with newer Windows versions. It's not a guarantee (some of these games/mods do insane things) but for some classes of games, things like patched proton/wine builds may be a valid way to preserve them more easily into the future.
imtringued 5y ago
Some games use proprietary microsoft video codecs for cutscenes that are not supported by linux libraries. Proton was patched recently so that it just shows a TV test card. Before that it just crashed.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

Ah; they've added questions specific to steam deck, like battery impact. That makes more sense - I was confused why it would be any different than any other machine using Proton.

kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
At least for battery impact, wouldn't that also help laptop users?
- johnny22 5y ago
  it probably would, but still more useful to steam deck users since battery usage can be dependent on hardware (and drivers for that hardware) specific to the deck.
- Duralias 5y ago
  Depends a lot on components, for example, the Steam Deck only has 4 physical cores, a laptop might have more and that is ignoring if you have a different architecture than Zen 2. You can do a lot to optimize the battery life on a Steam Deck, but it also does a few things automatically, which a laptop doesn't (like capping framerate in a very efficient way).
- chaorace 5y ago
  Probably! In that sense, this may be the first time anyone has attempted to maintain a large index of games by power consumpion. I do find it somewhat amusing that the existence of the Deck inadvertently creates a universal benchmark. I wonder how useful that data will prove to be over time as units age and new SKUs are released?
  - sbarre 5y ago
    I watched a video earlier today that touched on this, and suggested that the amount of metrics and data that Valve is allowing folks to pull out of their Steam Decks will 100% be useful when the Deck 2.0 comes out because we'll all be able to see real-world benchmarks on how it compares to the previous unit, for a lot more use-cases and types of games. Consoles traditionally hide this stuff...

bdefore 5y ago

ProtonDB creator here and solo dev (with a huge hat tip to the tens of thousands writing reports). It's been a wild three and a half years keeping this ship sailing. Happy to answer questions.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chaps 5y ago
(deleted my old comment, I actually have a question now ;)) Are there plans to make proton support anti-cheat engines? Part of me hopes yes, but another equal part hopes you don't.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  I'm hoping for NO too, mainly because this kind of software tends to become extremely aggressive.
  - teawrecks 5y ago
    When it comes to my PC, I agree. But I think I would be ok with a device dedicated to gaming having anti-cheat. Not because I trust it, but because there's nothing on that device I need to trust it with. Except maybe my account login and network access.
- bdefore 5y ago
  Valve has recognized this is a threat to the success of the Steam Deck and helped Proton support at least two prominent anti-cheat tools (EAC and BattlEye). But it remains to be seen if we'll see widespread acceptance from developers. Fortnite in particular has come out that they won't enable it. Free-to-play games have a more sensitive threat perception. On the site, you can review games that are known to use anti-cheat here: https://www.protondb.com/explore?selectedFilters=antiCheat https://www.protondb.com/explore?selectedFilters=antiCheat And to clarify, I'm not a dev on any of the underlying Proton technologies. I just run a community site for it.
- 5y ago

tencentshill 5y ago

Your mobile site is having a bit of an issue on Safari and Chrome on iOS https://imgur.com/a/hFUEDVb/ https://imgur.com/a/hFUEDVb/

bdefore 5y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. I'll have a look.

bartwe 5y ago

We knew our windows version wasn't going to work with proton so we made a native linux version that works on steamos. Sadly we remain listed as Unsupported on steamdeck as it seems to really want to use the broken windows version through proton instead of the working linux native version.

Scramblejams 5y ago
What game is it? Always interested in checking out games by those who care to release Linux builds.
- jpgleeson 5y ago
  Probably Staxel. Bartwe works on that and is active in FNA, a cross platform XNA reimplementation.
  - Scramblejams 5y ago
    Thanks. Wishlisted!
bdefore 5y ago
This is a minority situation but an important one for the exceptions. Under the shadow of the rise of Proton it's getting harder to surface that sometimes you want to force Steam to use the native version. Something something the turn tables. I recently changed the report questions to allow specifying 'Native. No Proton' as an an answer to 'Which Proton do you use'. It's gotten a few grumbles ('this is a site for Proton') but I think it's worth doing for cases like yours. Given enough samples, the site will be able to highlight games that have a significant amount of users preferring native over Proton for some games and I think it'll be a curious enough set to warrant its own filter or highlight section. Thanks for describing your case. I've linked to it in my todo notes to keep in mind.
tormeh 5y ago
Hm... Presumably this is a setting Valve can change on a per-game basis. Have they said anything?

jokoon 5y ago

I think Microsoft will not sit idly and let valve make money thanks to an emulation tool. I hope they will let it go, but if they see an opportunity to sue, they will. Not to mention that they could change a few things in their toolchain or direct x to make proton's like difficult...

vyrotek 5y ago
I'm planning to install Windows. It seems like you don't really lose anything doing so. If Linux can catch up someday, great! Until then, I just want a device that works.
- SixDouble5321 5y ago
  Congrats on being part of the problem. It does Just Work for the majority of cases.
beepbooptheory 5y ago
Aw geez I didn't even realize that was a concern! Really thought proton was an above board implementation. That would definitely be disappointing.
- BaseballPhysics 5y ago
  > Really thought proton was an above board implementation. It is. This is just fear mongering. I can't think of a good reason why Microsoft would want to get in the way, here. Maybe if Windows was a major revenue stream for them, but they make most of that money through OEM licensing and the Deck is very unlikely to cut very deeply into gaming laptop or PC sales. Beyond that, maybe Microsoft might view the Deck as a competitor to XBox itself, but the Deck is just such a niche product targeting different audience/use case that I don't see why they'd do anything anti-competitive to get in the way. It simply isn't worth the trouble. Frankly, this just smells of anti-Microsoft sentiment that dates back to the 90s and early 2000s. But Microsoft is a very different company today. Besides, in the absolute worst case (which I truly don't believe would ever happen), Valve could just start shipping Windows on these things.

sundvor 5y ago

Off topic: Each and every time I see this product mentioned I first think it's about (my) Stream Deck. They're a wonderful piece of kit for desktop productivity, it's just fantastic how one may automate lighting, camera, web meeting joins etc. Edit: Steam Deck itself looks phenomenal, I can't wait for it to become available in Australia. Huge kudos on the work done to help verify what titles are the most accessible on this new platform!