Have emailed them, I fully expect a no since their last PC release was Evolve which failed and was supposed to come to Linux but it never happened in the end. Sure would be nice to see it properly supported though for sure.

Quoting: Liam DaweHave emailed them, I fully expect a no since their last PC release was Evolve which failed and was supposed to come to Linux but it never happened in the end. Sure would be nice to see it properly supported though for sure.

Cheers Liam, I'd forgot they'd dome Evolve to be honest .

Shame as watching a few friends playing the Alpha test last night it looked a fun co-op L4D3 .

I do have the feeling that Linux gaming support is waning the last year or so

Quoting: pete910I do have the feeling that Linux gaming support is waning the last year or so

Well, it was never big to begin with. For various reasons we've gone over in other places - most porting companies only came along due to SteamOS / Steam Machines so we're finally seeing things go back to a more "normal" place without that push. We still see strong indie support but we never had AAA anyway. We're here to stay, as long as people want us to be.

The native support might be waning, but it is definitely on the rise via Proton. As much as I'd like to see more native ports, the shift away from native does actually make a lot of sense. It is much more realistic to make a single translation layer for all the games than to port every game individually. Makes even more sense considering that a sizeable number of native (or semi-native) ports were not that great to begin with.

Quoting: LinasAs much as I'd like to see more native ports, the shift away from native does actually make a lot of sense. It is much more realistic to make a single translation layer for all the games than to port every game individually.

Definitely not the way I want things to be forever though, otherwise as a platform we then do entirely depend on the Windows API and developers will continue to forget Linux exists...

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: LinasAs much as I'd like to see more native ports, the shift away from native does actually make a lot of sense. It is much more realistic to make a single translation layer for all the games than to port every game individually.

Definitely not the way I want things to be forever though, otherwise as a platform we then do entirely depend on the Windows API and developers will continue to forget Linux exists...

I am not so sure about that anymore.

Right now we are in a situation where most bigger games on Linux are ports from Windows anyway. Means that they still utilize various translation technologies, which are often homegrown and do not perform all that well. Having a standard set of highly optimized translation technologies (Wine, Proton, DXVK, etc.) can actually produce better results with less effort. If this evolves into a widely accepted standard porting kit, it may be a good thing.

We have already seen examples where unofficial implementations become widely recognized. For example Mono was an unofficial implementation of .NET Framework. Now it is a part of .NET Standard, and can run any .NET Framework application that conforms to this standard.

Likewise if you conform to the Proton API (not really a thing, I know) from the start, you get an application that can run on both Windows and Linux, but you only had to write it once. This is way more efficient than replacing large chunks of your application with something else. And it is only mildly inconvenient, because you cannot use all the API's that you are used to, but you can use most of them.

If I write an application with Proton as my target platform, is it native then? It's not an ELF binary, but neither are .NET Standard, or Java, or even Python applications, so you cannot use that to define the line between native and non-native.

You can even make a Java application completely unusable in Linux just by putting C:\foo\bar in you code. So coding in a cross-platform technology does not necessarily make it native either.

So is Proton-as-a-platform the future of gaming on Linux? I don't know. But I don't believe it will make developers to forget that Linux exists either. On the contrary, it may smoothen the entry into the Linux world for a lot of people.

P.S. Sorry OP for hijacking the thread. But you got the answer, so I hope it's ok?

We're talking Win32 and DirectX, two of the most tight and closed things for MSFT. It cannot become an official cross-platform standard or pulled on as if it is because it's a vastly different thing to Mono. Wine and Proton will always be a reimplementation and chasing after Windows.

Don't forget that B4B is a multiplayer game and might include some form of anticheat like EAC which could block Proton. Of course it's less likely for a co-op game to include such anticheat but it's still possible.

GeForce NOW might be available as an option, though. However, how well it performs varies by game.

I prefer to buy games that I can play on officially supported platforms. So far I have only seen one game on whole Steam with actual official Proton support, and even that was on beta stage. If B4B ends up being a good game I hope it'll come to Stadia in the absence of any form of official Linux support.