Another Steam Client Beta is out, adds the ability to force Steam Play

Proton is gonna be the end of native ports and companies like Feral. It will also confirm Windows as the only "true" gaming os on personal computers. Really sad.

even if its true, whats the problem with that?

do you want less native games, or more proton?
what do you think is best for linux market share? much more games with proton, or less native?

6 years steam client and only 0,8% linux users

linux needs MARKET SHARE! we wont get the gamers, if there are no/less games on linux

valve tried to make developers port games to steamOS... it failed, because of <0,8% market share

now they try a different way and proton is just the beginning
lets wait a few years. maybe developers make proton games, maybe more and more gamers switch to linux, because they can play 90% of the games with ONE CLICK om linux

after linux has enough market share developers will make native ports again. i am pretty sure about that, but you have to start somewhere and proton is a very good start

feral can still make ports of online games with anti cheat and games with nice graphics like tomb raider, because perfomance will be way better (as long as not everyone switches to vulkan and we have the same perfomance on linux)

I guess I can understand that, but equally that very statement makes me sad. It's most certainly not right, but it is perhaps necessary to have running games via wine more accepted.
At least Valve are contributing (financially if nothing else, and financials are not to be sneezed at) back upstream.

Theres no reason to be sad about it. People are just different. Thats one of the reasons why I dont necessarily think peoples opinions (whether i agree with them or not) are wrong. Cause for everyone that has a specific opinion on something, theres probably many more that have the same opinion just like you do with wine. And although I may not agree, trying to understand their point of view will help me understand them. I think thats really important for community spaces and even commercially for understanding customers.

Do what works for you. I'll always encourage you to use proton instead since it counts for the statistics, but if youre happy with your setup then game on.

For my point of view it doesn't matter if game is native, Winised, Protonised. And soon we could play cloud gaming too, playing game without to install it whatever the platform. The only thing matter: play game you want without to tweak it during hours.


Last edited by legluondunet on 18 January 2019 at 9:46 pm UTC

I also tried Deus Ex MKD but doesn't start.

Could it be trying to start in dx12 mode?

I set to be windows 7 with winetricks so i don't think it's the case. Maybe a bug with dxvk, wine or radv...

I also tried Deus Ex MKD but doesn't start.

Could it be trying to start in dx12 mode?

I set to be windows 7 with winetricks so i don't think it's the case. Maybe a bug with dxvk, wine or radv...

Doesn't work for me, and i'm using nvidia blob; didn't do anything special to wine/proton configuration

I tried tomb raider 2013 and it's much faster than native. In the mountain village a get now 60 fps with vsync enable, on native it's 22-24 fps because of one core with 100% utilization. I also tried Deus Ex MKD but doesn't start.

BAH you beat me to it! Currently still downloading the Windows version myself to compare (backed up the native). The mountain village/shanty town area seems to be massively CPU bound. To the point that increasing my CPU from 3.8GHz to 3.85GHz gained me an extra 3-6 frames in that area keeping just above 30. I've tested the same system with a R9 285, R9 390 and now a RX 580 and all perform identical in that particular area. Clearly hitting some translation bottle neck that requires raw CPU performance to get over the hump which is why my friends i7 6700K greatly outperforms my Ryzen in that specific use case. In the past I ended up playing the game on an old laptop i7-3520K with an external R9 270X running the Windows which ran maxed settings at a solid 60fps. Not hateing on Feral here as it was one of their earliest ports and I think it used Openg GL 3.3 rather than 4 which probably made getting a good DX11 translation even harder. I really wish they would go back and apply some of there obviously improved techniques to the game. I'd happily pay them another few quid for an updated port. I wouldn't be surprised if that bottleneck at the shanty town was not even challenging for them now.

Anyway I'll report back to confirm if the Proton running version works out better.

The OpenGL version of tomb raider should be at least 4.3 since that's the version with compute shaders required for tressFX. I think that the most limiting factor is that is a 32 bit application, and maybe it's needed a optimization for ryzen on mesa...

By the way I don't want to be that guy, but you do realize that there is a fix for all gaming problems right? ... Windows!

All gaming problems solved in an instant, on top of that you get basicly all games out there (if we don't count console exclusives ofcourse).

Heh. Unfortunately it's also a cause for all non-gaming problems . . .

That mirv guy was told to get his eyes checked for not agreeing. I didn't see it as a joke and asked it to be dropped. It was not.

No, I'm being told my opinion is wrong, without being told why. I suspected a case of "because Valve", and planted a few words to check....and it seems that way in some cases.
But not others. There have been a couple replies of normality, some reasons I hadn't considered. Might I highlight them?

Do you not see the hypocrisy in that? I'm not going to say that others havent reacted poorly. I'm not gonna argue that others arent in the wrong too. But let me just play out the scenario for you.

mirv: why not use wine?
others: **reasons**
mir: why not use wine?
others: **reasons**
mir: why not use wine?
others: why are you being like this?? (plus some less than favorable responses)
mir: why are you saying im wrong?

Arent you pretty much saying that others opinions are wrong by ignoring their points? People have said plenty of times that it being built in to steam is easier for them and for many many people. I, like many others, hate touching wine. Good for you in that you mastered it. Your responses (or lack thereof) clearly aren't encouraging civil discussions.

Everyone (including myself), lets take a step back and try to learn and become better members of the community to try to mitigate further encounters like this.

Sorry, but I didn't see many giving actual reasons. Some gave "reasons" of something that was already possible, in my experience, which was why I asked: why be excited when it could already be done? TheDaftRick pointed out much I hadn't thought of, and liamdawe had a couple things too.
I've not mastered wine. Vanilla, latest release, and sometimes I try git. I would like to know why I'm ok with it (technically speaking), while others might not be - or maybe they're getting something extra from "Proton" that I'm not seeing. Which are the main reasons why I ask.

My suspicion is that people are simply playing different games. I haven't tried Wine very often because back when I did, I never seemed to get a game to just happen (except original Starcraft, which used to work fine), which meant I'd have to do configuration, and I'd look at the configuration options and think "I have no idea which of these are likely to be useful", try a few half at random, and give up. No doubt I could have figured something out with a bit of research, but I didn't have enough time or motivation to do so. But if you were trying a game that Just Worked, you'd never notice that sort of problem. If all my games had worked like Starcraft it would never have occurred to me that Wine had any hiccups.

At the same time, I haven't used Proton at all and I haven't used recent Wine at all (because I don't have enough time to play most of my Linux native titles) so I don't know whether either of them would Just Work for what I might want to do. Maybe now they'd both be equally great (or equally borked).

I do like the idea of my purchase being seen as a Linux one.

(*) It's a shame that the English language doesn't have a decent word for the German "Feierabend". "Feierabend" ("Feier" being celebration/party and "Abend" the evening time) has a connotation of finally, work is done and we can do what we want. (Probably the opposite of what we Germans are know for. :D )

Happy Hour?

Doesn't that have a heavy connotation of booze? :)

And your point is?

If Valve refund for a whitelisted game not working, or what they do if a game stops working, remains to be seen - especially if there's a native version that's not playable, or only barely functional by comparison. Too early to tell. But, indeed, something to consider beyond just technically running a game via wine.

Interesting point. The most basic case (you buy the Windows version of a whitelisted game to play on Proton and it fails to work) should be fairly straightforward: Since you have no or virtually no time played, you get a refund without explanation just like you would for a game that worked but you found the colour scheme stabbed your eyeballs. You could do it with a game you bought to play in Wine, too.

Things that stop working after you've had them a while would be trickier, though (as indeed they already are even without Proton). And there'd be wrangling over whether your setup matches specifications; it could get gnarly. Hopefully it won't come up too often.

I don't really feel like messing with a beta right now, can anyone tell me if Saints Row: the Third works on Steam Play? I tried on Wine before but it wouldn't start, apparently because of problems with the DRM. (I didn't feel like trying to crack it.)

Nope, I just tried it with Steam Play (Proton 3.16-6 and 3.7-8) and it didn't launch. I was able to pick the D3D version but after that it just refuses to launch.

The OpenGL version of tomb raider should be at least 4.3 since that's the version with compute shaders required for tressFX. I think that the most limiting factor is that is a 32 bit application, and maybe it's needed a optimization for ryzen on mesa...

Thanks for clarifying the OpenGL version. I think the issue is some slow translation layer as I saw similar performance on simily clocked Intel machines. I wonder if it does better on NVidia GPUs though and may have possibly used some NV extensions when available (as I don't think Mesa had 4.3 support back then only NVidia is officially supported).

Interesting. I wonder if forcing games like ARMA 3, which is perpetually behind the windows release, will work well.

Before long, everyone who opted for the "free" Windows 10 upgrade, are running OEM windows, and all those other devices, is going to be under the thumb of ("NOT A SUBSCRIPTION!" ... yet) Microsoft Managed Desktop.

Windows 10 (now the majority version worldwide) will soon be under the grip of the "Microsoft Managed Desktop" not-yet-a-subscription service. Unless they have a full-retail Windows product key, most enthusiast-level PC users are quickly going to migrate to Linux once the ransom notices (or slowed-down updates) start popping up on their Windows desktops. Steam Play makes it easy migrate, at will.

This is an important point. Just for clarification -- the 'free Windows 10 upgrade' that microsoft graciously(?!) handed out last year (or the year before?) to owners of full licenses of Win 7 or 8 did not give those people full retail product keys for Windows 10. Rather, they got a version of Windows 10 'registered under' their 'microsoft account'.

That certainly sounds like a more precarious state to be in, compared to having a product key for a full version that one would expect to be able to install on whatever device, whenever one pleases -- though it's not so clear right now, exactly what the disadvantage consists in.

The ability to install whenever, continue to get updates, etc., holds as long as the 'product' is under support. On the 'permanent product key' model as well, Microsoft simply shuts off the 'activation' services when support ends for a product, and there's no way of registering it. I have a windows xp virtual machine that I can't activate, and use 'legitimately', because of this. (*Perhaps* phone activation still works -- either automated, or via an actual representative -- I haven't bothered to try; because I know from past experience that they make you enter & then verify an annoyingly long code. In any case, without the ability to download any updates [past service packs included], registration is pretty pointless anyway.)

Though at the very least, one can continue using an already activated 'product' -- at one's own peril, without any security updates (and rapidly diminishing 3rd party support). On the 'not-yet-a-subscription-service' model, you can't be sure of that much either. So perhaps *that's* the danger awaiting 'free upgraders' to Windows 10. The risk of waking up to some kind of sugar-coated ransomware screen from Redmond.

I agree that the recent improvements to wine can provide people in that sort of predicament with a way out. I'm entirely sure, by the way, that people would be leaving Apple in droves if something similar to wine were available for cocoa/obj.C/swift apps -- keeping their existing 'investment' in software, but liberating themselves from the OS-vendor's thuggery.

Proton is gonna be the end of native ports and companies like Feral. It will also confirm Windows as the only "true" gaming os on personal computers. Really sad.

even if its true, whats the problem with that?

You are probably too young to remember, but there was a time when a company called IBM tried the same exact strategy to compete against MS's operating system(s) with its OS/2 operating system: one of their "strong" points was near-perfect compatibility with DOS and Windows 3.x... I don't think I need to point out how that worked out for them: developers never joined the OS/2 train and kept developing for MS-DOS and Windows, giving users no incentives at all to switch. The users simply thought "why should I use a compatibility layer and have to put up with any nuisances, albeit minor, if I can have the real thing"? And this is more relevant than ever when applied to entertainment software in my opinion...
In the short run Proton is getting us more games, but in the long run it is encouraging developers to not even recognize Linux as a platform: they will keep writing software for Windows, they will still not support Linux, and they will have one less reason to even consider developing their games with a multiplatform focus from the start.

back then there was no internet. you havent update your OS at all. an OS couldnt phone home, or install crap you dont want by itself
developers dont have to recognize linux as a platform! GAMERS HAVE!
as i said: first market share, then developers

if i get you right you think, that developers stop supporting linux and valve stops proton and we have nothing?
there alway be wine and DXVK

what do you think? what would be the alternative?

what do you think? what would be the alternative?

WaaS*, that's what... plus soon-ish gaming will move to the cloud, so you will only rent access, and own nothing... though that could be said is true already with digital distribution and always on-line DRM (not only digital distribution), albeit without a periodic fee. So your "client" device won't matter if it's a PC, Chromebook, phone, tablet, Switch, XBOX or PSX.

*Windows as a Service. Plus, as ironic as it sounds, there are already projects and efforts to implement past MS APIs on top of modern Windows (Wine for Windows, if you will) in order to run older software... so...

Doesn't that have a heavy connotation of booze? :)

And your point is?

Despite the wink: "Feierabend" doesn't. :)

Doesn't that have a heavy connotation of booze? :)

And your point is?

Despite the wink: "Feierabend" doesn't. :)

Heh. Well, I don't even drink so you'd notice, the joke just seemed to want to be made.

what do you think? what would be the alternative?

WaaS*, that's what... plus soon-ish gaming will move to the cloud, so you will only rent access, and own nothing... though that could be said is true already with digital distribution and always on-line DRM (not only digital distribution), albeit without a periodic fee. So your "client" device won't matter if it's a PC, Chromebook, phone, tablet, Switch, XBOX or PSX.

*Windows as a Service. Plus, as ironic as it sounds, there are already projects and efforts to implement past MS APIs on top of modern Windows (Wine for Windows, if you will) in order to run older software... so...

thats not an alternative. if you think streaming is the future, it makes everything else unimportant and it doesnt matter if we have native or proton or anything

what do you think? what would be the alternative?

WaaS*, that's what... plus soon-ish gaming will move to the cloud, so you will only rent access, and own nothing... though that could be said is true already with digital distribution and always on-line DRM (not only digital distribution), albeit without a periodic fee. So your "client" device won't matter if it's a PC, Chromebook, phone, tablet, Switch, XBOX or PSX.

*Windows as a Service. Plus, as ironic as it sounds, there are already projects and efforts to implement past MS APIs on top of modern Windows (Wine for Windows, if you will) in order to run older software... so...

thats not an alternative. if you think streaming is the future, it makes everything else unimportant and it doesnt matter if we have native or proton or anything

That's the direction the industry is going anyway. See what are doing MS with the XBox and Google and nVidia, even.