Competitive FPS 'FragPunk' has launched on Steam and works on Linux / Steam Deck

The new kid on the block here is FragPunk, an online competitive FPS that feels like a noisy flashy version of Counter-Strike blended with Valorant and the good news is the anti-cheat is enabled for Linux / Steam Deck.

Compatibility notes: this was tested on the latest Proton 9.0-4 on Desktop where it was fine, but on Steam Deck there's an initial problem with you seeing a black screen (with audio) in Gaming Mode. Remembering on Desktop I had to accept their Privacy Policy, I loaded FragPunk in Desktop Mode on Steam Deck where it worked - I could use the touch screen to accept it.

Then I switched back to Gaming Mode once that was done, where it then worked fine on Steam Deck. This was the exact same problem that Marvel Rivals had at launch.

It's free to play with some pretty in-your-face monetization but it's clearly quite popular. Although, it remains to be seen if it will manage to do what few do and actually stick around for a while. Are the gimmicks of it good enough to keep people interested? Maybe!

Here you unlock over 150 "Shard Cards" as you play more of the game. These give each team certain bonuses, with each player voting on what cards to add into the game at the start of each round. It makes it a little weird, silly and actually pretty refreshing. You could get more HP, a turtle on your back to block bullets,

Pictured - FragPunk on Desktop Linux

Nice to see the anti-cheat enabled too. It claims it's called "Phanuel Anti-Cheat" when you load it, but it seems it's actually a variant of NEAC, which works in other games with Proton like Marvel Rivals and NARAKA: BLADEPOINT. See more anti-cheat compatibility on our dedicated page.

Performance on my desktop (Kubuntu 24.10, AMD Ryzen 5800x, Radeon 6800XT) on max settings at 1440p seems pretty much perfect.

Pictured - FragPunk on Desktop Linux.​​​​

An issue I have observed on my desktop though is that the mouse likes to leave the screen. I had to set it to Fullscreen, instead of a Borderless Window to get around the issue. I thought perhaps Gamescope might help, but that then caused mouse input in matches to be broken.

The Steam Deck performance on Low is initially a bit all over the place though. It seems to default on Steam Deck to DirectX 11, so changing it to DirectX 12 and reloading then allowed me to use FSR 3 (FSR 3 seems locked behind DX12, you get FSR 2 for DX11). After that the performance with FSR 3 on Balanced during matches stuck pretty close to 60FPS.

Pictured - FragPunk on Steam Deck, FSR 3 Balanced

Changing it over to FSR 3 Quality, and it still performed well there too.

Pictured - FragPunk on Steam Deck, FSR 3 Quality

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