Steam Play Proton 6.3 is out now plus a Proton Experimental update (updated)

Ready for a long weekend testing out the latest Steam Play Proton compatibility layer? Good news! Valve announced the release of Proton 6.3-1 along with a Proton Experimental update.

This is a big release as it rebases Proton from Wine 5.13 to 6.3 which comes with thousands of changes! That does include a lot of new Windows games that Valve say are confirmed playable on Linux including:

• Divinity: Original Sin 2
• Shenmue I & II
• Mass Effect 3 N7 Digital Deluxe Edition (2012)
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Lockdown
• XCOM: Chimera Squad
• Bioshock 2 Remastered
• Company of Heroes 2
• logiCally
• Rise of the Triad
• Home Behind 2
• Shadow Empire
• Arena Wars 2
• King Arthur: Knight's Tale
• Rise of Venice
• ARK Park
• Gravity Sketch
• Battle Arena VR

On top of all that it also updates DXVK (D3D9, D3D10 and D3D11 to Vulkan) to version 1.8.1, it upgrades VKD3D-Proton (D3D12 to Vulkan) to version 2.2, FAudio was bumped up to 21.03.05 and also Wine-Mono to 6.1.1.

A bunch of what was previously in the separate Proton Experimental was pulled into Proton 6.3 including: improvements for non-US keyboard layouts, improved video support, support for setting thread priorities via RTKit (or Unix priorities if your user has permissions), controller layout and hotplugging improvements in Slay the Spire and Hades, improved PlayStation 5 controller support and also improvements to Virtual Reality startup time and compatibility.

Further to that there's also improvements to Uplay sign-in, G29 steering support in Assetto Corsa Competizione, fixes for Microsoft Flight Simulator in VR mode, fixes for cutscenes in Bioshock 2 Remastered and also an overhauled build system to greatly reduce build times.

You will also find a new updates to Proton Experimental too including:

• All changes from Proton 6.3-1.
• Performance improvements around input, windowing, and memory allocation.
• Added support for Vulkan child window rendering.
• Better support Anno 1404 - History Edition.
• Updated file distribution method to save disk space.

Full changelog here.

Update - 07/04/21: Proton 6.3-2 is out now fixing "stuttering mouse cursor issue during longer play sessions".