Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: whizseThey are still focusing on testing games owned by Deck reservation holders right? So I guess peoples Steam libraries are quite random?

Oh, that's an interesting thought. Did Valve say that somewhere? Would make a lot of sense.

I think they mentioned it with the initial Deck Verified announcement, and Lawrence Yang talked about it during the dev conference, (with the implication that it's using playtime, wishlists, and upcoming games where there's lots of playtime for previous games, from people that have or have ordered the Deck) but it's wrapped up in the documentation as games that are "important to Steam Deck customers."

QuoteWhen Valve identifies a game as important to Steam Deck customers, we may sometimes add games to the review queue with no need for you to submit a manual request. You'll receive a notification when this happens.

There's also a more generic "heuristics" route for a game getting on the testing list, and at developer request.

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Quoting: HoriI would guess that the version of Proton they tested them with is way ahead the publicly released versions. That's just an assumption though.

Not way ahead, but ahead. The testing report that they send to devs specifies the Proton version, and one that was made public showed that it was using Proton 7.0-1 before that was released to everyone.

What I suspect they'll do, because it's what I'd do, is only verify against the latest internal non-experimental version (because experimental is a moving target) then set the game to use that verified version of Proton in the game's manifest so that everyone uses that automatically. If the game gets retested (because of an update or whatever) verify against the new latest non-experimental version, and update the manifest to refer to that version if it passes. Games that are in flux get the benefits of Proton improvements over time, and unchanging games get the version of Proton that it's known works. While minimising the combinatorial problem of testing every game against every version of Proton forever.

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Quoting: CyrilI'm not usually much on that side, but I think Proton, in this case, just killed the Linux release and a studio who has been a great Linux friendly from the past 10 years.
It's a bit heartbreaking.

In this case, I think it was more that Epic killed the Linux release (as seems to have happened with other games). Supergiant's previous Linux versions were done by Ethan Lee rather than as multiplatform development with in-house expertise, and what's the point of contracting out for that when your game's Epic-exclusive & Epic don't sell Linux games?

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Quoting: slaapliedjeReally the thing that could prevent normal Linux users from playing Deck games is if the controller was very much tied to the inputs the Deck has, which is similar, but not quite the same as say the Steam Controller. So there is always the potential of 'plays best with X controller' type thing.

Valve are also covering that aspect. Your game needs the touchscreen or the invoke-keyboard button (which other controllers don't have)?: no green checkmark for you.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou'd think just saying, like the developers of that one game with an article today (um, Thumper) did, that it's supported on Steam Deck but not on Linux generally, would be enough to deal with that, without going to the trouble of actually blocking people from using your game.

For sure, and as more developers follow Valve's guidance of installing and using actual Linux to test with I think there won't even be much of that as time goes on. But game devs in particular do find themselves drawn to This One Weird Trick and are often pressed for time.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI don't see what would be in it for anyone doing that, anyway. "We've released it for the Deck, but wait! What if some Linux user goes and buys it? They might give us money and play the game, and then where would we be?!"

The thing that game developers are nervous about is someone installing it on some obscure and broken distro, it not working, and then them leaving a negative review or wanting a bug fix. The developers know that they don't want negative reviews and don't think that they'll want to do a bug fix, and aren't experienced enough to judge whether distro fragmentation or single-distro breakage are widespread problems.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeI think No Man's Sky was another one of those 'we are going to release a Linux version!' and then they never did.

I think you could be right, before the Sony deal, but lots of things were said in that period that weren't in the launch version. They have been testing and fixing things for the game running under Proton for quite a few years now, though.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeMy only real fear would be if companies started releasing 'native' versions for the Deck, and figure out some sort of check so you can't run it on normal Linux desktops with a game pad.

It wouldn't be especially hard to do, but it would make Valve cross. Valve have lots of ways they could dissuade that behaviour, but simply saying, "this makes us cross" would probably be sufficient.

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QuoteOn their special update page, the title for the Steam Deck section is "Native Steam Deck Support", although it's not clear what kind of "Native" they actually mean - as right now there's still only the Windows build on Steam.

I expect that we'll get this kind of muddled language from developers for a while, where they're contemplating the Deck as a console and not thinking about Linux at all. Hopefully it'll get cleared up in time with more experience, more direct testing, and more marketshare for Linux as a gaming platform.

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Quoting: rustybroomhandleOf the Deck Verified titles, some games with native ports still show Proton as the recommended runtime. Falconeer, for example.

According to Pierre-Loup Griffais, initial tests didn't test the native version first, and they've subsequently fixed that. Those games would need to go through the testing process again for the corrected policy.

QuoteIn this case, it seems to be a testing datapoint from before a change in process where native versions are tested first, if available. You can get it re-reviewed, see the bits in the doc at the end there: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/

Twitter link

It's something that I've grumbled about previously, so I'm glad they've fixed it.

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