Wuthering Waves now Steam Deck Playable, and works on Desktop Linux with one tweak

After Wuthering Waves launched on Steam, it was left broken on all Linux platforms including SteamOS and Steam Deck but now it works.

The developer noted on their Steam page after release how they were working on it, and it seems they've recently updated their version of Anti-Cheat Expert (ACE) to allow it all to work.

For the Steam Deck / SteamOS, Valve have today officially bumped it up from Unsupported to Playable with Valve's testing using Proton 9.0-4. I've launched it on my Steam Deck LCD, and it does indeed load up fine now and you can get in-game.

Valve note a couple of issues though, preventing it being fully Verified:

• This game's launcher/setup tool may require the touchscreen or virtual keyboard, or have difficult to read text.
• Some functionality is not accessible when using the default controller configuration, requiring use of the touchscreen or virtual keyboard, or a community configuration.
• Entering some text requires manually invoking the on-screen keyboard.

It does have an Unreal Engine 4 prerequisites installer that needs the touch-screen or emulated mouse input on Steam Deck. Same with agreeing to their terms of service on the initial first run. Then you get to the login, and agreeing to other terms of services. After that, gamepad controls works fine.

As for Desktop Linux, we saw updates to GE-Proton only recently that enabled it to work too. Currently, Proton 9 and Proton Experimental do not work for it out of the box. However, Proton Experimental will allow you to get in if you set this launch option:

SteamOS=1 %command%

Otherwise, you can use the latest GE-Proton 10-9 that does it for you. See my full guide to installing GE-Proton for help.

Since it's not supported on Desktop Linux, it could potentially break again. But it works for now. Check out more on our dedicated anti-cheat page for Linux systems.