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.
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What possible motive will there be to do Linux-native when all the work is being done by someone else??
I know a lot of Windows Gamers that would love to switch to Linux if their current Windows games would run on linux.
And who knows how many of them are in the wild?
When linux gets a higher playerbase I could imagine that most developers will start to develop on vulkan and not directx.
5 Likes, Who?
On the long run, companies will recognize Linux more as a real market share even though they the companies dont have to do anything in terms of technical development because of Wine.Why would they want to do that? If Steam/Wine/whatever takes care of it non-natively, they will never have do any better. What possible motive will there be to do Linux-native when all the work is being done by someone else??
Because of this Linux market share recognition, chances are that they will want to support natively Linux so they make sure that their games run well on Linux also (not just with the Wine compatibility layer).
You're missing a point:
That is a compability layer and because of that it will have caveats and it is not entirely possible to have great compability.
Once the user base is there and there is an highly acclaimed upcoming AAA that won't work with Proton ; user base will do the pressure.
Because they have already docked into Linux shores and loved it , nuked Windows ; they won't do that installing Windows again. They will start to pressure then when it is announced.
So either that company will do a native Linux port or making sure that game works great with Proton.
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On the long run, companies will recognize Linux more as a real market share even though they the companies dont have to do anything in terms of technical development because of Wine.Why would they want to do that? If Steam/Wine/whatever takes care of it non-natively, they will never have do any better. What possible motive will there be to do Linux-native when all the work is being done by someone else??
Because of this Linux market share recognition, chances are that they will want to support natively Linux so they make sure that their games run well on Linux also (not just with the Wine compatibility layer).
I agree.
Only time will tell.
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Wiki is a better place for report Proton tested games https://www.gamingonlinux.com/wiki/Main_Page
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Maybe in January or so when this feature is out of beta(?) and the usage has stabilized. Doesn't Steam hardware survey emphasize new installs to a point that the results would be heavily skewed in favor of Linux from people that did just some quick tests? Unless the fix they did for cybercafes solved this behavior. In the short term it would certainly show if there is increased interest in Linux gaming due to this new feature (interesting data by itself though). I just don't think it would be a good indicator of actual marketshare in the next few months.
I guess you are right.
Now that wine/proton is buildin into steam, I for my part will start buying Windows games for which I've waited for tooooooooo long for native linux port.
I will wait for a cheap sale and buy them with a good feeling as they will count as a linux purchase.
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They definitely now seems to be encouraging more the usage of Vulkan than the port to native linux
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I'm really excited what the next steam hardware survey will tell!?No idea how Steam hardware survey reports are processed by Valve but survey raw data has couple places that clearly indicates that Steam has been started via wine.
For example data collected by Valve from the last my survey:
Manufacturer: The Wine Project
Model: Wine
Operating system: Windows 7 (64-bit)
Wine version: wine-3.11 (Staging)
So it depends how Valve was processed it... Add to Windows? Or Linux? Or "Other"? Or reject completely as "false data"?
If they were adding it to Linux (like they should) - then Linux percentage probably will increase but probably not much. If they rejected such data in the past - perhaps Linux will gain quite big increase in statistics - perhaps even more than 1% usage! ;)
To be realistic: 10% Linux market share is not possible even if Proton will excellent support all Windows Steam games. "Average PC gamer" is not technically advanced enough to install Linux. And what for? To play games that already are working on Windows?
Unless... Valve will back to SteamMachine initiative. Steam PC that is easy to use as console could attract "average gamers" easily - console ones especially.
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So it depends how Valve was processed it... Add to Windows? Or Linux? Or "Other"? Or reject completely as "false data"?
As Liam already communicated with Valve - IT WILL COUNT AS LINUX PURCHASE.
Last edited by johndoe on 22 August 2018 at 12:52 pm UTC
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So it depends how Valve was processed it... Add to Windows? Or Linux? Or "Other"? Or reject completely as "false data"?
As Liam already communicated with Valve - IT WILL COUNT AS LINUX PURCHASE.
Purchases yes, but the hardware survey is a completely separate thing.
2 Likes, Who?
If you run your Windows games via this Proton thing you'll do it from the native Steam client. Therefore when you see the hardware survey, it will report you being on Linux.So it depends how Valve was processed it... Add to Windows? Or Linux? Or "Other"? Or reject completely as "false data"?
As Liam already communicated with Valve - IT WILL COUNT AS LINUX PURCHASE.
Purchases yes, but the hardware survey is a completely separate thing.
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Yes, I know but you talking about developer Steam account statistics. Starting from yesterday - for example Bethesda - will exactly know how many Linux gamers bought Doom.So it depends how Valve was processed it... Add to Windows? Or Linux? Or "Other"? Or reject completely as "false data"?As Liam already communicated with Valve - IT WILL COUNT AS LINUX PURCHASE.
My previous comment is about Steam hardware survey that has been collected from win32 Steam started via wine on Linux. In the past it was not clearly indicated how Valve is treating wine surveys (or at least I did not find Valve official statement about surveys from wine).
Last edited by danniello on 22 August 2018 at 1:06 pm UTC
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Purchases yes, but the hardware survey is a completely separate thing.
Does using proton (currently only for Linux) not mean you are using Linux!?
Or did I miss a thing?
Last edited by johndoe on 22 August 2018 at 1:04 pm UTC
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My previous comment is about Steam hardware survey that has been collected from win32 Steam started via wine on Linux. In the past it was not clearly indicated how Valve is treating wine surveys (or at least I did not find Valve official statement about surveys from wine).
Ahhh. Now I know what you mean.
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So now that I've had time to think about this news more, I thought I'd try add more discussion points.News flash: people like you and me are not the norm. The work Valve is doing here is great for the ecosystem. I'm very excited about this just like I'm excited for new Ubuntu releases even though I don't use Ubuntu.
Disclaimer: I personally find it odd that people are praising Valve so much here. Valve didn't make wine. Or dxvk. Or actually any of the tools that make this possible. They're just packaging it into Steam.
Anyway, so the first point for me is that nothing here couldn't be done before, and wasn't already being done before. Wine could already be used, and what whitelisted games I have already ran completely fine anyway on a vanilla wine with no extra patches. Furthermore, some games that run on that vanilla wine don't run with Steam Play, likely because the latter is based off an older version of wine - and this I consider a "con" of Steam Play. It's not very likely to get updates in a hurry, and a lot of games benefit from those updates.
As a "pro", this does package everything nicely into Steam and avoids a lot of hassle for people who just want to push a button. I'm really not the target audience for this - I run gentoo, I like bleeding edge, I like customisation. I would say the target audience is more towards people who are likely to use SteamOS because it's bundled with whatever system they've bought. For them, from an end user experience, this would be great.
Another "con" however, is that something like this already exists! Lutris, for example. And many games really only work properly with different wine versions, different overrides, that sort of thing. Wine can be a bit of a temperamental beast, and needs coaxing to get it running sometimes, which Lutris handles far better (and doesn't need Steam to do it). appdb.winehq.org already has what I consider a "whitelist" - a community run lit of games that work nicely. Maybe there are plans for something similar here - it's still early days to know what the longer term plans are for Steam Play.
On the matter of support, I personally would prefer eON over wine. Native support (i.e support for running the game on GNU/Linux), and quite honestly eON is far more reliable. I could never run The Witcher 2 over wine, but could run it with the eON version (even initially, on fglrx drivers, it would run - and now of course it runs really damned smooth with mesa). As nice as it may be for some, don't forget that this is not official developer support for any of the games. At all. So don't expect money back if a purchased game doesn't run under wine. At least the announcement hinted at that.
To end on a "pro", the real news for me is apparent financial backing for some development effort. The wording makes me think that's what most of the effort from Valve really is (other than Steam packaging): financial backing, so if Valve employees are doing a lot more then I do apologise! This means that hopefully development will generically improve on things like dxvk and vkd3d, which helps the wine experience in general, for everybody, not just Steam users.
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If you run your Windows games via this Proton thing you'll do it from the native Steam client. Therefore when you see the hardware survey, it will report you being on Linux.So it depends how Valve was processed it... Add to Windows? Or Linux? Or "Other"? Or reject completely as "false data"?
As Liam already communicated with Valve - IT WILL COUNT AS LINUX PURCHASE.
Purchases yes, but the hardware survey is a completely separate thing.
Yes, should probably have used a past tense there. It would still be interesting to know how those "Wine-clients" have been counted. Sadly we most likely won't. Also I don't think all Wine-steam users will stop using their working setups.
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Wow... big news, big thread (and I'm late to the party as usual!). I have actually read every post 
Just re-installed STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl for the hell of it, to test. Played it a looong time ago, back when I had a Windows partition. Enjoyed all three games immensely as it happens.
This is a double edged sword for me though. The fact purchases count as a Linux sale is great, especially as there are potentially a lot of very good games which can be had cheaply in the sales. But... if I'm buying a Windows game then I'm not spending that money on a Linux native game. Which is even worse these days as I have such a backlog of titles to wade through that I'm spending less on games anyway.
Interesting times ahead!
Edit: It would be nice if there was a way to differentiate the proton compatible games in my list. A separate drop down category on the Library menu would be nice.
Last edited by fabertawe on 22 August 2018 at 1:25 pm UTC
Just re-installed STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl for the hell of it, to test. Played it a looong time ago, back when I had a Windows partition. Enjoyed all three games immensely as it happens.
This is a double edged sword for me though. The fact purchases count as a Linux sale is great, especially as there are potentially a lot of very good games which can be had cheaply in the sales. But... if I'm buying a Windows game then I'm not spending that money on a Linux native game. Which is even worse these days as I have such a backlog of titles to wade through that I'm spending less on games anyway.
Interesting times ahead!
Edit: It would be nice if there was a way to differentiate the proton compatible games in my list. A separate drop down category on the Library menu would be nice.
Last edited by fabertawe on 22 August 2018 at 1:25 pm UTC
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ertuqueque Aug 22, 2018
I'll put it this way... If Valve could do such gigantic effort to make a massive amount of Windows-exclusive games from different developers/companies run on Linux... I'm not interested in giving money to companies like Ubisoft, Bethesda or EA for basically doing NOTHING for us (when is now more than evident that they could). I will gladly buy Windows-exclusive games from small, indie developers that don't have the resources, but I will keep voting with my wallet.
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Edit: It would be nice if there was a way to differentiate the proton compatible games in my list. A separate drop down category on the Library menu would be nice.
I actually put all the Windows games in a "Windows" category. This category disappears when I select Linux games. But it would reappear if any of those games suddenly becomes available on Linux. I don't have a proton supported game, but this may work for that as well. (unless you turn proton on for all win games of course)
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So now that I've had time to think about this news more, I thought I'd try add more discussion points.Let's be clear though, Valve did fund the development of DXVK - so essentially, yes they did make. They've been funding it through all but the first what, two releases?
Disclaimer: I personally find it odd that people are praising Valve so much here. Valve didn't make wine. Or dxvk. Or actually any of the tools that make this possible. They're just packaging it into Steam.
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Thing is, I feel Valve have been exceptionally clear on the situation. Who people choose to champion is their business.So now that I've had time to think about this news more, I thought I'd try add more discussion points.Let's be clear though, Valve did fund the development of DXVK - so essentially, yes they did make. They've been funding it through all but the first what, two releases?
Disclaimer: I personally find it odd that people are praising Valve so much here. Valve didn't make wine. Or dxvk. Or actually any of the tools that make this possible. They're just packaging it into Steam.
I meant its original creation - I didn't think Valve was responsible for that?
Just really want to point out that Valve see and fund things that are very useful, and that's not to be underestimated, but I personally dislike the treatment that it's all and entirely Valve doing everything.
In the case of DXVK, they couldn't have been clearer even noting when funding started. The point is, while Valve didn't start these projects, it is the one that's pulling them together, funding them and making something bigger out of it. That benefits everyone too, since it's open source.
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