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Some thoughts on Linux gaming in 2019, an end of year review

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2019 is coming to a close, it's been a pretty wild year for Linux gaming that's for sure! Here's some thoughts on the year and what to expect for 2020.

Firstly, let's look over all the games that came to Linux in 2019. As usual, very little AAA support but that doesn't mean we don't get awesome experiences. We've had a huge amount of quality games, which is the important thing. Not including those currently in Early Access, here's a few random picks we've had released this year for Linux: Abandon Ship, AI War 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition, DiRT 4, Total War: THREE KINGDOMS, Sky Racket, Rise to Ruins, Indivisible, Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones, Jenny LeClue - Detectivu, Police Stories, Overland, Devader, Dicey Dungeons, Oxygen Not Included, Streets of Rogue, Mosaic, The Eternal Castle: Remastered, Mindustry, Slay the Spire and so on.

Listing "good" games released across a year is always highly subjective of course, your list will be vastly different to my own and there's plenty I will have completely forgotten about. Tons that arrived in Early Access too throughout 2019 that are worthy of mentioning like Jupiter Hell, Monster Sanctuary, Wildermyth and Volcanoids.

Watching how stores evolved over this year has been interesting. Epic Games have been throwing out free games constantly, pulling in plenty of exclusives but they still have no plans to support Linux. Epic did throw us a little bone by giving Lutris some funding, that was great for them, but a drop in the ocean for Epic overall.

The other side is Valve with Steam, still continuing to put resources into making Linux gaming better. Not just with Steam Play Proton, but the recent Steam Runtime Container system which should eventually help reduce QA time/cost for developers who do want to support Linux. The ACO shader compiler (original announcement) for AMD GPUs is another big Valve project to make gaming on Linux smoother again.

The elephant in the room is of course the Linux gaming market share, at least when looking at the available percentages that Steam offers in their monthly hardware survey. We're still small, we are a niche market and we're going to remain that way likely for some time. Silver lining there though, somewhat, is that the Linux market share is mostly stable. How can we push it further? Marketing. We need more marketing and better marketing. That, plus Linux being available on more machines at top vendors. Those two things really are needed to help push it.

Sadly, this year we saw a few games drop Linux support entirely with Rust, Natural Selection 2, Forager and Throne of Lies. Not many, but even one dropping support is not good.

However, don't get too down about the above point. There's a huge amount of moving pieces, certainly when it comes to the future of Linux gaming. Right now, if you truly don't care about any details and just want to play games on Linux—you've never had it better. We have Steam Play, enabling Proton (and other tools like Boxtron) to run games through Steam not designed for Linux like Halo: The Master Chief Collection, No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous, Deep Rock Galactic and plenty more. Wine also came along tremendously and when paired with DXVK/D9VK, even more games can be played easily on Linux like Overwatch.

I don't personally think Steam Play Proton/Wine should ever replace proper support, to make that clear. The last thing we need is more lock-in because developers end up seeing less of a point in using cross-platform tech and open APIs. For now though, while we're a niche, Steam Play Proton and Wine fill a big gap and they're definitely important for that. The most important part of Steam Play Proton, is people not losing access to their older Windows-only library when moving to Linux. Eventually when more people try out Linux and enjoy the experience and the market share rises as a result, then we can look to get proper support from more developers. Until then, be sure you keep supporting those who do put out Linux versions of their games.

We also have the rise of streaming platforms like Google Stadia further taking away barriers to playing bigger titles on Linux. There's also whatever Steam Cloud Gaming turns out to be, that's going to be very exciting to find out more on. Hopefully Valve won't keep us waiting too long on it. Streaming platforms still have a long way to go though, and they have their own barriers of entry (especially internet speeds and bandwidth).

Various other fun things were released this year too! Shadow of Mordor got a Vulkan Beta from Feral Interactive which gives some fantastic performance on Linux. A ton of great open source software came along nicely this year too like Lutris for managing games, vkBasalt for some fun extra post-processing, Godot Engine for game development, OBS Studio for recording and livestreaming, pyLinuxWheel and Oversteer for managing Logitech Wheels and so many more awesome projects had tons of improvements this year.

It's going to continue to be exciting to watch things grow and change over 2020. Thanks to many indie developers supporting Linux, the Unity Editor at some point will properly support Linux and when Unity has IL2CPP support on Linux with Unity 2019.3 it will be easier for developers again, Steam Play Proton and Wine will continue to mature, distributions and desktops will keep getting better and so on. There's always something improving somewhere.

We will be here to follow it all! What are your wishes for 2020? Do let us know in the comments.


This was also the busiest year on record for traffic and content here on GamingOnLinux!

2018 was already a big jump over 2017 but in 2019 we pushed things even further to bring you even more news! We're closing in on 2,300 articles posted this year. See some other stats on this page.

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This year, we're having a little holiday livestream on December 24th so be sure to come join in if you're stuck, alone or you just want to have some Linux fun with us: Twitch Channel.

A super-massive thank you for all the support this year, here's to an awesome 2020!

Personal note: I will be completely away on December 24th, December 25th and again on December 31st/January 1st for some rest and relaxation to prepare for another year.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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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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LungDrago Dec 16, 2019
Quoting: TheRiddickHey I was just saying, don't act like Linux is all roses and daffodils, it has a mountain of issues that need to be addressed before we see those steam statistics budge significantly in a positive way.

Hey, it's not like Windows is all roses and daffodils either. There's bugs and "missing features" in every software, OS or game. I have to agree with Liam though that marketing is our biggest problem. Note that not every gamer out there uses every possible gaming store and plays every single AAA game that's currently the hot stuff. I believe we would all be surprised at how many gamers could quite feasibly switch to Linux and still play what they want to play (LoL, Hearthstone, Warframe, etc.) IF they knew Linux existed and that it was an option.

From my experience though, most people are still in the late 90's when it comes to Linux. It's an elite OS for programmers, tech gurus and hackers. Even though they have Linux on their phone. :)
TheRiddick Dec 16, 2019
Allot of gamers are playing Fortnight / PUBG / Apex, if we could get those games on Linux, well, the problems would magically be resolved pretty damn quickly!

PS. I actually hate those games!

Linux has a learning curve along with some constraints to what software you can use and how you can use it. Windows FAR less so, its not about being perfect, its about doing most of what you want. Linux sadly doesn't for most people. Yet anyway.
LungDrago Dec 16, 2019
Quoting: TheRiddickLinux has a learning curve along with some constraints to what software you can use and how you can use it. Windows FAR less so, its not about being perfect, its about doing most of what you want. Linux sadly doesn't for most people. Yet anyway.

Depends on what we think that most people do on their PC. If it's surf the web, watch movies and porn and stuff, Linux is great. The things people always talk about are:

a) Office suites. That one I always didn't really understand, I always thought you use those mostly at work, I personally have very little use of them at home. But regardless, it's great on Linux. BUT it's still a push and pull, because M$ does its best to keep their product relevant.

b) Artist stuff from Photoshop all the way to 3D. Perhaps a bit paradoxically, Linux does better in 3D than it does in 2D, as I believe Blender is overall way better built software than most stuff you can get to do your 2D. And this was, is and always will be a big issue, because Adobe are d*cks.

And then of course gaming. Honestly, nowadays I really think it's just a matter of time. The hot AAA games that everyone including your 6 year old son should play come and go. Maybe the next big thing will run on Linux well.
TheRiddick Dec 16, 2019
Yes its a matter of time, but lets just not forget that according to valve linux has less then %1 market share, so it certainly does have issues and I suspect its not JUST because its not marketed to people correctly. Certainly bad marketing doesn't help, might get us to %2 if done right...
toojays Dec 16, 2019
Thanks Liam for another great year of running this site!

With Proton opening up so many options I actually bought too many games this year. Next year I will be more disciplined with my purchases. Or I might have a moratorium for a bit as I finish some of the many excellent games I picked up this year.
WorMzy Dec 16, 2019
Thanks for the write up, Liam, as well as all the work you do all year-round! Have a good Christmas and enjoy your well-earned days off. ^_^
Beamboom Dec 16, 2019
There's no reason to call for marketing when there's nothing to market. What should the message be? "You can now play a few of your windows games with just a little more hassle and just a little less performance than your windows pc. Except competitive online games, due to anti cheat.
Do the plunge today!"?

Thing is, those of us who want to choose Linux have already done so. That's why our share is so rock stable. Of course, new users are added each day but the core audience for Linux remains the same.

It's a huge, huuuge endeavor to create "the year of the Linux desktop". Ironically - and this pains to say - but someone like Microsoft is needed on board. And well, judging from the development from their side over the last few years, I don't rule out thaw exactly that's what will happen. Not today, not tomorrow, but further down the street.

And if so happens, that's gonna be one hell of a bitter pill to swollow for many of us, that's too damn sure. 😂


Last edited by Beamboom on 16 December 2019 at 2:11 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Dec 16, 2019
Quoting: BeamboomThere's no reason to call for marketing when there's nothing to market. What should the message be? "You can now play a few of your windows games with just a little more hassle and just a little less performance than your windows pc. Except competitive online games, due to anti cheat.
Do the plunge today!"?

Thing is, those of us who want to choose Linux have already done so. That's why our share is so rock stable. Of course, new users are added each day but the core audience for Linux remains the same.

It's a huge, huuuge endeavor to create "the year of the Linux desktop". Ironically - and this pains to say - but someone like Microsoft is needed on board. And well, judging from the development from their side over the last few years, I don't rule out thaw exactly that's what will happen. Not today, not tomorrow, but further down the street.

And if so happens, that's gonna be one hell of a bitter pill to swollow for many of us, that's too damn sure. 😂
I think you've got stuck in a bit of a box there. When talking about marketing, I'm talking about Linux as a whole. The market share for Linux is much bigger outside of gaming and could be bigger still, if all the stuff that's already mentioned happened. As it is, Linux is already a very stable and fantastic OS to use for general purpose. That's the point.
Beamboom Dec 16, 2019
Quoting: Liam DaweWhen talking about marketing, I'm talking about Linux as a whole. The market share for Linux is much bigger outside of gaming and could be bigger still, if all the stuff that's already mentioned happened. As it is, Linux is already a very stable and fantastic OS to use for general purpose. That's the point.

Yeah well alright, then I slightly misunderstood you. But actually my point still stands: The imaginative "message" I described in my post could be rewritten to,

"You can now open most of your Office documents but not always exactly how they were meant to look, and without the full integration with email and calendar you used to enjoy. But you'll get used to it. We don't really have your favourite design tools either but we do have some alternatives that cover 80% of the ground, you just need to learn a completely new tool to do the same. And we probably can offer you the clients to connect to your work network from home - although that's no guarantee.
Do the plunge today!"


The problem with Linux is not the OS - it's been stable and user friendly for years now - it's the applications. Only the applications. But damn how important that is - regardless if we talk about games, developer IDEs, office solutions or other desktop tools.
Even if we were on par with Windows - and we're far from it - why should they go through the hassle of getting familiar with a new OS?

You have to be willing to sacrifice something in order to take that plunge. And those who are today - at least the core crowd - should be well aware of Linux already.

I mean, I don't want to be the Debbie Downer here, but there really truly are no easy simple path to "the year of the Linux desktop". I still think we need someone like Microsoft to do something drastic. And... I got a feeling that may just happen. So I've not given up! :)


Last edited by Beamboom on 16 December 2019 at 9:41 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Dec 16, 2019
I hate marketing. But, that's the world we live in, and I do like strategy. So OK, in marketing terms the question is not "how to market Linux", it's "Who do you market Linux to?"
(OK, before I go any further here I'd like to note that all the problems TheRiddick and Beamboom point out are mostly real and the ones that involve Linux itself should certainly be fixed, as should many others they didn't have space to mention. But that doesn't make them right in their assessment. It just means there are some people you can't effectively market Linux to. In theory TheRiddick apparently should be one of those people, except apparently he does use Linux, so I'm not sure what that means)

Like, the market for desktop and/or laptop and/or tablet computers is basically almost everyone. But if you're trying to break in, you don't break in to "almost everyone", you divvy it up into different kinds of people, different kinds of use cases. So first of all, people whose main attribute is being hard core gamers is not who you market Linux to. But that is a minority of the market. TheRiddick's "people who know what VRR is" are a tiny minority of the market (I'm not one of them--or maybe I know and I just don't remember).
Look at Chromebooks. ChromeOS is fucking crippled. My wife has a Chromebook. The dang thing is incredibly limited; all the arguments people have been making about Linux not being marketable go triple for ChromeOS. It has basically no software, it basically can't play games at all, and it's weirder to get used to than any of the more user-friendly Linux distros. Google Docs is not serious and if you're used to saving your documents on your computer or your thumb drive it's bloody annoying because it really doesn't want to let you put your stuff anywhere except on Google's cloud. And yet Google has successfully marketed Chromebooks to a solid little niche, to whom they are fit for purpose.

I'm convinced that there are substantial market segments for whom Linux, depending on distro, is the best OS. Right now, as is. And I'm not talking about techies. So for instance,
--People who want to do relatively basic computing, but not as bare-bones as ChromeOS. A bit of this, a bit of that, light gaming, not doing corporate work at home so they're not that worried about the details of document exchange. So like, relatively typical users.
--People who don't want to muck around with finding and installing software, who'd like their computer to come ready to do most of what they need, out of the box, might appreciate a computer with Linux and all the open source software preloaded.
--People who are vaguely paranoid about the things computer users might want to be paranoid about, but don't want to get a friggin' degree to figure out what to do about it. You could easily do a distro that is, within reason, pretty unlikely to phone home but still pretty user friendly, ideally with a little GUI app that gave you a checklist of things to enable or disable both in the OS and browsers, with paragraph explanations--maybe tooltip or something--you could optionally display for each item.
--People who like having it their way. Techies aren't the only people who like customization. Burger King practically built their franchise on the notion of "What if I want my burger without a pickle?" even though I'm not sure they actually offered any more freedom to customize than anyone else.
--Old people who've been using computers for a long time. User friendly Linuxes are easy to use, and at this point can be made to run a lot of older Windows software better than Windows 10 will run it. Older people often end up with a lot of little programs they still want to use that aren't supported any more. So like my dad uses an old genealogy program that won't work on the latest Windows, and it annoys the hell out of him; he's hanging on to Windows 7 like grim death. Set up a distro so it could easily inhale a person's legacy stuff and run it without too much fiddling with Wine, and felt pretty old-Windows-ish and would be fairly long-maintenance, and you'd have a great OS for older moderate computer users.

Those segments add up to a lot more than 2%. And a lot of the kinds of problems TheRiddick talks about would solve themselves pretty fast if the percentage went up a bit.
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