Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

As we speculated previously, Valve have now officially announced their new version of 'Steam Play' for Linux gaming using a modified distribution of Wine called Proton, which is available on GitHub.

What does it do? In short: it allows you to play Windows games on Linux, directly through the Steam client as if they were a Linux game.

What many people suspected turned out to be true, DXVK development was actually funded by Valve. They actually employed the DXVK developer since February 2018. On top of that, they also helped to fund: vkd3d (Direct3D 12 implementation based on Vulkan), OpenVR and Steamworks native API bridges, wined3d performance and functionality fixes for Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11 and more.

The amount of work that has gone into this—it's ridiculous.

Here's what they say it improves:

  • Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support.
  • DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, resulting in improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact.
  • Fullscreen support has been improved: fullscreen games will be seamlessly stretched to the desired display without interfering with the native monitor resolution or requiring the use of a virtual desktop.
  • Improved game controller support: games will automatically recognize all controllers supported by Steam. Expect more out-of-the-box controller compatibility than even the original version of the game.
  • Performance for multi-threaded games has been greatly improved compared to vanilla Wine.

It currently has a limited set of games that are supported, but even so it's quite an impressive list that they're putting out there. Which includes DOOM, FINAL FANTASY VI, Into The Breach, NieR: Automata, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and more. They will enable many more titles as progress on it all continues.

To be clear, this is available right now. To get it, you need to be in the Steam Client Beta.

There will be drawbacks, like possible performance issues and games that rely on some DRM might likely never be supported, but even so the amount of possibilities this opens up has literally split my head open with Thor's mighty hammer.

Read more here.

Holy shit. Please excuse the language, but honestly, I'm physically shaking right now I don't quite know how to process this.

Update #1: I spoke to Valve earlier, about how buying Windows games to play with this system counts, they said this:

Hey Liam, the normal algorithm is in effect, so if at the end of the two weeks you have more playtime on Linux, it'll be a Linux sale. Proton counts as Linux.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
151 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 came back to check 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. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
528 comments
Page: «53/53
  Go to:

Nevertheless Sep 1, 2018
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Nevertheless<snip>
True, Valve stand on the shoulders of giants, like we all do, whatever we do. What I find most important is: They let others stand on their backs too. Aside from their client, everything they did is freely usable by competitors or the public, a lot of it is even open source. They truely seem to live openness (yes, maybe mainly because that serves their cause, but hey..). What else could we want?

Well you did ask...

Personally, I think Valve is a good example of how using open source can benefit and grow a company. ARM are showing it as well in the embedded world, and have done for a long time, but desktop often lags behind, and gaming in particular seems to want an iron grip on everything these days. So bear in mind that I've nothing against Valve at all, despite what many may think!

But, what I want more is less reliance on Steam itself for games. I just want to use Steam as a way to download and keep games up to date. Basically like what GOG Galaxy is supposed to be. Optional extras on top for using some of the Steam stuff for multiplayer games, but I would like game developers to really make it an optional thing - so that I can run the game without Steam, at least in single player mode.
And a little less reliance on the "steam runtime" would be nice. Mostly because it's outdated and is the entire reason that I can't play a few games (including Deus Ex: MD, DoWII:Retribution, and a couple others).

Before anyone jumps up & down, that's all in the hands of developers. Valve don't stop any of the above actually. I mention because it's in relation to the use of Steam, and I still very much think that _Valve_ dictate what games I can play, and when, because of reliance on Steam. Being able to rollback versions mean an update that breaks a game could be undone for me, and not needing Steam means I'm in control of when and where I want to play a game. Which is why, despite all the benefits of Steam, I will buy single player games from GOG, given the choice.

....but again, nothing to do with Valve, everything with to do with developers & publishers.

I've got no problem with your opinion at all. It's reasonable enough!
Just out of curiosity.. You can't play several games because the Steam runtime is outdated and does not work properly with your distro, or because you replaced it with something different and the games won't work with that?

Distro I think. Some of the games are because of a version screwup with libssl I believe (it's not compatible with the rest of my system). Other games are a distro thing I think, and because I'm just the right size of crazy to stick with mesa-git (I _think_ that's why Rise of the Tomb Raider stopped working for me, but it was a Steam update and a mesa-git update at the same time, so can't be entirely sure).
Dawn of War II: Retribution (just that one it seems) has another incompatibility with it that causes it crash as soon as speaking starts. Library version, and I think it's again because of my choice of distro. Did talk to Feral about it, but they can't do much; they needed the library, and so had to choose a version for a more widespread distro (Ubuntu something-or-other) and were aware it might not work on other distros. This is fine with me; I accept a few compatibility problems when using Gentoo!

Because of some of these reasons, I actually play a few games with native versions through wine instead. Things like flatpak might make it unnecessary in the longer run - more complex games tend to pull in lots of libraries, and it makes it that much easier for something to break, so wine or flatpak, or whatever, might help out there.

--edit: Rise of the Tomb Raider does now spit out loads of SPIR-V warnings, so that's a strong indication that it's a mesa (radv) update.

I gave up on Gentoo years ago, mainly because I found it too complicated to keep working after updates. Live is generally harder upstream. I found out I'm more happy with (Ku,Xu)buntu, Debian or Mint.
But yes Flatpak might be a solution for you, at least for everything driver unrelated.
Mohandevir Sep 2, 2018
Quoting: YoRHa-2BHairworks doesn't work because it needs Stream Output. It's using standard Dx11 features.

Sweet! So we may see a working Proton/Wine/DXVK Hairworks if Vulkan implements a similar feature? So, does that means that you can't completely turn off Hairworks in Witcher3? Unless some other features make use of Stream Outputs?

Sorry, for the questions. I'm asking because I tought I turned off Hairworks (my GTX 960 can't handle it correctly, no matter the OS), but I still have the issues related to it. Stream Outputs seems to be the major roadblock for this game.

Thanks for your awesome work on DXVK.
Mohandevir Sep 2, 2018
Quoting: dubigrasu
Quoting: MohandevirBioshock Remastered works with texture issues (low rez?), but it's playable with good performances.

For the low res issues try the launch option:
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%

That does it. All that's left is a stuttering issue, but lowering the anisotropic filtering seems to be the solution.

Thanks!
Kejk Sep 3, 2018
Quoting: MohandevirI tested Quantum Break and it's a big thumbs up. I have to do a full run of all of these games to make sure there is no critical crashes, though.

While testing Quantum Break, can you check if you have similar issue as reported here?
https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/issues/559#issuecomment-413326057
sub Sep 3, 2018
Hi Liam, do you know what happens if you neither install nor play the game within the first two weeks?
Will the platform where you purchased the product count in this case?

QuoteUpdate #1: I spoke to Valve earlier, about how buying Windows games to play with this system counts, they said this:

Hey Liam, the normal algorithm is in effect, so if at the end of the two weeks you have more playtime on Linux, it'll be a Linux sale. Proton counts as Linux.
dubigrasu Sep 4, 2018
Quoting: Mohandevir
Quoting: dubigrasu
Quoting: MohandevirBioshock Remastered works with texture issues (low rez?), but it's playable with good performances.

For the low res issues try the launch option:
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%

That does it. All that's left is a stuttering issue, but lowering the anisotropic filtering seems to be the solution.

Thanks!
Try also the latest beta SteamPlay (3.7-5 beta), where DXVK was upgraded to 0.70.
(You probably know/did this already, but is worth mentioning)

One thing I noticed about the anisotropic filtering is that settings above 4 add a certain (barely visible) artifacts on highly lit materials, so yes, I prefer myself lower settings.
I'm not sure about the stutter, what exactly eliminates/minimize it, but I'm incline to believe that you just have to stubbornly play for few minutes through all that stutter and eventually it will settle down,(regardless of the settings).
Mohandevir Sep 4, 2018
Thanks! I do know, but I did not try 3.7.5 beta yet. Last time I tried, (3.7.4-beta) I had a hang in Witcher 3 so I decided to stick with the stable version.

As for anisotropic filtering, it doesn't totally eliminates stuttering but it's definitely much better when set to 1. At 4, it's barely playable, in my case.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 4 September 2018 at 1:10 pm UTC
kuhpunkt Aug 21, 2019
Happy Birthday, Proton!
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!
The comments on this article are closed.