Dying Light 2 will be easily one of the biggest releases this year and the good news is that it works on Linux without any messing around. Note: personal purchase.
Tested with Steam Play Proton (specifically Proton Experimental), so far the experience has been pretty good, although with a caveat that I've yet to try co-op. At least as far as single-player goes, it works really well. Interestingly for a lot of players on Windows, the game just crashed trying to start the game - no such problem here on Linux.
Showing the true power of Proton as a compatibility layer, having such a high-profile release working out of the box on day-1 is a really fantastic thing for Linux. The original Dying Light is also one of my favourite open-world Zombie-smashers, so it's quite exciting to get to run through Dying Light 2 right away like this.
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Both the DirectX 11 and 12 modes work, although switching from 11 (the default) to 12 did cause a hard lock-up requiring a reboot. After that though, loading back in and it continued working just fine. Performance between the two modes doesn't seem all that different either, at least on NVIDIA with the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti.
Considering how Techland supported the first game for so long, I think we can expect good things for the future of Dying Light 2. Techland have already promised 5+ years of continued support with free DLCs, various in-game events, bigger paid story DLC, new enemies, new weapons and much more.
Something to note is that the game does include Denuvo Anti-tamper, which caused a bit of a ruckus since Techland did not even mention it until right before the launch. Thankfully Denuvo has worked on Linux with Proton for some time now and doesn't appear to cause any playability issues here, although be careful if you switch between Proton versions for testing on Dying Light 2 as it may trip it up.
Be sure to also add -nologos to your Steam launch options, otherwise you'll need to spam button-press to get through annoyingly long logo screens.
You can buy it on Humble Store and Steam.
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Bogomips 4 Feb 2022
I was watching the youtube video and realized that it was from GamingOnLinux 
7 Likes
x_wing 4 Feb 2022
@Liam, you may want to take a look to the heatsink or thermal paste of your CPU, you're hitting over 100C from time to time.
6 Likes
BielFPs 4 Feb 2022
There's one thing that saddens me about this game is that, back then when they attempt to make a native version, they didn't had vulkan and the linux graphics were in a sorrow state. That resulted in a (opengl) poor performant native version specially compared to the later Proton that made use of a more performant API.
Nowadays they have everything to make a great port for a linux version, thanks to so much investment that was made along those years, but there's almost no probability that we'll see another attempt to make it, due to the problems with their first attempt, and the fact that Proton justifies the lack of reason to work with anything that isn't DirectX.
At least we can somehow play the game on linux and hope that they don't put any kind of anticheat latter.
Nowadays they have everything to make a great port for a linux version, thanks to so much investment that was made along those years, but there's almost no probability that we'll see another attempt to make it, due to the problems with their first attempt, and the fact that Proton justifies the lack of reason to work with anything that isn't DirectX.
At least we can somehow play the game on linux and hope that they don't put any kind of anticheat latter.
8 Likes
Liam Dawe 4 Feb 2022
@Liam, you may want to take a look to the heatsink or thermal paste of your CPU, you're hitting over 100C from time to time.Good catch, missed that as was focusing on performance. Should be all sorted now, upped some fans, added another fan and cleared out some vents. :)
8 Likes
Spl-it 4 Feb 2022
At least we can somehow play the game on linux and hope that they don't put any kind of anticheat latter.
In a single player game that also has 4 player co-op, that would be highly unlikely.
The game runs great for me, I'm 6 hours in and haven't had a single crash or even a bug.
1 Likes
PublicNuisance 4 Feb 2022
Even if I liked the original Dying Light, which I didn't, I would stay clear of this sequel. It uses Denuvo and I refuse to support games that stoop to that.
2 Likes
There's something missing about this game vs the first one, i can't quite put my finger on it. It seems somehow tamer, less horror oriented & as a result less atmospheric & more arcadey. Maybe it's the color palette or the upbeat musics. It might just be my preference for that dark, foreboding 1970's-esk retro zombie vibe the first one gave off. This feels like it has had a layer of modern corporate smudged onto it, the game play from what i have seen seems more like dead island mixed with destiny than dying light.
each to their own i guess.
each to their own i guess.
1 Likes
dpanter 4 Feb 2022
The horror aspect is lessened yes. As much more of the gameplay is focused on nighttime, Techland aimed to make the night more accessible for all players. It will still be dangerous, but less punishing. Players searching for extra thrills can go deep inside houses at daytime... good luck. :)
Posted my initial performance impressions on the [Steam forums](https://steamcommunity.com/app/534380/discussions/0/3186862118579104760/).
Teaser: Starting area runs 85-90 on average without resolution scaling, smooth and nice.
Posted my initial performance impressions on the [Steam forums](https://steamcommunity.com/app/534380/discussions/0/3186862118579104760/).
Teaser: Starting area runs 85-90 on average without resolution scaling, smooth and nice.
2 Likes
BielFPs 4 Feb 2022
In a single player game that also has 4 player co-op, that would be highly unlikely.You might be unaware that Dying light also has a versus mode (pretty fun though)
1 Likes
Anza 
4 Feb 2022
It’s great that it runs with proton, but I’m not buying it full price unless it’s released for linux.
I'm not used to that kind of price either as I mostly buy indies.
It would be nice if there's at least semi official stance if Techland is willing to support Proton or not.
3 Likes
It’s great that it runs with proton, but I’m not buying it full price unless it’s released for linux.
So your never buying it then because they arent gonna bother because its proton or no tux now. Even Feral are stepping away from native ports.
2 Likes
prosoor 4 Feb 2022
I only want to post my opinion on the title because this game works well on Proton on Linux, not on Linux natively.
The game is not ported to Linux.
The game is not ported to Linux.
2 Likes
Liam Dawe 4 Feb 2022
I only want to post my opinion on the title because this game works well on Proton on Linux, not on Linux natively.No where does it say it has been. Proton is Linux gaming. Let's not have this again.
The game is not ported to Linux.
11 Likes
denyasis 5 Feb 2022
Hrm. I think I own the first one. I might have to give it a spin. Looks like it could be pretty fun.
2 Likes
anewson 5 Feb 2022
There's one thing that saddens me about this game is that, back then when they attempt to make a native version, they didn't had vulkan and the linux graphics were in a sorrow state. That resulted in a (opengl) poor performant native version specially compared to the later Proton that made use of a more performant API.
...
Interesting, I've been wondering why for some titles using proton performs better than some native ports; this explanation makes sense to me.
Last edited by anewson on 5 Feb 2022 at 12:19 am UTC
1 Likes
lukas333 5 Feb 2022
Great game, just that no progression for second person in coop...
0 Likes
BielFPs 5 Feb 2022
Worse than that.
They have vulkan and still use d3d.
I remember that Vulkan API was still an infant API at the time, not many hardware supported it and lacked of many resources. Nowhere near as stable and resourceful as it is today.
Add this to the fact that they where probably already developing it before the release (due to steam machines at the time) and you can see that they didn't have choice besides going for OpenGL.
Of course nowadays the opposite is true.
0 Likes
Nanobang 5 Feb 2022
I'm pretty giddy about this working out of the gate. I'll need to check the recommended specs, though. My GTX 1070 is nice, but it's not RTX 2080 Ti nice. :)
Any word on how well the multiplayer works, especially the cross-platform multiplayer?
Last edited by Nanobang on 5 Feb 2022 at 3:52 pm UTC
Any word on how well the multiplayer works, especially the cross-platform multiplayer?
Last edited by Nanobang on 5 Feb 2022 at 3:52 pm UTC
0 Likes
Liam Dawe 5 Feb 2022
Any word on how well the multiplayer works, especially the cross-platform multiplayer?It appears there are some co-op issues, with it possibly crashing https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/5542 however the first comment notes it worked fine on a specific Proton version so it's a bit odd.
That said, Techland did note that there were some issues overall with multiplayer too even on Windows. https://twitter.com/DyingLightGame/status/1489607307164106758?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Dear gamers, thank you for your feedback. Two things on the top of our list: disconnects in co-op mode and problems with redeeming awards, codes, and other in-game content, including Twitch Drops from TechlandGG. Our team is on it. We will update you on the progress.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 5 Feb 2022 at 3:59 pm UTC
1 Likes
BielFPs 5 Feb 2022
Could it be that many game developers are a bit like the people who work at Microsoft? People who are (in general) incomprehensibly lazy, do nothing positive all day, get the most worthless work results imaginable, but still become the richest people in the world because of the behavior of the average person.Conspiracy theories (that might be partially true) aside, the reason is the same as always:
Profit vs Development costs vs Shareholders deadline
Big companies usually opted to DirectX because , besides cultural history, they have more developers with experience and more tools compatible with
If a big company is going to develop a new non-exclusive AAA game, I imagine this is their priority list:
1 - DirectX 11(for now): supported on pre windows 10 system and xbox
2 - DirectX 12: not supported on pre windows 10 system, but supported on modern ones and more powerful that dx11. Also supported on xbox
3 - GNM/GNMX: supported on play station 4/5
4 - Nintendo switch: Using unity or other compatible engine if the hardware supports
5 - Vulkan(windows): supported on modern hardware and some pre windows 10 systems, as a alternative to directx but without the burden of officially support another system
There's also the fact that AAA companies almost never develop a game from scratch, they usually work with assets from their other games (or from the companies they bough) and modify it to make a new game, and most of the time those assets are directX dependent. There's also the fact that these work are made by humans, so they need time to learn how to properly work with a brand new api, and because directx is on the market for years, is very easy to find developers that are already experienced with Dx development (kind of a smaller chicken and egg case)
The same can be said of many new games that will be released this year. Super small developers (like with the game Valheim) can use Vulkan and support Linux and make a very popular game.Independent developers usually doesn't have a shareholder deadline to meet, and the fact that they usually have smaller and more centered teams means that most of the team knows exactly how the game is being made. Big companies uses developers from various parts of the world, some of them might never have direct contact to others, just a bunch of people developing single pieces of code, then merging together for the quality team to test. Like an open source project, but without the community to test and report bugs and with a deadline to met.
2 Likes
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