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So here's something fun, the latest Steam Client Beta has 'Fixed compatibility issues with some upcoming Vulkan games'. Begin mindless speculation.

Now, before everyone gets too excited, it could simply be for Doom which has a planned Vulkan version, but is not coming to Linux as far as I know. It specifically says "games" and if it was for Doom there would be no reason to be ambiguous as it's been publicly announced that is going to have Vulkan.

That said, I love a bit of mindless speculation and I haven't heard of many other games coming to Vulkan at all, seriously, and I have rather a lot of contacts now.

Some more food for thought, SteamOS was recently updated with much newer graphics drivers. It's possible again this was done due to games coming with Vulkan.

This is going to be an interesting year. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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natewardawg 1 Jul 2016
Too bad it's under the "General" section instead of being under a specific platform. :/
tuubi 1 Jul 2016
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Too bad it's under the "General" section instead of being under a specific platform. :/
Why is that bad?
Shmerl 1 Jul 2016
It's rather simple. UE and Unity will get Vulkan support (UE sooner than Unity), and many in-development games will implicitly start using it in result. That's already quite a lot. Other engines also will catch up at some point.


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 Jul 2016 at 10:09 pm UTC
natewardawg 1 Jul 2016
Too bad it's under the "General" section instead of being under a specific platform. :/
Why is that bad?

That's a fair question. Because if it were under the "Linux" section we would know that it was specifically for upcoming Vulkan Linux games. :)

To be fair, I know this has to be under the "General" section since it affects both Windows and Linux.
Shmerl 1 Jul 2016
See https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap (search for Vulkan there).


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 Jul 2016 at 10:11 pm UTC
sarmad 1 Jul 2016
If Doom is already going to support Vulkan, why not support Linux as well? What else is remaining that they refuse to support Linux? I'm pretty sure the remaining work is about one week of work or so, and I'm pretty sure the tiny Linux market will cover that one week of work and make some profit as well.
Shmerl 1 Jul 2016
If Doom is already going to support Vulkan, why not support Linux as well?

Because it's Bethesda. Times of idSoftware are long gone.
Liam Dawe 1 Jul 2016
If Doom is already going to support Vulkan, why not support Linux as well?

Because it's Bethesda. Times of idSoftware are long gone.
This, like I've said before, there's a lot more to a game than a graphics API. Anyone who says Vulkan will make more Linux ports is just wrong.
Shmerl 1 Jul 2016
If Doom is already going to support Vulkan, why not support Linux as well?

Because it's Bethesda. Times of idSoftware are long gone.
This, like I've said before, there's a lot more to a game than a graphics API. Anyone who says Vulkan will make more Linux ports is just wrong.

Vulkan can make it cheaper, both when Vulkan Windows game is ported to Linux and when DX12 one is (because they are close). So potentially it does help. But it's not a magic pill for automatic portability of course.


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 Jul 2016 at 10:28 pm UTC
Segata Sanshiro 1 Jul 2016
Even if these games don't come to Linux, it should still be seen as a win if more people are adopting Vulkan over DX12, then it will mean Linux ports will be more likely in the future.
Shmerl 1 Jul 2016
Also, I expect in the future it will be much easier for Wine to implement DX12 → Vulkan translation, than all the humongous effort for DX → OpenGL. And Vulkan based Windows games should be even more straightforward.


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 Jul 2016 at 10:25 pm UTC
sarmad 1 Jul 2016
If Doom is already going to support Vulkan, why not support Linux as well?

Because it's Bethesda. Times of idSoftware are long gone.
This, like I've said before, there's a lot more to a game than a graphics API. Anyone who says Vulkan will make more Linux ports is just wrong.

How much of that "more" is platform dependent though? I'm guessing not much.
sarmad 1 Jul 2016
Also, I expect in the future it will be much easier for Wine to implement DX12 → Vulkan translation, than all the humongous effort for DX → OpenGL. And Vulkan based Windows games should be even more straightforward.

RE: Vulkan based Windows games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhUIpQsJxfc
wojtek88 10 years 1 Jul 2016
If Doom is already going to support Vulkan, why not support Linux as well?

Because it's Bethesda. Times of idSoftware are long gone.
This, like I've said before, there's a lot more to a game than a graphics API. Anyone who says Vulkan will make more Linux ports is just wrong.
While in general @liamdawe you're right, you should keep in mind one thing - Vulkan is cross platform Graphic API. It means Vulkan does not imply more ports but it makes it easy to deliver games to platforms supported by Vulkan API.
To clarify: developers didn't use to prefer OpenGL API over DirectX in last years, because of various reasons: (OpenGL was outdated API while DirectX was dynamically modified, more people had interest in learning DirectX because of growing use of it, there is a huge company behind DirectX, which means that money was there)

@liamdawe also from business perspective I think you are not right.

Currently there are 2 main issues with Linux gaming:
- bad performance / quality of games
- for most of the Linux games release dates are shifted with at least one year in comparison to Windows versions.

While we already know that Vulkan does not magically solve first issue, we all know that support for an API that has comparable performance on Windows and Linux is beneficial for companies interested in more markets then just Windows.

Regarding second issue - it's easier to port a game if it uses Graphical API that is supported on many platforms, then write a platform-specific code for GPU rendering.

As I said, Vulkan does not mean more games on Linux. Vulkan means it's more likely more games will come to Linux.
IDNO 1 Jul 2016
Linux games dont have bad performece on my linux gaming rig and i have modified xorg.conf so much so its even faster than windows :P but yeah quality of games thats true. :P
t3g 1 Jul 2016
Linux games dont have bad performece on my linux gaming rig and i have modified xorg.conf so much so its even faster than windows :P but yeah quality of games thats true. :P

Share plz
liju 2 Jul 2016
Linux games dont have bad performece on my linux gaming rig and i have modified xorg.conf so much so its even faster than windows :P but yeah quality of games thats true. :P
yes. please share so we can learn from each other (:
lucifertdark 2 Jul 2016
Linux games dont have bad performece on my linux gaming rig and i have modified xorg.conf so much so its even faster than windows :P but yeah quality of games thats true. :P
Add me to the list of people interested in your conf file. :D
fabry92 2 Jul 2016
I hope they are Doom, sfv and rocket League with vulkan api. We don't have any info about them. Valve should work on it.
Overlord 2 Jul 2016
If Doom is already going to support Vulkan, why not support Linux as well?

Because it's Bethesda. Times of idSoftware are long gone.
This, like I've said before, there's a lot more to a game than a graphics API. Anyone who says Vulkan will make more Linux ports is just wrong.

Its funny when OpenGl games are not released for Linux.Its even more funnier when (vulkan) game developer does not port their games to linux.Its simply because linux has a small gaming community,the developers can afford to be troll.Its obvious that, vulkan games are much probable to be released for linux than games using directx.
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