Sadly it seems like Insurgency: Sandstorm is not one you'll be enjoying on the Linux desktop or Valve's Steam Deck any time soon, even with Epic Games supporting Easy Anti-Cheat with Wine / Proton.
A game that originally planned Linux support, which New World Interactive decided not to do while also cancelling the planned story campaign back in 2019. The last hope was Steam Play Proton but it appears the developer will not be enabling support for it in EAC.
Writing in their recent patch notes, the developer said this:
The Linux Situation
Hello penguin pals, this message is being written for you by someone who has in their lifetime been a self-described Linux-head. Yes, we are very much aware that EAC announced Proton and Wine compatibility. Please understand however that we would still need to do quite a bit of development work to properly support Linux, and at this point in time we do not have that capacity. Thank you for your understanding!
Perhaps they, like we expect others to, may change their mind once the Steam Deck is out and they might see more players asking them to support it. That, or people just go elsewhere and find a different game. I'm sure there will eventually be no shortage of first-person shooters that you will be able to play online.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: t3gOh well, the player base is kinda "meh" anyways: https://steamdb.info/app/581320/If you like the co-op mode against bots, the player base is plenty fine. A squad against bots doesn't have to be very large to be fun. If you find a server with 3 players in it, that's enough.
Funny thing about that is, consoles aren't Windows PC's.
If I'm not mistaken, the ps4 even runs on some fork of BSD. So there likely already is a native *nix build out there.
It doesn't seem logical that publishers of a game with such a small player base wouldn't be on the lookout for ways to get more people hooked, even if it's only 1% of Steam's user base.
To quote this site; "1,396,640 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam". This is by no means a small number of potential customers to simply discard in favor of a console port that doesn't even seem that popular.
Also, according to this article, the game's development and marketing budget has already been recovered.
So, economically speaking, I think proton support is definitely feasible.
They owe a chunk of the first game's success to its native Linux-support, and have a fair shot of being redeemed for coming back on a promise of Linux support prior to launch.
I bought a couple of games from New world interactive since Insurgency thinking they would at least support proton eventually... But since that ship has sailed, so has my desire to buy any other games coming from them.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me