A look over the ProtonDB reports for June 2019, over 5.5K games reported to work with Steam Play

I would be super scared about the state of Linux gaming without Steam Play. Let's be honest, our platform isn't gaining any momentum whatsoever. We're still stuck at the same 1% market share we had before Linux gaming became a thing. And not only has no further major publisher entered the Linux market in years, we're reading more and more developer comments about Linux not being worth it and them questioning further releases for it. I get the idea that it's not a perfect solution and native ports would be preferable, but at least this way we can play these AAA games that nobody seems to port to Linux. Call me happy!

Good that games work perfectly with Proton as native ports get more and more scarce. On the flip side Proton works so well that some games that stopped working on Windows like Act of Treason and it made some ports unnecessary.

For me as long as the game offers the same experience as on Windows I don't care about the underlying technology.

The only thing with Proton is that you should not play in full screen mode.

QuoteI'm actually somewhat surprised to see less in June

Might be this "going outside" or "vacation" thing...

(Especially northern hemisphere, before somebody complains. ;-) )

Quoting: KimyrielleI would be super scared about the state of Linux gaming without Steam Play. Let's be honest, our platform isn't gaining any momentum whatsoever. We're still stuck at the same 1% market share we had before Linux gaming became a thing. And not only has no further major publisher entered the Linux market in years, we're reading more and more developer comments about Linux not being worth it and them questioning further releases for it. I get the idea that it's not a perfect solution and native ports would be preferable, but at least this way we can play these AAA games that nobody seems to port to Linux. Call me happy!

One thing we all could always aim to improve. how we introduce Linux to new comers. It takes a effort to really step to the point of view of a total newbie and fresh intrestee of Linux.

There is so much pieces in this puzzle. We should try to keep things absolutely simple and straight-forward. Bringing things about as calm (i know it's hard as we're all so so passionate!) and clear as humanely possible and so forth.

Noah Chelliah touched this subject spot on in his latest SouthEast LinuxFest speech here https://www.bitchute.com/video/i9eAJxkP69zx/

Ps. I don't know what happened to the 2019 playlist on SouthEastLinuxFest Youtube channel so therefore Bitchute to the rescue!

i expect that 683 borked games is gonna be alot lower before the thanksgiving holiday this year.once you get that battle eye,or whatever drm is causing some of these games not to work,those 683 games are gonna probably be cut in half.683 games is really not that big and im quite shocked its that small.pretty soon we will be playing most games just fine.

Quoting: gojulGood that games work perfectly with Proton as native ports get more and more scarce. On the flip side Proton works so well that some games that stopped working on Windows like Act of Treason and it made some ports unnecessary.

This made me stop and think.
Can you use Steam Play on Windows? I haven’t had Windows install for a couple years now.

Would be an interesting incentive for some to at least dual-boot to play some cherished classic games. Completely backwards to the reason most people did/do dual boot.

Quoting: Woodlandor

Quoting: gojulGood that games work perfectly with Proton as native ports get more and more scarce. On the flip side Proton works so well that some games that stopped working on Windows like Act of Treason and it made some ports unnecessary.

This made me stop and think.
Can you use Steam Play on Windows?

No. Wine is not available and DXVK is unsupported for Windows. I suppose one could try to get it running but it won't be worth the effort.

Quoting: Eike

QuoteI'm actually somewhat surprised to see less in June

Might be this "going outside" or "vacation" thing...

(Especially northern hemisphere, before somebody complains. ;-) )

I'd also comment that this time of year is when university students and school children are taking exams and cramming in last minute revision.

Quoting: linuxcityas for people not coming to linux alot of that has to do with people just not wanting to format or change anything they have.they just don't want to come over.i have come across alot of people like that.

That's one big reason, second one is just the amount of third party software support that you get with massively used platform. People tend to stick to the platform they get most support on.

"The recent release of My Friend Pedro" sounds like you know a dude who was in jail.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy"The recent release of My Friend Pedro" sounds like you know a dude who was in jail.

Well I know a guy, who knows a guy...

I am still waiting for .wmv playback support. It's blocking a lot of games. Apparently, there is work ongoing on it upstream in Wine (Media Foundation implementation), but it's not yet ready.

The game changer here in terms of performance are Vulkan, DXVK and its derivative, D9VK.

When SteamOS and the Steam Machines arrived, none of these things existed. The only thing was the (today obsolete) OpenGL and its bad performance against DX9/11...
Without Vulkan, the performance of a game running on Linux, due to the use of OpenGL would be nearly the 50% of the same game running of Windows.
Without Vulkan, DXVK and D9VK, the only option for to give performance to a game running on Linux would be to teach Linux how to speak D3D9/11 natively.... I remember there was a native implement of D3D9 for Linux and AMD Radeon GPUS.

But now We have Vulkan, DXVK and D9VK and everything is different in terms of performance..
Rebohle deserves the Golden Penguin Prize... And Ashton also deserves it.

I guess in 2020 We gonna see a new batch of Steam Machines.
Valve has until the EOL of Windows 7 for to polish SteamPlay and make it 100% compatible.

Skyrim SE still not running very well :(

Quoting: linuxcityas for people not coming to linux alot of that has to do with people just not wanting to format or change anything they have.they just don't want to come over.i have come across alot of people like that.

I don't think that it will attract a lot of new user coming, I see it more like a way to make people, who dualboot or who don't use Linux on their gaming pc, be full time Linux user.

About the test results, hellblade being in the humble monthly, and my friend Pedro, make me want to spend some money on them. If only I had more time to play or not so many games to finish.

I don't like the idea of users report, most people don't know how to write a impartial analysis.

I see some Platinum rating with a lot of workarounds, and some "borked" games that the game runs.

Fells like borked and platinum is a little inflated.

IMO:
Borked: Doesn't work
Bronze: Works but crashes after some time.
Silver: Works with glitches.
Gold: Works perfectly with workarounds.
Platinum: Perfectly out of the box.


Last edited by fagnerln on 1 July 2019 at 11:12 pm UTC

Quoting: KimyrielleI would be super scared about the state of Linux gaming without Steam Play.

Agree with that somewhat, with the balloon letting out of the Steam Machine boost Linux gaming got for a while...

Quoting: KimyrielleLet's be honest, our platform isn't gaining any momentum whatsoever. We're still stuck at the same 1% market share we had before Linux gaming became a thing.

Well, considering meteoric Steam growth over that time, that stable 1% is a whole lot more Linux gamers on Steam over time. Certainly, we're not disproportionately growing faster than any other platform, but not disproportionately shrinking either. It's stable, industry consistent growth.

Quoting: KimyrielleI get the idea that it's not a perfect solution and native ports would be preferable, but at least this way we can play these AAA games that nobody seems to port to Linux. Call me happy!

I'm very happy too. Already own more games than I have time to play, and Linux can play more now than I could ever hope to tackle in several lifetimes...

Looking 10 years or so into the future, I think all of this angst will be moot, and the majority of "casual" gaming will happen through Stadia like cloud services. As long as we can play those, and early indication is hopefully we will, then we'll be fine. Google may be doing us a big favor in infrastructure in making sure all these Stadia titles run on Linux.


Last edited by iiari on 1 July 2019 at 10:54 pm UTC

Quoting: linuxcityi expect that 683 borked games is gonna be alot lower before the thanksgiving holiday this year.once you get that battle eye,or whatever drm is causing some of these games not to work,those 683 games are gonna probably be cut in half.683 games is really not that big and im quite shocked its that small.pretty soon we will be playing most games just fine.

I think you're right, that's the next big push. Once/if? that barrier falls, the floodgates will open up.

I've personally run out of Windows titles I care about enough to test that I don't already know the results of... ^_^


Last edited by iiari on 1 July 2019 at 10:57 pm UTC

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: Woodlandor

Quoting: gojulGood that games work perfectly with Proton as native ports get more and more scarce. On the flip side Proton works so well that some games that stopped working on Windows like Act of Treason and it made some ports unnecessary.

This made me stop and think.
Can you use Steam Play on Windows?

No. Wine is not available and DXVK is unsupported for Windows. I suppose one could try to get it running but it won't be worth the effort.

Ironically, from a technical perspective it might boost development if WINE were available on Windows. When X-professional app failed due to Windows changes in the years a company could just try to run it through WINE and it might work (eg: StarCraft 1 used to have terrible graphics glitches for years on Windows running in Legacy mode but on Linux it rendered perfectly.)

In the same way that Xenia is strapped to Windows to assist in developing a Xbox 360 emulator, I think it would actually make a lot of sense and draw in a lot of developers to make a Windows version, not to mention there could be opportunity to Containerize Applications and Sub out native libraries to speed up development and draw interest from Win Devs.

Quoting: KimyrielleI would be super scared about the state of Linux gaming without Steam Play. Let's be honest, our platform isn't gaining any momentum whatsoever. We're still stuck at the same 1% market share we had before Linux gaming became a thing. And not only has no further major publisher entered the Linux market in years, we're reading more and more developer comments about Linux not being worth it and them questioning further releases for it. I get the idea that it's not a perfect solution and native ports would be preferable, but at least this way we can play these AAA games that nobody seems to port to Linux. Call me happy!

My thoughts on some possible reasons why:

• The UX of many distros is still very poor. If a brand new convert from Windows picks something like Arch for their first Linux distro, they're going to have a bad time and ask "why the hell would anyone even bother with this?". And by UX, I don't mean just the UIs, although a bad UI is of course included in a bad UX. But also the websites of many distros are poor, there's often poor documentation, and not a lot of beginner friendly content, like videos on how to perform common tasks. New users are often left to just 'figure stuff out' for themselves, and while some Linux users may like that, it would definitely be turning off new users.


• App distribution on Linux is still a bit of a mess. Just look at the length of the 'download' page for Lutris. For Windows that page would just be a single button, 'Download', and hence it wouldn't even be a separate page, just a button on the homepage. We can't seem to nail down what method to make the primary focus of app distribution and often devolve back to just terminal command instructions for each distro. I'd like to see a survey targeting a wide number of people that asks the question, "What is your preferred means of application distribution?", and see if we can pick one, then focus entirely on making all applications available via that means, and integrating it well into every distro. If that's flatpak then focus on flatpak, if it's appimage, then focus on appimage. We just need to pick something and make it happen, and whatever we pick needs to be something other than entering terminal commands like a programmer adding dependencies to a project.


• Even if Proton became perfect tomorrow, it would still take years for us to reach even 5%, because people are hesitant to change something when it works and often completely unaware of Linux's existence or anything happening on Linux. People often take a 'if it aint broke don't fix it' approach to PCs, so the only time to grab a potential Windows user and bring them over to the dark side is when something breaks on their PC, or when they hate the next version of Windows. I don't know how we advertise Linux without becoming 'annoying' but that's something worth tackling.


• Even if Proton became 'perfect' tomorrow, and could run every Windows game flawlessly, there's still one more issue Linux faces: All that achieves is making Linux on par with Windows in terms of number of available games, that still doesn't make Linux superior to Windows for gaming. To the typical user who doesn't care about Linux, what reason do they have to switch to Linux? Linux will need to become 'superior' to Windows for a large number of users first before we get huge numbers of converts.


• There's also still a lot of hardware support issues when it comes to gaming. We got the basics now of course, when it comes to supporting GPUs and such, but stuff like gaming mice/keyboards, customising RGBs, etc, we still don't have many nice solutions for that stuff.

That said, we have gained a little bit of traction recently, and there are always going to be a number of people who will be keen to switch away from Windows even despite everything I've said up there. I think there's lots of reasons to be positive, but we still face a lot of challenges.