Valve adds support for games using CEG DRM through Steam Play Proton

Quoting: dubigrasuWhatever the today status, those porters, VP/Aspyr/Feral/etc deserve our (at least mine) gratitude, they kept the Linux gaming going as best as they could.

Absolutely. I purchased everything Feral pushed out out of sheer principle.

But surely we must agree that we are happy those days are behind us.

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: dubigrasuWhatever the today status, those porters, VP/Aspyr/Feral/etc deserve our (at least mine) gratitude, they kept the Linux gaming going as best as they could.

Absolutely. I purchased everything Feral pushed out out of sheer principle.

But surely we must agree that we are happy those days are behind us.

I'm not sure we must. I only buy games that are officially supported on Linux, and until we see more first-party Linux releases of bigger budget games, I can't really be too happy about porters giving up on our platform. But let's hope that Proton actually works as a stepping stone and actual supported Linux releases will follow, like the more optimistic among us like to predict.

I'm not too bothered though. I've always got my wishlist bursting with excellent indie releases so I'll be fine either way.

Quoting: chelobakaAll above titles work with Proton Experimental bleeding-edge beta.

That is interesting, can confirm that GRID 2 works with bleeding-edge beta, but not the normal Experimental.

Any idea what git branch bleeding-edge corresponds to?

Quoting: tuubiI only buy games that are officially supported on Linux

I may now open a can of worms but my question is genuine: Why?

Quoting: GuestAppreciation? Valve are doing this for Valve, to lock more into Steam, and build their own little walled garden.

Yes, Steam is the same on Linux as it is on Windows. Anything else would be weird.

But if we for once allow ourselves to talk from a pure gamer perspective and leave politics aside for just a brief moment, Valves efforts to add Linux to their platform - regardless of their economical or strategical incentives - opens up a world of effortless gaming we would simply not have without Steam. And I personally believe there's not a hint of probability that the Linux support would have improved from where we left before Proton were introduced. It was already declining at that point, and Valve saw that only too well. And Steam Deck would never have happened without Proton.

I really see no rational logic why Valve should favour one or the other - like you say, their focus is to recruit and keep gamers on their platform. If that means improving support for Windows games on Linux, then so be it. It'd be easier for *them* if devs ported their games instead. But they didn't.


Last edited by Beamboom on 30 October 2021 at 6:00 pm UTC

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: tuubiI only buy games that are officially supported on Linux

I may now open a can of worms but my question is genuine: Why?

Because I think it matters. I often vote with my wallet.

Besides, even with that self-imposed "limitation", I can barely keep my wishlist below a couple of hundred titles at any given time.

Quoting: tuubiBecause I think it matters. I often vote with my wallet.

I can respect that! I did the same, before Proton. Man I have so many barely played indies in my library from that period. :D

Quoting: tuubiBesides, even with that self-imposed "limitation", I can barely keep my wishlist below a couple of hundred titles at any given time.

If smaller indie games is your thing then strictly speaking you hardly need Steam Play at all? That's my impression.

Here's a snippet of my wishlist:



So yeah... Thank Gabe for Proton. :)


Last edited by Beamboom on 30 October 2021 at 5:52 pm UTC

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: tuubiBecause I think it matters. I often vote with my wallet.

I can respect that! I did the same, before Proton. Man I have so many barely played indies in my library from that period. :D

Quoting: tuubiBesides, even with that self-imposed "limitation", I can barely keep my wishlist below a couple of hundred titles at any given time.

If smaller indie games is your thing then strictly speaking you hardly need Steam Play at all? That's my impression.

No, I don't need Steam Play. I wouldn't say smaller indies are "my thing" though. I will buy bigger budget games if they interest me and if they support my platform, just like I've done in the past.

Quoting: GuestAll these things happened without Valve, it's just they were hurried along a bit by additional funding.

Absolutely! And this is also very much in the spirit of Linux, to build upon others work. And I fully applaud their choice of using existing technology instead of running a parallel run. Imho they've done everything right.

But let's be honest here: Gaming on Wine was and is quite the hassle and requires a good understanding of how Wine works - and even an understanding of the windows libraries. Not to mention the patience to configure and tweak a bottle for that game. You're bloody lucky if it "just works".

I consider myself to be fairly proficient on Linux, but of the few attempts I did I never got anything I wanted to play to run via Wine. And they all had top ratings on the Wine homepage. I was lucky if I got the installer running... :D It really is a tinkerers project, gaming on Wine.

So even if one *could* run the Steam client on Linux and tinker around to get stuff running it most definitely was not something most did - we dual booted into Windows instead, or had a console at hand.

I do notice you don't want to make light of Valves contribution, but even so: The contrasting reality before/after Steam on Linux is so, so dramatic that we really are talking about one major milestone for gaming on Linux.


Last edited by Beamboom on 30 October 2021 at 6:15 pm UTC

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: tuubiBecause I think it matters. I often vote with my wallet.

I can respect that! I did the same, before Proton. Man I have so many barely played indies in my library from that period. :D

Quoting: tuubiBesides, even with that self-imposed "limitation", I can barely keep my wishlist below a couple of hundred titles at any given time.

If smaller indie games is your thing then strictly speaking you hardly need Steam Play at all? That's my impression.

No, I don't need Steam Play. I wouldn't say smaller indies are "my thing" though. I will buy bigger budget games if they interest me and if they support my platform, just like I've done in the past.

I end up functionally with a bias towards "indies" just because I tend to like strategy games and there's no such thing as an AAA strategy game. If there were I'd probably buy it--I buy Civ games and Paradox games, which is as high end as strategy gets; it's just lucky for me that's not quite high end enough to ignore Linux. Makes it pretty easy for me to stick mostly to native titles.
I did eventually give in and buy Galactic Civilizations III. So far I can't get it to run under Proton, but it's been a while since I tried, maybe I should give it another shot.

I've tried CoD Black Ops, and it doesn't work :(
EDIT: Apparently it doesn't work with MangoHud. It runs fine without it.


Last edited by ageres on 31 October 2021 at 4:14 pm UTC

Quoting: Comandante Ñoñardo

Quoting: chelobakaNot all CEG titles work so far. It seems Valve announced only the working ones.

• Lara Croft & the Guardian of Light — works, takes a lot of time to start


• Warhammer 40000: Space Marine — doesn't work


• The Bureau: XCOM Declassified — doesn't work


• Darkness II — starts, shows cinematics and crashes. Didn't start before.

The last three are the ones I was about to try... You saved me time.

Space marine works, I'm going trough some of my proton borked list :)

You might need to delete old prefixes, watch the steam command line output. I'm going over to protondb.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: tuubiI doubt it had any lasting effect on anything though. Linux is doing fine. And I would never have bought and enjoyed those games if the ports didn't exist, so it's a bit hard to really agree with this line of thought.

Oh as did I. And nobody remembers the travesty around that anymore.

But if those "ports" were the alternative way forward for gaming on Linux, there is no end to the appreciation we should feel for Steam Play/proton. To put it mildly.

Appreciation? Valve are doing this for Valve, to lock more into Steam, and build their own little walled garden. My appreciation goes to the open source projects that Valve are using to do that, not to Valve for doing normal business.

Valve are actively discouraging developers from creating GNU/Linux native versions. They are pushing for Windows gaming, and want to adjust GNU/Linux to run _Windows_ games. Yes it gives you plenty of Windows games to play, but be wary of the sacrifice to get it.

Of course Valve is doing it for Valve just like any other company that puts money into open source. Do you think Red Hat or Ubuntu does it "for the people"? Even hobbyist distros do it for themselves and other people can benefit if they can use the software.

But the "walled garden" part is total rubbish. Proton is completely open source and can be used by anyone. Valve has probably done more to push forward WINE development than any other single company. They have dumped a lot of money into Proton and WINE devs are completely free to push those changes upstream.

Valve have contributed a lot to Linux gaming adoption not just through Proton, but through SLR because games don't "work on Linux". They mostly work on Ubuntu and everyone else has to figure out how to make those work. Without Valve "Linux Gaming" would still be back in the stone ages. There likely would not be a Stadia (and that marvelous tech stack).

If Valve was pushing Windows they would have made their Deck run on Windows not an Arch derivative. If Valve was pushing Windows they wouldn't have spent millions on building Proton and Steam Linux Runtimes for what are arguably an insignificant monetary demographic.

Quoting: LightkeyThat is only true if you ignore Lutris, which exists without Valve's help. I was amazed when I tried it (now that I have a new PC) to install StarCraft through Blizzard's awful bloated launcher. It really was just one click and it just kept going through various downloads, error messages galore, and chained install process steps to a working play button.

Ah! You got a very good point there, LightKey. Lutris is absolutely a great initiative and would have been there regardless of Steam. One could argue it's not as smooth and "failproof" as Steam, but yes - without Steam it would have been the go-to client on Linux, no doubt. And indeed - for many it already is today.

Quoting: Lightkey

Quoting: randylBut the "walled garden" part is total rubbish. Proton is completely open source and can be used by anyone. Valve has probably done more to push forward WINE development than any other single company. They have dumped a lot of money into Proton and WINE devs are completely free to push those changes upstream.

More than CodeWeavers, the company that Valve hired to make those improvements and where the core WINE developers are working at for the past two and a half decades?

Yeah, fair enough. I really should have qualified that and intended that to mean since "Proton" has been a thing. I would say in the most recent few years Valve has been the company to sink the most money and development effort into the compat layer. But I'm going on my take from news articles and such along with observing how accelerated development has gone compared to the previous decade. Even like you point out, Valve paid Codeweavers to work on it.

But I don't want that point to take away all the effort, time, and money everyone else has put into Windows game compatibility. There has been a lot of commendable effort by others before and after Proton. The point I was trying to make is firstly that Proton is open source so anyone can use it and it isn't a walled garden. And secondly to point out that Valve has put a tremendous amount of money and effort into the tech since launching Proton and promoting gaming on Linux.

In short I object to the idea that Valve is promoting Windows gaming with Proton as I see their effort to make the Windows gaming platform less relevant and exclusive; and the idea that Valve is for some inexplicable reason trying to screw Linux gamers over.


Last edited by randyl on 1 November 2021 at 3:56 am UTC

Quoting: GuestAnd Valve have directly discouraged native title development. How can that be a good thing?

Directly? I think promoting Proton can only really count as indirectly discouraging other things. Have they come out and directly said people shouldn't do native title development? I suppose at some point they've said you don't have to because there's Proton, but I don't see how they can promote Proton without somehow saying that.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 2 November 2021 at 4:04 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: GuestAnd Valve have directly discouraged native title development. How can that be a good thing?

Directly? I think promoting Proton can only really count as indirectly discouraging other things. Have they come out and directly said people shouldn't do native title development? I suppose at some point they've said you don't have to because there's Proton, but I don't see how they can promote Proton without somehow saying that.

Actually yes they said that. I'm sure for them they're thinking running through "Proton" gives them more quality control (and in some cases...fair enough!) but I'm certainly no fan of anyone saying not to develop natively for any platform.

When? I thought I'd been following all this fairly closely and I don't recall that.

Quoting: GuestStemmed from the faq stating native ports are not required, and some devs have also stated they were directly advised not to bother.

IIRC they were advised to focus on things "that make an immediate difference" like using the Vulkan API, or making sure it works with Steam Input/SDL first. But no actual "native=bad" advice.