Want to play Age of Empires 4 on Linux? Now you can. Another update for Proton Experimental has gone live. What is Steam Play and Proton? See our beginner's guide for more if you're unclear.
As of November 9, Proton Experimental got fixes to allow Age of Empires 4 to work as well as Marvel's Guardian of the Galaxy (although that only works on AMD GPUs currently). Additionally, a rare crash when starting up Baldur's Gate 3 was also solved for this release.
Checking on it myself this morning and yup — Age of Empires 4 works. Once it's set to Proton Experimental it's looking really good. Pictured below running on an NVIDIA GPU:
You may see an error about an AMD GPU drivers, even with an NVIDIA GPU, when trying to launch the game - it can safely be ignored.
Nice to see another huge recent game release working so nicely on Linux less than two weeks after going live. That's a pretty reasonable turnaround time, especially interesting with it being an Xbox Game Studios title, something that is always a little odd seeing load up on Linux. Both single-player and online multiplayer appear to work well.
Performance with all settings turned up to max on 1080p seems to be pretty darn great too, very smooth overall. A very minor graphical issue with objects just out of the fog of war, where you see a strange outline sometimes but other than that it seems to be just fine. Edit: turns out that graphical issue is on Windows too.
See the Proton Experimental changelog to see all the current differences.
Need to know how to actually use Proton Experimental? Here's a simple HOWTO (as it's not complicated!). Make sure it's installed by searching for it in your Steam Library, then select it from the Compatibility menu in the Properties section of a game. See our quick video below:
For an explainer in text form:
- Search for Proton Experimental and install if not already.
- Right click any game on Steam and go to Properties.
- Select the Compatibility menu on the right side.
- Ensure the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" is ticked.
- From the dropdown box that appears select Proton Experimental.
slaapliedje Nov 11, 2021
most RTS games are pretty much a carbon copy of Dune II with different graphics slapped on
That should be taken as a compliment, to be as good as Dune II. ;-)
Agreed! I don't know why it gets everyone riled up. They always come back with every FPS is just reskinned Doom. Ignoring the fact that engines keep getting better and better to be able to habdle more realistic graphics.
rustybroomhandle Nov 11, 2021
Forza Horizon 5 videos/tests that shows it working on Proton were made with non-legit version.
Currently a Steam copy of Forza Horizon 5 doesn't work without that non-legit executable.
So OOB it is borked.
Ah, didn't know this detail.
Thanks for clarifying.
Forza Horizon 5 works now for some people using the bleeding-edge branch of Proton Experimental (found in BETAS tab under Properties). Up to you whether you want to try it or give it more time in the kitchen first to get tested and into the stable branch.
Note, the "some people". Others still report crashes. Performs very well though, so that's good.
Lycurgus87 Nov 11, 2021
I tested campign / tutorial and Online multiplayer and everything works nicely. I play a match every evening. I have 30 hours + now estimatedly without a single crash or problem.
kaktuspalme Nov 11, 2021
Ha, I'm fairly terrible at RTS games. Granted I also triggered some people in a discussion recently by saying most RTS games are pretty much a carbon copy of Dune II with different graphics slapped on. So many got all offended by that statement. Was kind of hilarious.
Well I don't know Dune II but yes many Games in RTS are similiar. But I think that applies to every genre. Many Shooters are very similiar. Many Jump 'n' Runs are very similiar. It applies to all sorts of things in life. As soon as you are interested only then you see and value the differences. It's the same with Music for example. For non Rock listeners it all sounds the same for Fans there are huge differences. I could go on and on.
So to me, that statement is not offending, it's just natural that for an outsider it looks very similiar and for fans there's "huge" differences.
ElamanOpiskelija Nov 11, 2021
AoE4 is up on the list of the Steam top-sellers with already over 10000, very positive reviews. Before making the game, you knew that there is a certain hundreds of thousands of copies sold that you can count on, just for the fact that your game is called "Age of Empires 4". Now what you need to do, mostly, is not "screwing it up" by deviating too much from whatever it is that made AoE2 successful in the first place.
Now as I say this, it could be that even the small deviation from AoE2 to AoE4 is too much.
I can see the initial peak of AoE4 players almost halving this week (it's now getting closer to half the all-time peak) and potentially those players going back to AoE2. And the player count of AoE2 eventually surpassing AoE4, as they already did with AoE3. So, as unoriginal as this game looks, it's possible that Microsoft will not succeed in convincing the player base to switch to the newer AoE4 either, as they couldn't with Age of Mythology, as they couldn't with AoE3.
Relic themselves, again I think they have done a great job, but we know they have innovated more than this in the past, and if you read AoE4 reviews you will that as well in comments such as "where is feature X that is in Relic's game Y?". One possible answer is that the game is made to specification, it's not the time to reinvent the wheel, it's time to give people what they want. Like if you made yet another Marvel movie.
What's important in this news, is that this is the only AAA RTS game that has come out in the last 11 years (roughly) and that it became playable on Linux already in a matter of weeks. AND it's a MICROSOFT GAME, FFS!
slaapliedje Nov 11, 2021
Ha, I'm fairly terrible at RTS games. Granted I also triggered some people in a discussion recently by saying most RTS games are pretty much a carbon copy of Dune II with different graphics slapped on. So many got all offended by that statement. Was kind of hilarious.
Well I don't know Dune II but yes many Games in RTS are similiar. But I think that applies to every genre. Many Shooters are very similiar. Many Jump 'n' Runs are very similiar. It applies to all sorts of things in life. As soon as you are interested only then you see and value the differences. It's the same with Music for example. For non Rock listeners it all sounds the same for Fans there are huge differences. I could go on and on.
So to me, that statement is not offending, it's just natural that for an outsider it looks very similiar and for fans there's "huge" differences.
It was remade as Dune 2000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNl0hY_h0ws And in this case, OpenRA supports it, and it's been ported to many platforms. Still one of the great RTS games as well.
Dec 23, 2021
most RTS games are pretty much a carbon copy of Dune II with different graphics slapped on
That should be taken as a compliment, to be as good as Dune II. ;-)
Agreed! I don't know why it gets everyone riled up. They always come back with every FPS is just reskinned Doom. Ignoring the fact that engines keep getting better and better to be able to habdle more realistic graphics.
Well, come on that's almost right. Just almost all FPS games are downgrades from doom and that's why I only play gzdoom ;)
slaapliedje Dec 24, 2021
Ha, and now you can play Doom on just about anything!most RTS games are pretty much a carbon copy of Dune II with different graphics slapped on
That should be taken as a compliment, to be as good as Dune II. ;-)
Agreed! I don't know why it gets everyone riled up. They always come back with every FPS is just reskinned Doom. Ignoring the fact that engines keep getting better and better to be able to habdle more realistic graphics.
Well, come on that's almost right. Just almost all FPS games are downgrades from doom and that's why I only play gzdoom ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9fQw1W22i8
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me