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Valve put out another Steam Beta Client with minor Steam Play changes

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Valve are pushing out updates rather often to the Steam client lately, with the fourth this month now out.

On top of removing Steam Play options for Mac and Windows, along with a Steam Input bug fix we also saw these updated to the Steam Play integration on Linux:

  • Fixed an issue with invalid Steam Play tool selections if user had previously opted in to enable Steam Play for all titles. (Note: this will cause a one-time reset of all Steam Play global and per-app selections to the default state).
  • Added the ability to force Steam Play compatibility tools for non-Steam game shortcuts

Nice to see the ability added for shortcuts, for games from other sources you add into Steam. Could be pretty handy.

Note: Apparently there's an issue where it can remove your Steam Play games and redownload them. A fix is to set Steam to use Steam Play for all titles and restart the client as soon as possible after updating. You can also try it in offline mode, to prevent any downloads. 

See the announcement here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Emazza Jan 19, 2019
I've been hit by the issue of continuous re-downloading.

MHWorld kept re-downloading again and again - I've now tried to uninstall and reinstall.
Thankfully I'm on a 1 GBps - again, for this to fully work had to disable IPv6 and enable only IPv4 (another bug/issue with latest steam release - but this may be due to ISP problems?)

Not the smoothest beta released :)
dpanter Jan 19, 2019
READ THIS QUOTE PPL
Quoting: NoXPhasmaFellow Linux users:

Watch out, you might lose gamedata if you've had set to use Proton for all games and/or use Proton for native games! Steam is currently re downloading a lot of games for me and other people report the same.

When you start steam after the update, all Proton specific settings are set to default and by that it will delete all Windows games and redownload the Linux files of native games you set to use with proton.

To reduce the amount of lost data, when you start the client after the update, go straight to the Steam settings > Steam Play and enable Proton for all titles and restart the client. The faster you can do that, the less data steam is able to delete.

After the restart you also need to go to the native games you use with Proton and set them to use Proton again, also restart Steam after that.
(Emphasis mine)

Oh wow, that's pretty brutal. :O


Last edited by dpanter on 19 January 2019 at 11:22 am UTC
Naib Jan 19, 2019
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well 70gig of redownload has started :( my 10M line is being pushed but it is what it is· As long as these are few and far between.
dpanter Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: EmazzaI've been hit by the issue of continuous re-downloading.
I couldn't switch from native to Proton with Dying Light, it just kept re-downloading again and again. I had to uninstall the game and clear download cache (Steam menu/Settings/Downloads) before it could be installed properly.
Liam Dawe Jan 19, 2019
This is what a beta is for though remember, here be dragons.
eldaking Jan 19, 2019
QuoteAdded the ability to force Steam Play compatibility tools for non-Steam game shortcuts

Again I am pleased - I would say pleasantly surprised, but it is not that surprising by now - by Steam making it easier for people to play non-Steam games. :)
Skiski Jan 19, 2019
I've reanabled steam-play for all games after this beta and now, Steam wants to re-download most of my "windows" games. Is there a way to avoid that? Because they are still on my HDD. And that's a lot of Go!
Kristian Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: eldaking
QuoteAdded the ability to force Steam Play compatibility tools for non-Steam game shortcuts

Again I am pleased - I would say pleasantly surprised, but it is not that surprising by now - by Steam making it easier for people to play non-Steam games. :)

Valve is basically the most benevolent DRM provider out there. If it wasn't for the DRM I suppose only Free Software only people would have anything to complain about at all. If GOG adopted Valve's attitude about everything else(while keeping their DRM free stance) or Valve adopted GOG's DRM free stance(While still keeping all their work on Linux, Proton, DXVK etc) it would be the best possible combination.


Last edited by Kristian on 19 January 2019 at 12:10 pm UTC
dpanter Jan 19, 2019
Quoting: SkiskiI've reanabled steam-play for all games after this beta and now, Steam wants to re-download most of my "windows" games. Is there a way to avoid that? Because they are still on my HDD. And that's a lot of Go!
Same here, but when I had checked all the settings again and allowed the updates to run, they just completed instantly (similar to the old 0-byte ones) so nothing new was actually downloaded.
WorMzy Jan 19, 2019
I think it's borked the steam servers, I have a load of pending downloads, but nothing's actually downloading because "content servers unreachable". :(
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