Confused on Steam Play and Proton? Be sure to check out our guide.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has now released on Steam, and at least when it comes to AMD GPUs, it seems to be currently a no-go and just doesn't run with Proton on Steam Deck and Desktop Linux.

Testing on my Kubuntu 24.04 desktop across Proton 9 and Proton Experimental with an Radeon RX 6800 XT on Mesa 24.1.1 and Mesa 24.0.6 nothing makes it work. It will attempt to load, and then nothing happens and Steam reports it has just stopped running. Even trying the community-made GE-Proton 9-7, same thing again. There's a bug report on GitHub with others reporting the same.

It might be possible with an NVIDIA GPU, but I haven't tested.

As for Steam Deck, it just doesn't work there either from the Steam release. Testing again Proton 9 and Proton Experimental, it won't launch. Checked across SteamOS 3.5 Stable and the current SteamOS 3.6 Preview with the same issue. Even if it did run, the performance in the open world is simply unplayable constantly below 30FPS and a mess on Deck as shown in various videos of people who got the Epic or Ubisoft version of it to boot.

Hopefully at least for desktop Linux, a future Proton update might make it playable.

If you want to try your luck check out the Steam page.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
8 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
See more from me
14 comments
Page: «2/2
  Go to:

based Jun 20
They all come crawling back. Might consider if it it works.

EDT: oh wait, thats Ubisoft. Not spendig a dime if you'll just take it away in a month lol 🏴‍☠️


Last edited by based on 20 June 2024 at 3:25 am UTC
Pengling Jun 20
Quoting: robvvThere are a number of other cons, in particular: published by Ubisoft, contains Denuvo malware, always-online, in-game purchases and numerous bugs. Add to that a hefty price tag of £114.99 (without discount) if you want the Ultimate Edition (or £59.99 otherwise).
A potential other con for those who might not know this: Disney owns the Avatar franchise, and Disney is pretty greedy and poorly-behaved themselves. I guess that's why they keep teaming up with Ubislop.
jarhead_h Jun 21
The only good thing to come out of AVATAR is Mr. Plinkett's review of AVATAR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJarz7BYnHA
TheRiddick Jun 21
Could it be DRM misbehaving by freaking out in the background. I think this game has its own extra DRM layer on top of steam doesn't it?
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register


Or login with...
Sign in with Steam Sign in with Google
Social logins require cookies to stay logged in.

Buy Games
Buy games with our affiliate / partner links: