As of January 2024 - 75 of the Top 100 most played Steam games work on Steam Deck

25% native. \o/

Good to see.

EDIT: Although it was 31 last year. :(


Last edited by WorMzy on 5 January 2024 at 10:02 pm UTC

So I make it 4 games that are both Unsupported (but not because of Anti-cheat) and Bronze or worse. So, 4 games out of 100 that just don't work because they don't work. A couple more if you count Unsupported + Silver. That's not bad. Shows that most of the problem is Anti-cheat, and it's a significant problem.

and Rocket League even though you can no longer get it on Steam

This is my most-played game. Probably 200 hours this year... Supposedly they're going to add anti-cheat in addition to killing the Linux version a few years back.

Despite playing this game a lot, I don't like it very much anymore. I kinda play it mainly because I can't be bothered to boot into my Windows partition...

I'm really not sure what that says about me but it can't be anything good.

Shows that most of the problem is Anti-cheat, and it's a significant problem.

I agree with this based on my small sample size. The really popular multiplayer games fall into this category.

So I make it 4 games that are both Unsupported (but not because of Anti-cheat) and Bronze or worse. So, 4 games out of 100 that just don't work because they don't work. A couple more if you count Unsupported + Silver. That's not bad. Shows that most of the problem is Anti-cheat, and it's a significant problem.

Just spelling it out: the thing that makes it a significant problem is that there's nothing we can do about it.

Wrong file format, using APIs we don't have? We can fix that. Abusing those APIs or being otherwise broken or janky? We can work around that.

But embedding itself in a kernel that we don't have to detect the most miniscule differences between its running environment and a specific known version of exactly Windows so that it can refuse to run? There's nothing we can do about that - and we also don't want to make it easier for people to cheat. We're entirely at the mercy of game publishers that don't give a fig about us, and who aren't at all interested in detecting cheaters on their servers rather than looking for software tampering on other people's computers - which would remove the issue entirely.

As I remember, Civ5 have native Linux version. I think, I even use native version on my Linux PC.

I figured it's been a while since I've done this, so I decided to have a look again.

 
Year     Total   Linux    Proportion 
2012       323      86      26.6%
2013       460     180      39.1%
2014      1601     495      30.9%
2015      2638     847      32.1%
2016      4279    1059      24.7%
2017      6146    1169      19.0%
2018      8002    1211      15.1%
2019      7691     971      12.6%
2020      9468    1105      11.7%
2021     11200    1202      10.7%
2022     12277    1426      11.6%
2023     14640    1625      11.1%
(this is games released each year, and how many of them have a Linux build, per SteamDB)

Looks like our share of developer attention has stabilised following the plummet after the Steam Machines, but there's not enough signal there to say if it's going up again. Hopefully it will pick up as our market share picks up.

There really are an awful lot of games on Steam - excluding future games and including games prior to 2012 there are 99,226 - of which 13,332 have Linux builds for an aggregate of 13.4%

Anti-cheat can get a lot worse. If you want to see how, take a look at Android.

A lot of Android games don't bother directly detecting cheating: instead they just try to detect rooting. If you have root access, they assume you're cheating. If you don't, they assume you're not cheating. Worse still, it isn't just multiplayer games that use "anti-cheat:" publishers of single player games with in-app-purchases don't want you to cheat, because then you are less likely to buy in-game stuff with real money.

It may just be a matter of time before a big PC game publisher decides the solution to cheating is to require you to be in "S Mode" (i.e. only have software from the Microsoft Store). That wouldn't just mean the end of WINE: It would mean the end of Steam and all other stores as distribution platforms for AAA games.

I really hope I'm wrong.

It may just be a matter of time before a big PC game publisher decides the solution to cheating is to require you to be in "S Mode" (i.e. only have software from the Microsoft Store). That wouldn't just mean the end of WINE: It would mean the end of Steam and all other stores as distribution platforms for AAA games.

I doubt there are too many publishers who want to limit their market to people willing to get everything from the Microsoft Store. Microsoft has tried to push that many times, and it fails miserably every time.

Anti-cheat can get a lot worse. If you want to see how, take a look at Android.

A lot of Android games don't bother directly detecting cheating: instead they just try to detect rooting. If you have root access, they assume you're cheating. If you don't, they assume you're not cheating. Worse still, it isn't just multiplayer games that use "anti-cheat:" publishers of single player games with in-app-purchases don't want you to cheat, because then you are less likely to buy in-game stuff with real money.

It may just be a matter of time before a big PC game publisher decides the solution to cheating is to require you to be in "S Mode" (i.e. only have software from the Microsoft Store). That wouldn't just mean the end of WINE: It would mean the end of Steam and all other stores as distribution platforms for AAA games.

I really hope I'm wrong.

I wouldn't be surpirsed if Valve were working on some sort of Anti-cheat product to sell or provide to developers to avoid scenarios like this.

Anti-cheat can get a lot worse. If you want to see how, take a look at Android.

A lot of Android games don't bother directly detecting cheating: instead they just try to detect rooting. If you have root access, they assume you're cheating. If you don't, they assume you're not cheating. Worse still, it isn't just multiplayer games that use "anti-cheat:" publishers of single player games with in-app-purchases don't want you to cheat, because then you are less likely to buy in-game stuff with real money.

It may just be a matter of time before a big PC game publisher decides the solution to cheating is to require you to be in "S Mode" (i.e. only have software from the Microsoft Store). That wouldn't just mean the end of WINE: It would mean the end of Steam and all other stores as distribution platforms for AAA games.

I really hope I'm wrong.

I wouldn't be surpirsed if Valve were working on some sort of Anti-cheat product to sell or provide to developers to avoid scenarios like this.

They already have one. VAC.

Anti-cheat can get a lot worse. If you want to see how, take a look at Android.

A lot of Android games don't bother directly detecting cheating: instead they just try to detect rooting. If you have root access, they assume you're cheating. If you don't, they assume you're not cheating. Worse still, it isn't just multiplayer games that use "anti-cheat:" publishers of single player games with in-app-purchases don't want you to cheat, because then you are less likely to buy in-game stuff with real money.

It may just be a matter of time before a big PC game publisher decides the solution to cheating is to require you to be in "S Mode" (i.e. only have software from the Microsoft Store). That wouldn't just mean the end of WINE: It would mean the end of Steam and all other stores as distribution platforms for AAA games.

I really hope I'm wrong.

I wouldn't be surpirsed if Valve were working on some sort of Anti-cheat product to sell or provide to developers to avoid scenarios like this.

They already have one. VAC.

That's not really what I meant. As far as I am aware, Valve don't license VAC to other developers?

Anti-cheat can get a lot worse. If you want to see how, take a look at Android.

A lot of Android games don't bother directly detecting cheating: instead they just try to detect rooting. If you have root access, they assume you're cheating. If you don't, they assume you're not cheating. Worse still, it isn't just multiplayer games that use "anti-cheat:" publishers of single player games with in-app-purchases don't want you to cheat, because then you are less likely to buy in-game stuff with real money.

It may just be a matter of time before a big PC game publisher decides the solution to cheating is to require you to be in "S Mode" (i.e. only have software from the Microsoft Store). That wouldn't just mean the end of WINE: It would mean the end of Steam and all other stores as distribution platforms for AAA games.

I really hope I'm wrong.

I wouldn't be surpirsed if Valve were working on some sort of Anti-cheat product to sell or provide to developers to avoid scenarios like this.

They already have one. VAC.

That's not really what I meant. As far as I am aware, Valve don't license VAC to other developers?

It sounds like any Steam developer that makes use of Steamworks APIs can integrate VAC into their game: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/anticheat/vac_integration

Games that use VAC: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?category1=998&category2=8