As we speculated previously, Valve have now officially announced their new version of 'Steam Play' for Linux gaming using a modified distribution of Wine called Proton, which is available on GitHub.
What does it do? In short: it allows you to play Windows games on Linux, directly through the Steam client as if they were a Linux game.
What many people suspected turned out to be true, DXVK development was actually funded by Valve. They actually employed the DXVK developer since February 2018. On top of that, they also helped to fund: vkd3d (Direct3D 12 implementation based on Vulkan), OpenVR and Steamworks native API bridges, wined3d performance and functionality fixes for Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11 and more.
The amount of work that has gone into this—it's ridiculous.
Here's what they say it improves:
- Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support.
- DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, resulting in improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact.
- Fullscreen support has been improved: fullscreen games will be seamlessly stretched to the desired display without interfering with the native monitor resolution or requiring the use of a virtual desktop.
- Improved game controller support: games will automatically recognize all controllers supported by Steam. Expect more out-of-the-box controller compatibility than even the original version of the game.
- Performance for multi-threaded games has been greatly improved compared to vanilla Wine.
It currently has a limited set of games that are supported, but even so it's quite an impressive list that they're putting out there. Which includes DOOM, FINAL FANTASY VI, Into The Breach, NieR: Automata, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and more. They will enable many more titles as progress on it all continues.
To be clear, this is available right now. To get it, you need to be in the Steam Client Beta.
There will be drawbacks, like possible performance issues and games that rely on some DRM might likely never be supported, but even so the amount of possibilities this opens up has literally split my head open with Thor's mighty hammer.
Holy shit. Please excuse the language, but honestly, I'm physically shaking right now I don't quite know how to process this.
Update #1: I spoke to Valve earlier, about how buying Windows games to play with this system counts, they said this:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.Hey Liam, the normal algorithm is in effect, so if at the end of the two weeks you have more playtime on Linux, it'll be a Linux sale. Proton counts as Linux.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: liamdaweTried Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and yup, works like any other game. Tried S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (not on Valve's official list) and also worked like a dream.
Sadly, Skyrim Special Edition didn't give me any NPC voices, so that was a bit of a bust for now.
Doom is going to take forever to download, so I think it might be time to get some sleep and gather my thoughts...
Play Skyrim the normal version with the hd texture pack ran no problem for me with full controller support the special edition is problematic due to changes in the game code and new texture mapping etc
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Quoting: MalQuoting: mirooh well, I am really not that happy as most people.
from now on I'm really afraid that too many publishers will use this as an excuse not to provide native linux builds in case it runs "well enough" with proton/wine.
since this is now to be built-in, most people will not have to understand what wine even is, they will take the running binary for granted. hence what is to expect is less performance and continuous direct x instead of opengl or vulkan
this would totally be acceptable for older/legacy titles, but I really think too many will jump on that train that it runs with proton and that there is no need to compile it for linux.
we'll see.
I am torn.
The fundamentalist half of me tells me exactly what you wrote.
But the pragmatic half invites me to look at reality: for linux now it's not an issue of technology anymore. It's very possible to develop new titles to be portable an native. Why is not happening then? You all know why. Market share. That cold heartless numbers that will convince the board dudes that there actually people out there willing to buy your linux version. Infact Valve confirmed that wine will count as linux.
If we have to deal with the devil for these numbers so be it. What has linux world to lose anyway? We're stuck in a limbo. If it works good. If it backfires screw it. I'll change hobby to bird watching,
well I am not pessimistic about this, surely it will do lots and lots of good.
I am just afraid that too many people will blame "linux" for the less performance and more bugs, not understanding that this is not a native build, that there is dx->vulkan translation and .dll emulation aka at least one additional layer which makes things slower and more buggy.
for whom mentioned that even native binaries can be or are slower: do not forget that graphics card vendors heavily optimize their GPUs for directX - OpenGL was always secondary, I hope this will totally change with vulkan since it became more and more important for everyone, not just linux.
However, I think directX will be the main priority for a long time, there is too much market share and the GPU instruction sets needed for DX are already very well tested, where vulkan is too new and OpenGL with too little market share.
The good news in this good news is that it counts as a linux sale, that is quite something, but I'd like to know how/when exactly?
- what if a game is _not_ marked as proton-compatible, one nevertheless buys it and plays it with proton?
- or do games have to be marked as compatible + bought with steam running on linux?
the first case would mean that only those games that are greenlit for steam play do count as a linux sale and the others not.
liamdawe, could you clarify with valve?
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strunkenbold Aug 22, 2018
So that was the reason there where a lot of windows specific drirc overrides in Mesa...
Nice Valve!
Now someone create a proton fork to be able to use wine with Gallium Nine. And thx to the one who created the package in AUR just hours after release.
Nice Valve!
Now someone create a proton fork to be able to use wine with Gallium Nine. And thx to the one who created the package in AUR just hours after release.
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Quoting: LeopardIt is already opposite in my country.Not so lucky here.
The Title image says it all.
And regarding the text itself… Vulkan always at the bottom of the list (sometimes in the brackets, like an afterthought), sometimes omitted and generally considered "just another DirectX" without any comparison to D3D 12.Needless to say, there are only 2 Vulkan games in the benchmarks "Ashes of the Singularity" (which is "meh" in terms of Vulkan support) and "DOOM" (no, DOOM's big performance boost is not attributed solely to Vulkan, DrectX shares the "victory" there).
And this is recent. Two years ago it was much worse (like Vulkan being mentioned only once and the rest of the article being only about DirectX 12).
Quoting: LeopardMany emulators also introduced them Vulkan.Emulators being emulators are not entirely legal and no self-respecting news site will ever write about them.
But, on the positive side of things, emulator developers are very rationale and pragmatic ones so, being unaffected by PR and marketing BS, they chose the best solution and not the most hyped one. It seems they are dropping DirectX for good.
Quoting: LeopardAlso Cemu emulator ( Windows only ) is looking into Vulkan possibility. Right now it is on OGL and many AMD users just learned about Mesa OGL because of that.Mesa for Windows™? Didn't know about that. From my impression, most of the (Windows™) gamers don't know even about OpenGL. Like when the "Broken Sword 5" came out most of them stupidly tried to update DirectX when the game didn't launch or had no sound (BS5 uses OpenGL+OpenAL and at that time by default Windows™ had WHQL-certified drivers installed which notoriously don't include OpenGL support). The developers had a hard time explaining gamers they should install fresh drivers from HW supplier (Nvidia, AMD, Intel) and not from "Windows Update Center" and OpenAL to boot.
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Well I think its good, if you go to the steam page on it, they actively encourage developers to develop games on vulkan to get the most out of it if nothing else.
If it saves me from having to f around with wine, all for it.
If it saves me from having to f around with wine, all for it.
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Quoting: Alm888Quoting: LeopardIt is already opposite in my country.Not so lucky here.
The Title image says it all.
Needless to say, there are only 2 Vulkan games in the benchmarks "Ashes of the Singularity" (which is "meh" in terms of Vulkan support) and "DOOM" (no, DOOM's big performance boost is not attributed solely to Vulkan, DrectX shares the "victory" there).
And this is recent. Two years ago it was much worse (like Vulkan being mentioned only once and the rest of the article being only about DirectX 12).
Quoting: LeopardMany emulators also introduced them Vulkan.Emulators being emulators are not entirely legal and no self-respecting news site will ever write about them.
But, on the positive side of things, emulator developers are very rationale and pragmatic ones so, being unaffected by PR and marketing BS, they chose the best solution and not the most hyped one. It seems they are dropping DirectX for good.
Quoting: LeopardAlso Cemu emulator ( Windows only ) is looking into Vulkan possibility. Right now it is on OGL and many AMD users just learned about Mesa OGL because of that.Mesa for Windows™? Didn't know about that. From my impression, most of the (Windows™) gamers don't know even about OpenGL. Like when the "Broken Sword 5" came out most of them stupidly tried to update DirectX when the game didn't launch or had no sound (BS5 uses OpenGL+OpenAL and at that time by default Windows™ had WHQL-certified drivers installed which notoriously don't include OpenGL support). The developers had a hard time explaining gamers they should install fresh drivers from HW supplier (Nvidia, AMD, Intel) and not from "Windows Update Center" and OpenAL to boot.
Hmm , so Russian are pretty uniterested then.
https://www.donanimhaber.com/ekran-karti/haberleri/F1-2017-oyunu-Linuxa-geliyor.htm
https://www.donanimhaber.com/ekran-karti/haberleri/AMD-RX-480-ile-DOOM-Vulkan-testi-28e-varan-performans-artisi.htm
About Cemu:
No actually. Many people using Cemu for Zelda BOTW and using an AMD cards on Windows , created Linux partitions to run Cemu into Wine with Mesa OGL drivers. AMD Windows OGL drivers are such a disaster.
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I feel a great disturbance in the force... As if millions of gamers were crying with rejoice. I... I think the great migration finally has started.
I typically didn't bother with wine, even though I could have. Maybe this will get me to clear some of my windows backlog? I need to finish that Just Cause 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (s), Skyrim, Mafia II, among others.
Also, fullscreen improvements is the second big thing. I've been wishing for this behaviour fro *years*. I guess it wasn't implemented because it is technically not the same behaviour as windows and could break a few tools.
Also, let's not ignore the extra funding and manpower they've been pouring into this for *two* years. DXVK, dx12 support, etc.
That would make sense, as Linux is currently a sane platform to target if you want your application to easily be portable to other platforms (switch, ps4, mac). A Linux-first development workflow would be awesome!
Meanwhile, Valve is advocating for what really counts: Vulkan!
Well, ideally, they would end up abstracting all platforms, and probably use proton on windows as well to be more in control of the runtime.
I'm sure it could be improved somehow!
Last edited by MayeulC on 22 August 2018 at 10:21 am UTC
I typically didn't bother with wine, even though I could have. Maybe this will get me to clear some of my windows backlog? I need to finish that Just Cause 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (s), Skyrim, Mafia II, among others.
Quoting: Guestnothing here couldn't be done before, and wasn't already being done beforeThe biggest difference with classic Wine gaming is the native implementation of the steam libraries (this has been attempted independently in the past )
Also, fullscreen improvements is the second big thing. I've been wishing for this behaviour fro *years*. I guess it wasn't implemented because it is technically not the same behaviour as windows and could break a few tools.
Also, let's not ignore the extra funding and manpower they've been pouring into this for *two* years. DXVK, dx12 support, etc.
Quoting: GuestCouldn't see any word if system wine could be used instead - but then, just use wine & steam in that case I guess.Well, they allow you to select your own "compatibility tool", so I guess it is possible :)
Quoting: pmatulkaSo this is end of native Linux games... :/
Quoting: GuestI'll just [put this here](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-may-be-adding-support-for-using-compatibility-tools-for-playing-games-on-different-operating-systems.12349/comment_id=130651)I think that the next iteration for them would be to provide the reverse: allow to target windows from Linux.
That would make sense, as Linux is currently a sane platform to target if you want your application to easily be portable to other platforms (switch, ps4, mac). A Linux-first development workflow would be awesome!
Meanwhile, Valve is advocating for what really counts: Vulkan!
Well, ideally, they would end up abstracting all platforms, and probably use proton on windows as well to be more in control of the runtime.
Quoting: TeqI worry that Feral (and Aspyr) will be harmed by this, which can't be good for our community.So do I... Icculus too. That might actually be one of the reasons their Linux head left for Unity some time ago. Hopefully they can specialize in implementing a Vulkan renderer for DX games! But if Linux marketshare grows as a result of this, this also means more room for Feral!
Quoting: UserwithanameA Valve turns, and from the powerful release of Steam, the Windows shatter.Make it a haiku:
... it sounded better in my head...
A Valve turns open
Steam blows in Antarctica
the Windows shatter.I'm sure it could be improved somehow!
Quoting: liamdaweHopefully this only means developers will think twice before putting invasive DRM schemes. Or remove them a bit after launch?Quoting: GuestQUESTION: Once this goes stable, what's to stop every desktop gamer jumping to Linux, especially with bright new horizons like Mesa 18, RADV, and Linux completely smacking the pants off Windows with the new Threadripper?Titles with harsh DRM that Wine/Proton simply cannot support. That's the big one that comes to mind right now.
Quoting: ShmerlBy the way, will dxvk remain an independent repository? It would be nice if it could.Looks like Valve played it smart and decided to leverage git submodules where it could. I have no objection to the dxvk upstream moving to Valvesoftware (they already have a repo there, AFAIK), but there's no reason for it to, as long as they employ the dev.
Last edited by MayeulC on 22 August 2018 at 10:21 am UTC
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It's no magic bullet and developers will probably still have to adjust their code for their stuff to work on wine unless they are very lucky. If nothing else developers might start talking to valve/wine developers to fix bugs etc for games they want to push out. In some ways it could be good for everyone.
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Quoting: libgradevQuoting: pbQuoting: chancho_zombieso many games to download I need a new hard drive ^_^
Word.
You need help :D
Up till now I had it under control, but now with steamplay... the next steam sale... will be hard...
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Results of testing so far (Post will be updated as I test more games)
Doom (2016): Runs well, although my oldest save game wouldn't load.
Skyrim SE: Runs fine, but there is no NPC audio.
Supreme Commander: launches to a grey window. Eventually goes to a black fullscreen, with no graphics shown and nasty audio corruption. Cannot play.
Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons: Does not launch at all. Cannot play.
Crysis 2 Maximum Edition: Some intial mucking about with resolution and windowed/fullscreen, but got it working well.
Black Squad: Fails to load BattleEye anti-cheat software. Game will not run without it. Cannot play.
Unreal Tournament 2004: Runs flawlessly.
Deus Ex Human Revolution: Runs well, but crashed on exit. Even after manually killing the processes, I had to logout to get rid of it off my screen.
STAR WARS Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast: Launches a grey window, which quickly changes to a black fullscreen before crashing and dropping back to desktop. Cannot play.
Grand Theft Auto V: Launches the "Social Club" window, but there are no buttons on it to go any further. Cannot play.
Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition: Runs fine.
Mortal Kombat XL: Good frames per second, but regular stuttering makes it difficult to time moves.
Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition: Runtime error while loading. Cannot play.
System
Intel i5-8600K
NVIDIA 1080 Ti
16GB RAM
Kubuntu 18.04
Last edited by PieOrCake on 23 August 2018 at 2:25 am UTC
Doom (2016): Runs well, although my oldest save game wouldn't load.
Skyrim SE: Runs fine, but there is no NPC audio.
Supreme Commander: launches to a grey window. Eventually goes to a black fullscreen, with no graphics shown and nasty audio corruption. Cannot play.
Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons: Does not launch at all. Cannot play.
Crysis 2 Maximum Edition: Some intial mucking about with resolution and windowed/fullscreen, but got it working well.
Black Squad: Fails to load BattleEye anti-cheat software. Game will not run without it. Cannot play.
Unreal Tournament 2004: Runs flawlessly.
Deus Ex Human Revolution: Runs well, but crashed on exit. Even after manually killing the processes, I had to logout to get rid of it off my screen.
STAR WARS Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast: Launches a grey window, which quickly changes to a black fullscreen before crashing and dropping back to desktop. Cannot play.
Grand Theft Auto V: Launches the "Social Club" window, but there are no buttons on it to go any further. Cannot play.
Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition: Runs fine.
Mortal Kombat XL: Good frames per second, but regular stuttering makes it difficult to time moves.
Injustice Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition: Runtime error while loading. Cannot play.
System
Intel i5-8600K
NVIDIA 1080 Ti
16GB RAM
Kubuntu 18.04
Last edited by PieOrCake on 23 August 2018 at 2:25 am UTC
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