A look at the top 100 Steam games and how many will work on Linux and the Steam Deck

Quoting: Purple Library GuyHuh. I could have sworn I'd heard something on the interwebs about Valve planning on releasing some kind of device that ran games on Linux, and hoping to sell quite a few of them. The "Steam Duck" or something. Maybe I was dreaming it.

Think on this as a car company (steam store) trying to sell their cars together with their insurance (steam deck)

They may not sell so many insurances to their clients, but this wont make they bankrupt because even if people don't buy their insurance, they're still selling their cars (which are their main product that holds the company)

You can also think that they'll also profit if they can sell insurance for cars not made by them (people installing windows on deck to play games from other stores) so they're really not losing so much here.

My point with this analogy is to say that since Steam deck (and steam for linux) are not their main revenue sources, they don't need to push so much other developers to support Proton (or make native linux builds).

It's very good for them if they do, but "it's ok" if they don't

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe "Steam Duck" or something. Maybe I was dreaming it.

Yeah, that sounds quackers. You must be dreaming ;-)

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: BielFPsSadly 9 of the top 15 games are borked

Sure, but 8 of those are from anti-cheat. I would be really surprised if Valve were unable to persuade those people to enable their anticheat to work with Proton.

I don't think Valve holds as much persuasive power as one would imagine. I suspect not many of these developers are going to bother at all.

I don't think the persuasive power would be directly Valve's, but the sales of the Steam Deck. I think it all depends on how big the Steam Deck is. So far, it looks pretty big, but we'll see, I guess.

Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: AussieEeveeFinancially, no. But Gaben seems to have made it his mission to make gaming on Linux a reality, so I would still expect Valve to try.

Personally I think "his mission" as you said is the same as it has always been: Keeping Steam on the throne of the game stores.

Linux it's more of a guarantee that they can be independent of their potential competitor (aka Microsoft) if they need to, and while I wish your opinion to be the truth I really think that this vision of "Valve's being the savior of Linux on desktop" that the community seems to have a bit too much.

Which of course doesn't change the fact that their efforts are benefiting the Linux gaming for sure, so it's something of win-win situation.

It's more than just an opinion.

Here's a quote from the big man himself:

Quoting: Gabe NewellThe big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior. We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well.

Quoting: Gabe NewellIt feels a little bit funny coming here and telling you guys that Linux and open source are the future of gaming. It's sort of like going to Rome and teaching Catholicism to the pope.

Gabe really believes that "Linux and Open Source are the future of gaming". This last one is a quote from him at [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCGMiT0CQAI&t=16s]Linuxcon 2013[/url].

Opt in AC support for Linux drops.
Developers: Meh...

Quoting: AussieEeveeIt's more than just an opinion.

I don't doubt that he truly thinks Linux it's better (even Microsoft knows this), my main point is that Valve in the end of the day it's a company, and their main goal is to make money, so it's different to us (as users) who truly wants to support Linux for personal preferences.

Valve is contributing a lot to Linux and this is a fact, it's just that they're not doing this for ideological reasons like some people in the Linux community thinks so.

Of those 100, I think I own... Maybe 11?.

I must be gaming wrong, lol

Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: Purple Library GuyHuh. I could have sworn I'd heard something on the interwebs about Valve planning on releasing some kind of device that ran games on Linux, and hoping to sell quite a few of them. The "Steam Duck" or something. Maybe I was dreaming it.

My point with this analogy is to say that since Steam deck (and steam for linux) are not their main revenue sources, they don't need to push so much other developers to support Proton (or make native linux builds).

It's very good for them if they do, but "it's ok" if they don't

I think "very good" is enough for a company worth billions to do a bit of bell-ringing. I mean come on, they're doing a major project launch and one of their repeated claims, which will make a significant difference to sales, is that their objective is for all the games to work. They've done sufficient behind the scenes persuasion and pressure that suddenly Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye and some other one officially work on Proton.

And you're saying you don't think it would be worth their while to take things the final step and actually put in a bit of effort to get the game companies to use the EAC and BattlEye that they just arranged to work? That strikes me as pretty dashed unlikely on the face of it. (And for a company the size of Valve, "a bit" of effort could plausibly involve millions of dollars)

Quoting: BielFPs... that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, ...

Wow, that's so braindead.

Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: AussieEeveeIt's more than just an opinion.

I don't doubt that he truly thinks Linux it's better (even Microsoft knows this), my main point is that Valve in the end of the day it's a company, and their main goal is to make money, so it's different to us (as users) who truly wants to support Linux for personal preferences.

Valve is contributing a lot to Linux and this is a fact, it's just that they're not doing this for ideological reasons like some people in the Linux community thinks so.

Don't forget valve is not a publicly traded company. It's not a company with a million anonymous shareholders, but with a limited number that knows each other.
For a publicly traded company, the sole common goal of shareholders is a desire for profit. This may not apply to a private company. In principle, Valve's goal is whatever shareholders make up their mind about.
- It could just be profit.
- It could be revenge on MS if they've ever had a fight with them.
- They can just be really big Linux fans.
- It could also be an effort to make the world a better place.
...

And from the beginning of the effort to port Steam to Linux, they could move from any category to another.
I acknowledge that profit is represented in the operation of Steam itself. As far as linux efforts go, it can be a profit, but I'm not sure.

Apart from games, We need client apps like Netflix and Disney+

Looks like about 11 that don't work with proton, excluding the ones that don't work because of anti-cheat.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think "very good" is enough for a company worth billions to do a bit of bell-ringing.

"a bit of bell-ringing" indeed, a little persuasion is different from "heavily incentivize" companies to do the port, which is like some people are thinking it's happening.

Quoting: Purple Library Guythey're doing a major project launch and one of their repeated claims, which will make a significant difference to sales

-Sales of deck devices? of course (those are already sold for now)

-More games? maybe not so much, because most of the games people will play on deck they bough already (without Linux AC support) so developers may think it's not worth to spend money on support another platform for games people already bough anyway. The only case most of the developers would have a reason to properly support by proton / native is if steam deck consolidates as platform like other consoles in the mainstream, to people outside the Linux bubble start to ask for it too, specially if this demands results in possible new sales.

Also like I said before in other deck article, it costs $0,00 for developers to say to users "just install windows on it" making this a possible threat for Linux support.

Quoting: ArtenDon't forget valve is not a publicly traded company. It's not a company with a million anonymous shareholders, but with a limited number that knows each other.

Yes that's why they can safely invest in a new concept like this one. Valve is in a unique position where they're consolidate as the top game store in the world and doesn't have shareholders to answer too, but this doesn't mean they don't want profit.

If for some reason investing on linux would result only in expenses they would never invest on it.

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: BielFPs... that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, ...

Wow, that's so braindead.

They did this to take advantage of the Cortana's AI, despite the "Windows dependency" part, I think this was actually pretty smart of them.

Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: BielFPs... that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, ...

Wow, that's so braindead.

They did this to take advantage of the Cortana's AI, despite the "Windows dependency" part, I think this was actually pretty smart of them.

That's a sure way of making sure your game is completely unplayable in 5 years is what that is.

Quoting: BielFPsAlso like I said before in other deck article, it costs $0,00 for developers to say to users "just install windows on it" making this a possible threat for Linux support.

They really can't do this. They would be ridiculed for telling their customers to install Windows on the Steam Deck unless some percentage approaching half of all Steam Deck users were already doing it anyway, and that is very highly unlikely.

Though Valve will not put up any obstacles to installing Windows, they have no intention of supporting Windows on the Steam Deck. The mainstream majority of Steam Deck purchasers are not going to switch to an unsupported option; the mainstream majority never do. The entry level Steam Deck has too little storage to comfortably run Windows with much of anything else, and that will be the most common version of the console/computer.


Last edited by CFWhitman on 6 October 2021 at 12:03 pm UTC

CS: GO always results in a black screen, and ProtonDB's page on it supports as much. That's at least one "native" port that means nothing.

Quoting: AussieEeveeGTA V is such a pain to run under Proton. If your computer, like mine, is underpowered and not running a high enough graphics card, it doesn't seem to work right.

In Windows, I get about 45-60FPS, depending on what's going on... with most settings turned to low.

In Linux, I get 5FPS, same settings.

GTA is the only game I've played where the Linux performance is worse than the Windows performance, so I chalk it up to either my card being rubbish (It is. GTX 960 2GB) or the game itself.

Of course, none of this really matters to the Steam Deck, but I just wanted to ramble about this..

But yeah, in my experience, most games tend to work unless broken by anti-cheat... and this list confirms that.

i saw somewhere that the issue is the ammount of code that has to be translated and if its cpu code or gpu code...
and there was a thing about resolution and how it impacts performance, now i wish i could remember the details and the source of the info but it was quite informative.

Quoting: CyborgZetaCS: GO always results in a black screen, and ProtonDB's page on it supports as much. That's at least one "native" port that means nothing.

I play it regularly just fine. The initial load does give a black screen for a bit but it does eventually load. Doesn't matter what ProtonDB says, it doesn't work with Proton.