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After curiosity got the better of me, I decided to have a little fun checking out just how many popular games are available officially on Linux.

We’ve tracked before how many Linux games there are, we often give our opinion on various games in reviews, thoughts posts and so on. However, what about looking at how many Linux games there are as a whole when compared with the most highly rated games on Steam? Interested in the figure myself, I’ve taken a look over it all tonight. Thanks to the efforts of the Steam 250 website which tracks it automatically, we can find this out reasonably easily.

Before getting into it, just a note: I’m only counting games that are officially supported with a Linux icon. There may be some that have a Linux version but they’re not advertised on the Steam store for whatever reason, just to keep it simple.

As it turns out, there’s quite a lot! A lot higher than I was personally expecting it to be, it’s one of those times where I’m happily wrong. Overall, out of the 250 most highly rated titles on Steam as reviewed by users, 132 of them have official Linux support. Compared with Mac which has 156, we’re not far off there at all. Let's just remember how small the Linux gaming platform is compared to Windows, over 50% there really is impressive.

There are a couple titles like Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter and Left 4 Dead where we have the later versions officially. We have all the Serious Sam games on the revamped Fusion version and Left 4 Dead 2, so there’s possibly others like that.

Now, let’s take into account the titles in that top 250 list that do not have official Linux support, what about Steam Play? When comparing titles to their rating on ProtonDB where they have a Platinum rating overall (meaning they should “Just Work”™) that’s an additional 21 titles. These include games like Castle Crashers, Beat Saber, Orcs Must Die! and so on.

To put it all together then—Linux titles that are officially supported plus Steam Play titles with a “Platinum” rating together make 153 out of 250 of the most highly rated Steam games. Overall, that's a pretty decent number of highly rated games available to play on Linux.

There could be even more there, some titles on ProtonDB didn’t have enough reports to have a rating. I’m still surprised DOOM only has a “Gold” rating there, as it’s basically flawless for me outside of one windowing issue that was solved with a simple ALT+Enter to re-do the fullscreen.

The list is subject to change obviously, that’s just the state of things in January 2019. I will probably take another look at the end of the year to see how far things have moved either way if anyone is interested in me doing so.

Ps. By doing this it seems I helped the Top 250 website find a bug too.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam
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About the author -
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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.
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Beamboom Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: Purple Library GuyHang on, though--it's the same problem you'd have under Windows, and the same workaround you'd have to use in Windows. How can something whose behaviour is identical to the Windows version not be platinum?

ahhh sorry, I totally misunderstood that post.
Thanks for the correction. :)
ageres Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: kuhpunktWe just don't know if it's a permanent thing. If sales will be crap on their own store they might see themselves in a position where they "have" to go to Steam to reach the people over there.
I don't think Fallout 76 has good sales, but still it's not on Steam. Many EA games failed but didn't go to Steam. We all know what publishers say when their games get poor sales: "should have used more DRM, will do in the future." They never say that it's because their games are crap or noone wants to use their stupid launchers.
x_wing Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: x_wingMany games that works flawlessly with proton are reported as just "gold" or "silver"][...] the game works flawlessly after running the windows workaround .

That's not flawless, that's "working after applying workarounds", that's gold or even silver.

See, that's the problem with those reports, claims of platinum status, claimed by experienced wine users. That's what leads to disappointment after disappointment by newbies who can't even get to the main menu screen before something shitty happens.
This is in fact why wine is given up by so many, myself included.

But in this case, is a problem that anyone would get even on Windows.
kuhpunkt Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: ageres
Quoting: kuhpunktWe just don't know if it's a permanent thing. If sales will be crap on their own store they might see themselves in a position where they "have" to go to Steam to reach the people over there.
I don't think Fallout 76 has good sales, but still it's not on Steam. Many EA games failed but didn't go to Steam. We all know what publishers say when their games get poor sales: "should have used more DRM, will do in the future." They never say that it's because their games are crap or noone wants to use their stupid launchers.

There was a 3 month difference between Elder Scrolls Online launching on Bethesda.net and Steam. Does it mean Fallout 76 will end up on Steam? No. But there is precedent with 2 games.
danniello Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: HoriI agree that we should compare it against the version of Windows that those games were designed for, but many games were designed for Vista or 7, and don't work in 10, which begs the question why do they still sport the Windows icon on their store page. Especially since Steam doesn't support Windows Vista anymore. If a game ONLY works on Vista, and no other version supported by Steam, it should lose its icon.
But this is a recent change (Vista being unsupported) and I trust Valve will do something about this. At least in the meantime, we can ask for a refund if there's any problem, so that's nice.
Valve will do nothing. Already there are plenty of games that in theory cannot be legally played. Max Payne for example - Windows XP only. Steam is already officially not supported in Windows XP... In my opinion such games should be released like it is on GOG - without Steam DRM. But Valve do not want publish games outside Steam service. Probably they even cannot do it because it would be considered as precedent. In theory Steam it is not game shop - it is subscription based service (with one time per game payment - at least for now). So they cannot publish download version of service based applications.

Unsupported Windows games is one thing, other is very bad state of unsupported/abandoned Linux ports. Like Ticket to Ride - native port not updated from very long time. Linux version should be removed and Steam Proton should be the only option, but it is publisher decision. Publishers prefer to leave Linux icon - probably because they do not care. Plus more system icons looks better from marketing point of view, so they do not care even more.
mylka Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: ageres
Quoting: mylkais there a way to sort protondb by release date?
rage 2 uses same engine as just cause 4 and should also work with proton
doom eternal should be the same as doom and work with proton
These games won't be sold on Steam, so no Proton for them. I'm sure Bethesda will try to shove as much DRM into them as they can, and it could prevent from running in Wine.

i dont think so. maybe at the beginning, but later also on steam
i like rage, but its not a must have, so i can wait and get it cheaper on steam

Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: mylkahavent they said, that they finished cyberpunk already and are just bugfixing?

Where did you hear that?

rocketbeans.tv
i think they said it at gamescom. they are friends with fabian döhla, who works for CDPR
ageres Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: kuhpunktThere was a 3 month difference between Elder Scrolls Online launching on Bethesda.net and Steam. Does it mean Fallout 76 will end up on Steam? No. But there is precedent with 2 games.
Quake Champions and TESO are online-only games, they must have big player bases, so Bethesda had to release them on Steam. Maybe Fallout 76 will appear on Steam for the same reason (but who would buy it there and not refund?) but I don't think Rage 2 and Doom Eternal will. Valve lowered their share from 30% to 20% though for big games, maybe Bethesda would find it more profitable than avoiding Steam.
Quoting: dannielloMax Payne for example - Windows XP only.
Actually, Max Payne is glitchy even on XP (that infamous sound problem), it works fine only on Windows 2000 (and Linux lol), but with a community patch it runs without any problems on Win7 and 8 too.
wvstolzing Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: dannielloMost ratings are off, actually.

In fact, there are games that are reported as Gold / Platinum when they should be silver (they have functionality that doesn't work and cannot be fixed).

Protondb should probably give the user a more fine-grained questionary, and then calculate the final rating itself. The questions should have concrete answers; like: does the controller work? how much fps do you get at what settings?, etc.

Currently, some users put relevant info like that in their commentary; but it has absolutely no effect on the overall score. The overall score should reveal something about the level of support the game has; though currently it's just an average of what people felt like clicking when they were filling in the form, sort of.
jarhead_h Jan 7, 2019
So far the number of games that just work with SteamPlay has been going up quite a bit, at least for me. I just got Far Cry 3 working. I had to hunt down the No-UPlay crack and the game runs great. In fact it runs better than Far Cry2 which I also have installed. Something I noticed on the vegetation FC2 and has carried over into the water on FC3 is a visible grid pattern being displayed - I think that it's a quirk of DXVK but I'm not sure.

I'm still waiting on Sleeping Dogs, and the Batman Arkham series. So far no one can get Arkham Knight working and the others are kind of a pain owing to dot-net framework. As for anything release this year? I have a Phenom II bottlenecking a GTX1060 6GB so I don't play any new games LOL.
Linuxwarper Jan 8, 2019
As most of us are all to well aware, Linux isn't a priority because of marketshare. What Liam points out, how small linux gaming is, helps when frustrated about why games are not being supported for the platform.
Everyone prefers games developed properly for the platform they use.
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