Proton Experimental sees new fixes for DEATHLOOP, Forza Horizon 5

Valve has put out another small upgrade to Proton Experimental, with it focused on improving a couple of popular games. What is Proton? It's a compatibility layer designed to run Windows games from Steam on Linux. See more about it in our full guide.

The release that went up on December 20 fixed up the Xbox login window behaviour for Forza Horizon 5, worked around a bunch of graphical glitching in DEATHLOOP and also fixed Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord occasionally getting stuck in a loop displaying errors.

Not only that though, this release should also speed up the "wind-down" of Proton after you exit a game. So that should make the whole experience a fair bit smoother. Update: an additional fix was added on December 21 to "Fix the new Rockstar Launcher crashing".

See the Proton Experimental changelog to see all the current differences to the normal Proton releases.

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:

1. Search for Proton Experimental and install if not already.
2. Right click any game on Steam and go to Properties.
3. Select the Compatibility menu on the right side.
4. Ensure the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" is ticked.
5. From the dropdown box that appears select Proton Experimental.