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For those of you sticking with the stable channel of Steam Play's Proton system, Valve have today rolled out all the recent beta changes for everyone.

Previously, you had access to Proton 3.7-3 which was what everyone used by default and you could also use the "Compatibility tool" dropdown in the Steam Play options section to switch to a beta to have the latest updates. Valve must now consider all the changes stable enough, as Proton 3.7-6 is now the default. There's another beta channel now, which is still currently at 3.7-6 but it should remain where the latest changes go.

There's quite a lot of improvements included since the initial release, like: automatic mouse capturing in fullscreen windows by default, performance improvements, certain game compatibility improvements, an updated build of DXVK, more display resolution support and so on. You can see the full changelog here.

If you missed them, we had an interview with the creator of DXVK which is part of Steam Play's Proton and an interview with Linux game porter Ethan Lee recently. We will have another article up having a chat with a few developers about it all in a few days. Given that we're approaching the weekend, it will probably be early next week. We have some interesting people lined up for it, stay tuned.

It's really fun to watch it progress, I'm pretty excited personally to see how it evolves over the next year. It's still early days, but it has been rather promising so far. How have you all been finding it so far? What has been your biggest surprise with it? Let us know in the comments.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam Play, Valve
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wojtek88 Sep 14, 2018
Quoting: officerniceWell... I just moved and won't have internet for a month. So I won't get to play with it until then... :( Gotta have fiber digged in. Looking forward to playing around with Skyrim and following the communities tests. :)
Where do you live? I live in Poland and if I am outside my home and want to play I can always share connection from my phone. And I have "unlimited" internet (full speed up to 100GB, then no more than 1mbps) on 2 phones for moreless 15 euro. Can't you share internet from your phone or is it expensive where you live?
Dunc Sep 14, 2018
Quoting: FeistHowever, if there´s even the *slightest* chanse that one or more of them will get a native port at some point, I´d naturally abstain from buying until I can buy native.
You can't go wrong with my five-year rule. Set a shorter “quarantine” period if you can't wait that long. :)

I have to admit though, I am tempted by a few titles that will almost certainly never have native ports. The fact that Proton counts as a Linux sale makes a difference, I think. It doesn't help the porters obviously, so like you I'll still give games that have any chance of being ported a wide berth (I'm a fan of driving games, and Codemasters have been a fairly safe bet in the past, for example), but I feel less bad about handing over money to the likes of Bethesda now that they'll know it's not just another Windows sale.
ewertonurias Sep 14, 2018
Steam Play <3

With this I bought games that I hadn't played for years:

-Bioshock;
-Bioshock 2;
-Borderlands;
-Cuphead;
-GTA San Andreas;
-The Last Remnant;
-Spore;
-The Witcher -Enhanced Edition-;
-Worms Armageddon;
-Worms Ultimate Mayhem.

All working perfectly with my Desktop NVIDIA!

I'm still selecting more games to buy

Many thanks to those responsible for this! Continue!
Cyba.Cowboy Sep 15, 2018
Quoting: GuestNo Feral port, no money. At some point, we need to support those who support us, dude. I love the Tomb Raider reboot games but won't play Shadow without a native port, unless 3 or more years pass and Feral decides not to port it.

This.

They've already ported the first two games, so it's pretty likely they'll port the third game at some point... I don't like the fact that they're (the reboot "Tomb Raider" games) not on GOG.com, but I'll absolutely buy the other two games because Feral look after us, so the least I can do is look after them, by purchasing a full-price copy of the second and third games (with only rare exceptions, I refuse to purchase Linux games at a discount)(unfortunately, I was still-booting when I bought the first game though!).


Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 15 September 2018 at 7:12 am UTC
wojtek88 Sep 15, 2018
Quoting: ewertonuriasSteam Play <3

With this I bought games that I hadn't played for years:

-Bioshock;
-Bioshock 2;
-Borderlands;
-Cuphead;
-GTA San Andreas;
-The Last Remnant;
-Spore;
-The Witcher -Enhanced Edition-;
-Worms Armageddon;
-Worms Ultimate Mayhem.

All working perfectly with my Desktop NVIDIA!

I'm still selecting more games to buy

Many thanks to those responsible for this! Continue!
Worms Armageddon is working perfectly for you? In fullscreen? I couldn't even switch resolution from default one (640×480)...

Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy
Quoting: GuestNo Feral port, no money. At some point, we need to support those who support us, dude. I love the Tomb Raider reboot games but won't play Shadow without a native port, unless 3 or more years pass and Feral decides not to port it.

This.

They've already ported the first two games, so it's pretty likely they'll port the third game at some point... I don't like the fact that they're (the reboot "Tomb Raider" games) not on GOG.com, but I'll absolutely buy the other two games because Feral look after us, so the least I can do is look after them, by purchasing a full-price copy of the second and third games (with only rare exceptions, I refuse to purchase Linux games at a discount)(unfortunately, I was still-booting when I bought the first game though!).
In theory I agree with you guys. Feral is a company, that we owe most of the AAA titles. We need to support them as much as possible.
But...
Without clear agenda of releases it's not ok to expect from us that we're not going to buy new games, that just works, because they may have port in next 2 or 3 years.
We need to adapt to new reality, so as Feral.
I also don't like "No Tux, no Bucks" approach for Proton titles at the moment. Valve invested money in Proton / Wine / DXVK. Now very often I read that people are going to use Steam Play only for titles that they already have in their libraries. Personally I think this is the worst approach that you can imagine. Of course while testing Proton that's fine, but when it's released, only buying new titles that are meant to be run on Proton will generate real money return for Valve's investment.
Sure, we can buy 3 years old titles to achieve that, but very often 10 titles that are 3-5 years old will cost less than just released game.

So maybe it's good idea to buy few titles that are not so old and run well with Proton instead of writing everywhere "No Tux, no Bucks".
Smoke39 Sep 15, 2018
Quoting: wojtek88
Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy
Quoting: GuestNo Feral port, no money. At some point, we need to support those who support us, dude. I love the Tomb Raider reboot games but won't play Shadow without a native port, unless 3 or more years pass and Feral decides not to port it.

This.

They've already ported the first two games, so it's pretty likely they'll port the third game at some point... I don't like the fact that they're (the reboot "Tomb Raider" games) not on GOG.com, but I'll absolutely buy the other two games because Feral look after us, so the least I can do is look after them, by purchasing a full-price copy of the second and third games (with only rare exceptions, I refuse to purchase Linux games at a discount)(unfortunately, I was still-booting when I bought the first game though!).
In theory I agree with you guys. Feral is a company, that we owe most of the AAA titles. We need to support them as much as possible.
But...
Without clear agenda of releases it's not ok to expect from us that we're not going to buy new games, that just works, because they may have port in next 2 or 3 years.
We need to adapt to new reality, so as Feral.
I also don't like "No Tux, no Bucks" approach for Proton titles at the moment. Valve invested money in Proton / Wine / DXVK. Now very often I read that people are going to use Steam Play only for titles that they already have in their libraries. Personally I think this is the worst approach that you can imagine. Of course while testing Proton that's fine, but when it's released, only buying new titles that are meant to be run on Proton will generate real money return for Valve's investment.
Sure, we can buy 3 years old titles to achieve that, but very often 10 titles that are 3-5 years old will cost less than just released game.

So maybe it's good idea to buy few titles that are not so old and run well with Proton instead of writing everywhere "No Tux, no Bucks".
Valve doesn't care which or how many games you buy, they only care how much you spend. They get the same cut either way if you spend $60 on one Windows game or 6 ten-dollar Linux games. The purpose of Proton isn't to drive sales per se, it's to make Linux a more credible threat to Microsoft. If Proton emboldens someone to uninstall Windows, or to just use it less, or to try Linux for the first time, those are all big returns on Valve's investment, even if they never buy another Windows game.

I'm not necessarily saying you should never buy newer Windows games to play on Proton -- it's up to everyone to choose how strict they wanna be about supporting Linux devs -- I'm just saying you don't need to overthink "repaying" Valve for Proton.
wojtek88 Sep 15, 2018
Quoting: Smoke39
Quoting: wojtek88
Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy
Quoting: GuestNo Feral port, no money. At some point, we need to support those who support us, dude. I love the Tomb Raider reboot games but won't play Shadow without a native port, unless 3 or more years pass and Feral decides not to port it.

This.

They've already ported the first two games, so it's pretty likely they'll port the third game at some point... I don't like the fact that they're (the reboot "Tomb Raider" games) not on GOG.com, but I'll absolutely buy the other two games because Feral look after us, so the least I can do is look after them, by purchasing a full-price copy of the second and third games (with only rare exceptions, I refuse to purchase Linux games at a discount)(unfortunately, I was still-booting when I bought the first game though!).
In theory I agree with you guys. Feral is a company, that we owe most of the AAA titles. We need to support them as much as possible.
But...
Without clear agenda of releases it's not ok to expect from us that we're not going to buy new games, that just works, because they may have port in next 2 or 3 years.
We need to adapt to new reality, so as Feral.
I also don't like "No Tux, no Bucks" approach for Proton titles at the moment. Valve invested money in Proton / Wine / DXVK. Now very often I read that people are going to use Steam Play only for titles that they already have in their libraries. Personally I think this is the worst approach that you can imagine. Of course while testing Proton that's fine, but when it's released, only buying new titles that are meant to be run on Proton will generate real money return for Valve's investment.
Sure, we can buy 3 years old titles to achieve that, but very often 10 titles that are 3-5 years old will cost less than just released game.

So maybe it's good idea to buy few titles that are not so old and run well with Proton instead of writing everywhere "No Tux, no Bucks".
Valve doesn't care which or how many games you buy, they only care how much you spend. They get the same cut either way if you spend $60 on one Windows game or 6 ten-dollar Linux games. The purpose of Proton isn't to drive sales per se, it's to make Linux a more credible threat to Microsoft. If Proton emboldens someone to uninstall Windows, or to just use it less, or to try Linux for the first time, those are all big returns on Valve's investment, even if they never buy another Windows game.

I'm not necessarily saying you should never buy newer Windows games to play on Proton -- it's up to everyone to choose how strict they wanna be about supporting Linux devs -- I'm just saying you don't need to overthink "repaying" Valve for Proton.
In general we agree. But you talk now only about long time plan.

We, as Linux gamers, do not apply to long time plan, as we are already on board, Microsoft decisions won't hurt the marketshare we provide.

So there are 2 ways that we can support Valve at the moment:
1) Buy games on Steam directly. No matter if it is Linux native, proton based, EON wrapped, wine wrapped version.
2) Talk to our friends and recommend them to try Linux.

My problem is, that I personally won't do #2 as it was always problematic for me. There were several issues - I convinced teacher in my family to switch to Ubuntu.
After one month she was complaining about not working copy / paste, printing in Word under Wine which was a blocker (seriously).
My girlfriend had problems with Photoshop. Few colleagues resigned because of missing games (all this was around 2013 when I was doing final switch).

So I recommend we do buy games :)
Cyba.Cowboy Sep 15, 2018
Quoting: Smoke39The purpose of Proton isn't to drive sales per se, it's to make Linux a more credible threat to Microsoft. If Proton emboldens someone to uninstall Windows, or to just use it less, or to try Linux for the first time, those are all big returns on Valve's investment, even if they never buy another Windows game.

The obvious purpose of Proton is to push Steam Machines and SteamOS... If all (or the majority of) Windows games "just work" under SteamOS, then there's even less reasons for Steam users to be using a Microsoft Windows-based operating system and more reason for them to be using SteamOS - which means more direct control/influence of PC gamers by Valve Software.

Realistically, SteamOS in its current state is a solution suitable only for Linux fanboys... With Proton, well it's potentially something that could compete directly with PCs and every console on the market.

That's an awfully big slice of the gaming pie that any company with half a brain would like a piece of...


Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 15 September 2018 at 3:50 pm UTC
Projectile Vomit Sep 15, 2018
I love Proton! I really hope the developers are able to see how many Linux users are enjoying Proton. Yay, Skyrim and Neverwinter (the MMO- yes, NWN Enhanced is amazing, as well, but it works native, which is great, but that's not what this conversation is about, so...)!

I have also started checking out the free to play games that I couldn't play before. Path Of Exile is pretty damn cool, if you're into MMORPG-types. It has a very Diabloesque look and feel to it.
Purple Library Guy Sep 17, 2018
Quoting: lucifertdark
Quoting: Dunc
Quoting: lucifertdark32bit Prefixes for those games that absolutely need it.
.NET working in 64bit prefixes if possible, we wouldn't need 32bit prefixes that way.
Definitely. .NET's a big sticking-point for a lot of games. And it really shouldn't be.

QuoteNo more 0byte downloads every time I fire up Steam.
I was getting a lot of those for a couple of months before Proton dropped. Whether it's related or not, I don't know. But they do need to figure out a better way of updating Proton itself.

QuoteAn easier way to configure prefixes than Winetricks, or a proper gui for it that makes sense.
I don't know if that'll happen, given that the whole point is to make it seamless so you don't have to configure anything.

Something in the Beta channel, to help users try out and suggest fixes, wouldn't be a bad idea though. But I expect Valve probably assume that anyone doing that kind of thing already knows how Winetricks works.
Thinking about it, perhaps they could find a way to integrate what Winetricks & Winecfg do into Steam directly but keep it under an advanced settings menu that only shows up if you choose the Proton Beta.
OK, I'm just imagining this backend data-gathering thing. Like, they do what you're saying there, right? And then they have a database so when anyone uses the options it (leaving them anonymous) records what options people tried for what games and how long they played after. So then, like, you'd create this information base where you could tell what people tried that resulted in them actually playing the game and you could record that as like a default thing that the next iteration of Proton could do to make the games work.
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