Valve officially confirm a new version of 'Steam Play' which includes a modified version of Wine

Quoting: SamsaiSo you think that a good way to encourage publishers and developers to support our platform is to file nonsensical negative reviews of their products for which they do not offer any kind of Linux support?

No I neither said that nor do I support this but it is the way people react when a game doesn't run. No matter if we like it or not. Windows gamers do it too but since Linux users are a smaller group we stand out more. Have a look at 1-star Amazon ratings. You can see on first sight that the product the people got delivered is defective and just should be replaced but they write a bad review anyway. We can't do anything about it.


Last edited by Wendigo on 27 August 2018 at 4:32 am UTC

Quoting: WendigoYou can see on first sight that the product the people got delivered is defective and just should be replaced but they write a bad review anyway. We can't do anything about it.

Yeah, that is a thing on every storefront that has ratings and/or reviews. From an end user standpoint the ideal choice would be to have an option to see how often a given product is delivered defective. From a supply end business standpoint, you'd never want that as there will always be at least some defective product shipped and at the least it'd require more QA to lower meaning more costs per unit and thereby a higher price leading to more complaints to field about that. For the store, caught in the middle of these two opposing forces, it's less of a problem to deal with to just let people use such review and ratings systems in such a way even if we all know it's stupid.


Anyway, after testing a handful of older indie games (so far only one of the four didn't at least play) and not a one having any audio, I did some digging online and came across someone having found terminal commands for Proton's included winecfg. Proton apparently uses some sort of dummy prefix that has the config data in it. I have to be at work in about four hours so don't have time to really play with all that just now to see if I can fix my issues, but wanted to share what I found.
WINEPREFIX=[your home directory]/.steam/root/steamapps/compatdata/[App ID of the game]/ ~/.steam/root/steamapps/common/Proton 3.7/dist/bin/wine winecfg
I don't remember seeing this mentioned upthread, but I also didn't read every comment. The first part of that is likely the most important, seeing as you should be able to use any winecfg or winetricks once you know the prefix to dither about with.


Last edited by vlademir1 on 27 August 2018 at 8:28 am UTC

Quoting: vlademir1WINEPREFIX=[your home directory]/.steam/root/steamapps/compatdata/[App ID of the game]/ ~/.steam/root/steamapps/common/Proton 3.7/dist/bin/wine winecfg
I don't remember seeing this mentioned upthread, but I also didn't read every comment. The first part of that is likely the most important, seeing as you should be able to use any winecfg or winetricks once you know the prefix to dither about with.

Just a few notes:
- The actual prefix is in a subfolder named pfx, so you should add that to the end of the WINEPREFIX path.
- For me at least the "steamapps" folder should be "SteamApps". That should actually be the default, but better check your capitalization just in case.
- Depending on your Steam Play configuration, you might want to replace "Proton 3.7" in the wine path with "Proton 3.7 Beta", and remember to put the whole path in quotes or escape the whitespace with backslashes or that obviously won't work.

Taking these into account, here's what works for me:
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/compatdata/[AppID]/pfx" "$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/Proton 3.7 Beta/dist/bin/wine" winecfg

Proton doesn't package winetricks, but if you've got it installed locally, you can use it with Proton's wine executable by pointing the WINE environment variable to the right place, like this:
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/compatdata/[AppID]/pfx" WINE="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/Proton 3.7 Beta/dist/bin/wine" winetricks

Also note that if you install a game into a secondary library, that it will install both Proton and the compatdata into that secondary library as well.

I haven't read through all of the comments but in case it wasn't mentioned yet -> here is a list of Steam games that shows how well they run with Proton.
The graph on the second table is very interesting: 59% of the games are either stable or completely stable. Pretty impressive amount.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: WendigoValve did a really clever move here to force game developers into cross platform development. Publishers will now have to make sure that their games run on all platforms Steam supports, no matter if they intend it to run there or not since the games were made available everywhere. Even though players get a notice when starting a game via proton I guess quite a few will still down vote a game that doesn't run on Linux or OSX, so the Publishers have 3 choices:

1) Do nothing and get a bad rating that affects their future sales of the game.
2) Make sure their game runs with Proton on all operating systems that Steam supports and hope that a future change in Proton doesn't break the game.
3) Do a proper cross platform port or develop future games with cross platform in mind and have control over the game's performance on Linux and OSX.

I guess the third option is the best choice.

If you think this is going to force publishers to support Linux, you are delusional. If you start leaving shitty reviews because stuff doesnt run well on Proton... the end result will be publishers will loudly complain to Valve about it, and force them to blacklist their game from Proton.

You dont get ANYTHING by being shitty to devs and publishers. Didn't Witcher 3 teach you that ?

Your language sounds like an attack, Jaycee. Wendigo wasn't suggesting that (s)he would do this, nor advocating others. It was simply an acknowledgement that this will happen.

And Witcher 3 did teach us that this will happen.

Hopefully Valve have a plan for when it does. Because of the nature of Proton, I can see a lot of potential abuse of the refund system, along with bad reviews, as Wendigo suggests. Buy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.

I expect Valve will update their refund Terms of Service pretty soon...

Edit: [Terms of Service are here, if anyone's interested. And for the record, I agree with Jaycee that publishers/devs won't be forced into anything here, even by bad reviews - they'll just ask for that blacklist, if such a thing even exists...]


Last edited by scaine on 27 August 2018 at 8:48 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: WendigoValve did a really clever move here to force game developers into cross platform development. Publishers will now have to make sure that their games run on all platforms Steam supports, no matter if they intend it to run there or not since the games were made available everywhere. Even though players get a notice when starting a game via proton I guess quite a few will still down vote a game that doesn't run on Linux or OSX, so the Publishers have 3 choices:

1) Do nothing and get a bad rating that affects their future sales of the game.
2) Make sure their game runs with Proton on all operating systems that Steam supports and hope that a future change in Proton doesn't break the game.
3) Do a proper cross platform port or develop future games with cross platform in mind and have control over the game's performance on Linux and OSX.

I guess the third option is the best choice.

If you think this is going to force publishers to support Linux, you are delusional. If you start leaving shitty reviews because stuff doesnt run well on Proton... the end result will be publishers will loudly complain to Valve about it, and force them to blacklist their game from Proton.

... And potentially make Valve wihtdraw SteamPlay completely.

Personnally I would just ban those that leave bad evaluations because of Proton.. Ok, might give a warning or two, but if it becomes viral... I may be a little too extreme... Still, Valve made it crystal clear that SteamPlay is on them, not on the devs.

Edit: And if someone leaves a bad review on a title because he decided to turn on SteamPlay on all titles... What is he thinking about?! He deserves to be banned!

This said, what I hope for is that it will convince the devs that are on the fence about supporting Linux to do it, because of Proton. But you cannot force it. That would be doing like Microsoft often does and shoot yourself in the foot... And since Steam is not a monopoly like Windows is...


Last edited by Mohandevir on 27 August 2018 at 9:27 pm UTC

Quoting: PatolaThere was already a 4) by other user, so here it goes:

5) Do an improper cross platform build like Reality Pump Studios did with Two Worlds II: Call of the Tenebrae (it has no executable) and use the Linux port slot, effectively preventing steam play from being used. Actually even some games with "proper" Linux ports that are now broken / stopped working is possible, like this bug report for steam client shows.

This issue will be resolved by Valve when you will have the possibility to launch a Windows port with SteamPlay, even if a Linux native port exists. I'm sure they will add soon this feature, it's a very wanted feature on the Proton github, because a lot of Linux native port are not maintained or/and don't work any more.


Last edited by legluondunet on 27 August 2018 at 10:41 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestIf they start allowing games with native Linux ports to be run under Proton anyway - how are the Linux porters supposed to know whether that was a "real" Linux sale, or a Windows sale thats being run on Linux via Proton... in other words, how do you stop this damaging legitimate Linux sales revenue that should go to the porters like Feral, Aspyr and VP ?

We are talking about Linux native ports that are not maintained or don't work anymore or Windows port has more features... If dev/editor maintained their port, Linux users will not need to use the Windows port, isn't it? Read the issue here:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5638
there are several reasons to ask for this feature.


Last edited by legluondunet on 27 August 2018 at 11:14 pm UTC

Quoting: scaineBecause of the nature of Proton, I can see a lot of potential abuse of the refund system, along with bad reviews, as Wendigo suggests. Buy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.

Reviews aside, can you elaborate on what part of this you consider abuse of the refund system? I would definitely refund a game if I buy it intending to run it via Steam Play and find out it doesn't run well enough. The 2-hour allowance is very well suited for this kind of demo/test run approach.

Quoting: GuestIf they start allowing games with native Linux ports to be run under Proton anyway - how are the Linux porters supposed to know whether that was a "real" Linux sale, or a Windows sale thats being run on Linux via Proton... in other words, how do you stop this damaging legitimate Linux sales revenue that should go to the porters like Feral, Aspyr and VP ?

Wouldn't the problem be the opposite since Proton play counts as Linux? i.e. "Bad devs" who no longer support a broken port still get a cut from Steam sales even though people are effectively forced to emulate the Windows version instead of playing their port.

Quoting: tuubiTaking these into account, here's what works for me:
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/compatdata/[AppID]/pfx" "$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/Proton 3.7 Beta/dist/bin/wine" winecfg

Proton doesn't package winetricks, but if you've got it installed locally, you can use it with Proton's wine executable by pointing the WINE environment variable to the right place, like this:
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/compatdata/[AppID]/pfx" WINE="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/Proton 3.7 Beta/dist/bin/wine" winetricks

Thank you. I haven't had time to play around with any of this as yet, so not having to figure the part about the "/pfx" on the end is a real nicety.

Quoting: scaineBuy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.

If I understand correctly the way Steam is handling this stuff (I may be wrong), refunding a game after leaving a review for it (crap or not) will remove the review the same time the game is removed from your library (you can only leave review for games you own). :)

Edit: to be clear it seems that I was wrong, refunding a game do not seem to delete a review previously written for it! :)


Last edited by riusma on 5 September 2018 at 10:39 am UTC

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: scaineBecause of the nature of Proton, I can see a lot of potential abuse of the refund system, along with bad reviews, as Wendigo suggests. Buy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.

Reviews aside, can you elaborate on what part of this you consider abuse of the refund system? I would definitely refund a game if I buy it intending to run it via Steam Play and find out it doesn't run well enough. The 2-hour allowance is very well suited for this kind of demo/test run approach.

It generates false sales data. You get "money", pay your expenses, then you have to return the money. That can be a disaster, since that's what developers live by.

If people are using the refund system to get refunds after trying a game that doesn't work on Proton, I expect it would usually happen before the developers even realized they had a sale, let alone used the money for anything. They'd check that day and it'd be like oh, a dozen people bought and then refunded since I checked sales last time.

Some developers will just see Linux sales as extra money without any extra effort on their part as long as the game just works, if it doesn't all they have to do is say "speak to Valve, nothing to do with us", it's a win/win for those developers.

Quoting: riusma

Quoting: scaineBuy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.

If I understand correctly the way Steam is handling this stuff (I may be wrong), refunding a game after leaving a review for it (crap or not) will remove the review the same time the game is removed from your library (you can only leave review for games you own). :)

You can write the review and refund the game, and the review stays.

Quoting: PatolaIt generates false sales data. You get "money", pay your expenses, then you have to return the money. That can be a disaster, since that's what developers live by. It might well be in the customer's rights to do that, but it does not change the fact that impacts developers a lot. If the amount of people doing refunds is small, it's tolerable and can be compensated by other means. If it's large, in a barely profitable game which seems to be the majority of titles lately, it might lead to bankrupcy in the worst case.

Of course, you might not consider it "abuse" since each individual is acting in his/her own right. Maybe we can get a better word for it? "Overuse" does not communicate the idea that the developer is being harmed.

Well I don't know, considering the 2-week limit on no-questions-asked refunds, I'm tempted to say that 1) the devs might not even have received the money from that sale in that time (I don't know how they get their cut from Valve but presumably it's not transferred to their bank account on a per-sale basis), and 2) it's on them if they spend money that they know is still under the refund period.

I would expect Valve has ways to minimize this. Making too many payments would tank everyone's profits in transfer fees, and I wouldn't be surprised if sales amounts were frozen for 2 weeks so that Valve can handle the majority of refunds on its own without money going back and forth between accounts (Customer -> Valve -> Publisher -> Valve -> Customer would dilute so much of the amount in transfer fees that it would be outright dumb not to prevent it). By using an electronic wallet for both customers and third parties, they can essentially handle the majority of payment operations on their own without fees, excepting only the initial purchase and the actual money transfer to the devs, no matter what happens in between.

So I get your point, but Valve really needs to get a new accountant if that stuff hasn't already been straightened out.

Quoting: legluondunet

Quoting: PatolaThere was already a 4) by other user, so here it goes:

5) Do an improper cross platform build like Reality Pump Studios did with Two Worlds II: Call of the Tenebrae (it has no executable) and use the Linux port slot, effectively preventing steam play from being used. Actually even some games with "proper" Linux ports that are now broken / stopped working is possible, like this bug report for steam client shows.

This issue will be resolved by Valve when you will have the possibility to launch a Windows port with SteamPlay, even if a Linux native port exists. I'm sure they will add soon this feature, it's a very wanted feature on the Proton github, because a lot of Linux native port are not maintained or/and don't work any more.

You can download Windows version of any game using steamcmd. Not sure how to link it to proton then (shouldn't be that difficult), but you can get the binaries if you want.

Why are so many people testing games on older drivers?

Quoting: baccilusWhy are so many people testing games on older drivers?

Yeah, pretty frustrating. Especially since some of the functionality of Proton/DXVK actually relies on the most up-to-date Nvidia driver (assuming you're using NVidia).

Quoting: baccilusWhy are so many people testing games on older drivers?

I, for one, started avoiding driver updates when they broke my entire system. Since I needed a specific version to achieve a playable state with one particular game, and that driver didn't break anything, I never updated again since setting that up.