Valve announces update to Steam Play to bring Windows exclusive games to Linux

U

ugly

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https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561

There's been a lot of rumours about this lately. A number of gaming compatibility projects have been getting funded from undisclosed sources and many speculated it was Valve.

Looks like Valve is using their own version of WINE to make Windows-only games run in Linux.

I've never messed around with WINE. I still dual-boot and that's pretty much exclusively for gaming. So this would be one step closer to not having to use Windows.

Our goal for this work is to let Linux Steam users enjoy easy access to a larger back catalog. We think it will also allow future developers to easily leverage their work from other platforms to target Linux. This would give them the option of focusing on areas that would make a meaningful experience difference for all users instead, such as supporting Vulkan
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The initial set of supported games that we are enabling with this initial Beta release is as follows:
Beat Saber
Bejeweled 2 Deluxe
Doki Doki Literature Club!
DOOM
DOOM II: Hell on Earth
DOOM VFR
Fallout Shelter
FATE
FINAL FANTASY VI
Geometry Dash
Google Earth VR
Into The Breach
Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013
Mount & Blade
Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword
NieR: Automata
PAYDAY: The Heist
QUAKE
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
Star Wars: Battlefront 2
Tekken 7
The Last Remnant
Tropico 4
Ultimate Doom
Warhammer® 40,000: Dawn of War® - Dark Crusade
Warhammer® 40,000: Dawn of War® - Soulstorm
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Well I know the "Native linux or no buy" group are going to be upset about this. Since Linux sales tend to be a tiny bit of the total sales and some developers have reported that linux users take a significantly more support calls compared to what percentage of sales they are, something like this from Valve just might make it more enticing to skip supporting linux themselves and just let Valve work on Steamplay for the games instead. It'll save the developers money and they don't have to support Linux tech issues.
 
I do hope it grows, more gaming support on linux can only really be a good thing in terms of OS competition.
 
If my Steam and GOG games magically worked on Linux, I'd dump Windows in a second. Right now I'm running Mint, and it's so smooth.
 
nutcrackr said:
I do hope it grows, more gaming support on linux can only really be a good thing in terms of OS competition.
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Agreed. I gave up gaming on Linux the last time I used Wine, but that was years ago. I probably won't go back to Linux unless it becomes mainstream as I'm quite happy with windows at the moment, but more open platforms for gaming + OS competition just is not a bad thing.
 
I also think increased Linux compatibility is a good thing. I've never used Linux because it never made sense due to game compatibility, but it would be nice to have it as an option, especially if M$ tries to pull some subscription bullshit with future Windows versions.
 
Tried a couple games not on the list.

Beyond Good and Evil:
Started a new game and the da da da daa opening with the domz reporter gai kept repeating over other dialog making the game annoying to play otherwise graphics and stuff were ok.

Deus Ex Human Revolution:
Started one of my saved games from 2012 exited the limb clinic and spikey polygons all over the screen with people missing heads or disembodied hands sitting on a park bench as well as frame drops into the 30s and back up to 120+

Totes unplayable cause I cant see anything.

Overall it was simple as frig just install the game and launch. I bet the other approved games fare quite a bit better and this looks promising as fug. Can't wait until this is out of testing ^_^
 
This has already moved to the stable stream.

I gave it a shot on a couple games. I picked non-demanding games mostly since I didn't want to download a lot just to test. Moving the games from my Windows Steam library to my Linux Steam library worked, but still needed to download a little bit.

I have Final Fantasy VI, which is whitelisted and it worked perfectly.

I've been slowly playing through FFIV: The After Years. Seems like it works perfectly. The performance might not have been perfectly smooth, but barely noticeable.

I also tried Avernum 2: Crystal Souls. For a game that looks like ****, this game does seem to bog down when there are a lot of animations on the screen on Windows. It was noticeably worse on Linux. But other than that seems to work perfectly.

I'm really surprised how easily it all worked. Lutris is also trying to be an easy install process, and pretty much every game I've tried involved some tinkering. But with this Steam Proton, it really is easy. You don't even know you're not playing a non-native game.
 
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