XIVLauncher now on Linux, gets FINAL FANTASY XIV Online running on Steam Deck

Hopefully at some point it won't be needed, if Square Enix can look at the issues with their official launcher

It works just fine on their targeted platform (Windows), why they should have?

Thing is; they announced they will be switching to new launcher for good like 1.5 years ago.

So if one party should be blamed here; i would say Wine/Proton.

Square Enix or any other company whom are pushing Windows builds do not have any obligations for SteamOS/Proton users.

Square Enix or any other company whom are pushing Windows builds do not have any obligations for SteamOS/Proton users.

They don't have any obligation but neither did all of the other devs who made adjustments to their windows-only games to get them running better on Deck.

Hopefully at some point it won't be needed, if Square Enix can look at the issues with their official launcher

It works just fine on their targeted platform (Windows), why they should have?

Thing is; they announced they will be switching to new launcher for good like 1.5 years ago.

So if one party should be blamed here; i would say Wine/Proton.

Square Enix or any other company whom are pushing Windows builds do not have any obligations for SteamOS/Proton users.

You're asking for the obvious here: why? Uh, to give players a better experience on a brand new popular handheld that it can run on that plenty of people wish to play it on. No they don't have any obligation, but it's a "nice to have".

I linked this article to a friend of mine, but they wondered how it fits in Square Enix' ruling against using third party tools?
They linked me to a video about that; https://youtu.be/DBBcTa8esps

i wonder how well their custom version of wine works with reshade/gshade/stormshade/etc?

Square Enix or any other company whom are pushing Windows builds do not have any obligations for SteamOS/Proton users.

They don't have any obligation but neither did all of the other devs who made adjustments to their windows-only games to get them running better on Deck.

It actually should not be that hard to get away from MSHTML. But you are right, they need not to since MSHTML will receive security updates till 2029.

With a history of terrible launchers for FFXIV, I doubt this will change any time soon, especially since that piece is not that old.

I am fine with XIVLauncher if they do not start banning us for using it (which I doubt, even with their more aggressive stance to non-standard addons I am pretty sure they are aware of XIVLauncher and will not break it on purpose). I actually use the XIVLauncher windows version inside the FFXIV prefix at the moment, which works well too (and stays there on my HDD when I decide to switch distros).

The flatpak is cool though, didn't think they'd be going for that.


Last edited by STiAT on 11 May 2022 at 6:04 pm UTC

Hopefully at some point it won't be needed, if Square Enix can look at the issues with their official launcher

It works just fine on their targeted platform (Windows), why they should have?

Thing is; they announced they will be switching to new launcher for good like 1.5 years ago.

So if one party should be blamed here; i would say Wine/Proton.

Square Enix or any other company whom are pushing Windows builds do not have any obligations for SteamOS/Proton users.

Yes it works fine - to the point where a friend of mine had to make a workaround to copy a config file each time before starting the launcher because the launcher decided to delete it.

Another friend couldn't get it working with the new version on Windows - you know the environment that they officially support.

These are things they need to solve in general for all platforms. I'm generally not affected since I play on playstation but I have played for almost a year on linux as well at some point due to reasons. And we are talking about paying customers - you don't need to officially support but you can do minor tweaks that cost you next to nothing to make it work and thus gain good will and more paying customers(FFXIV is a sub based game).

I used the Windows version of this launcher when I played FFXIV, and even if the official launcher gets fixed up I highly recommend using this one anyways. The mod support it enables is stellar!

i wonder how well their custom version of wine works with reshade/gshade/stormshade/etc?

well after installing the launcher and getting the game running i can say it seems to run gshade. using the gshade installer bash script it seems the gshade setting menu does appear in the menu and the shaders seem to be running correctly though i was not able to test ingame, though it uses the wine installed on the system which cause a popup asking for wine-mono to be installed to the prefix though i do not know if this will cause problems later.
here is the command to run with the script(replace USER with your username)

WINEPREFIX="/home/USER/.xlcore/wineprefix/" ./gshade_installer.sh dx11 "/home/USER/.xlcore/ffxiv/game/ffxiv_dx11.exe"

Holy shit. This and the news on Nvidia open source driver? It really is the year of Linux Gaming. I'm looking to see if there's any other non-Steam games interested in packing themselves as a Flatpak (whether officially or not), because that really would be really accessible for everyone.

My "final bar" would be if Genshin could get some sort of Linux release, because then that's it, we've reached critical mass where the ball's rolling on their own.

here is the command to run with the script(replace USER with your username)

Perhaps change "/home/USER" to just $HOME then?


Last edited by fenglengshun on 12 May 2022 at 2:13 am UTC

Is this specific to the Steam version? Since I'm running the stand alone launcher via Lutris just fine at the moment.

My "final bar" would be if Genshin could get some sort of Linux release, because then that's it, we've reached critical mass where the ball's rolling on their own.

Can't be trusted to work forever, but search for "an anime game launcher" on gitlab. Will respect their wish to not link it here or mention the game by name.

My "final bar" would be if Genshin could get some sort of Linux release, because then that's it, we've reached critical mass where the ball's rolling on their own.

Can't be trusted to work forever, but search for "an anime game launcher" on gitlab. Will respect their wish to not link it here or mention the game by name.

Have tried that one, and it works, but it's still too much of a hassle for me - I can do it, I did it, the instruction was clear, but it's a hassle compared to just "adding non-Steam game" or just running a .exe.

Kinda like FFXIV before this new flatpak release of XIVLauncher. If there's a way to get it on flatpak then that's when it's actually accessible to most people IMHO. Obviously, though, that's not going to happen as long as the anti-cheat stays the way they are.

Might be of interest - Glorious Eggroll dropped a new GE-Proton 30 minutes ago:
https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases/tag/GE-Proton7-18

From the release notes:

proton bleeding edge updates, contains patches to fix official FFXIV Launcher (finally)
Additional notes:
- As before, you can still also use NOSTEAM=1 %command% to log in with a standalone non-steam account.
- The login and download progress bar both render at the bottom of the launcher, you'll need to scroll down.

To be honest, just after Denuvo, I'd say that games that launch launchers from Steam are next on my list of "do not buy". Launchers aren't quite as anti-consumer as Denuvo and its ilk, but as a general gamer, they add nothing but frustration to my overall experience of the game, and as a Linux gamer, they add uncertainty that I'll be able to play at all. Seems that only absolutely huge companies use them too - Blizzard, Microsft/Mojang, EA, Ubisoft, etc. I wonder if they even realise how much they're pissing their customers off?

Or is there a subset of gamers out there who actually click Play and they're pleased to see a launcher, interact with it and be pleased that this extra step exists between choosing to play a game, and actually fucking playing it.

/rant.