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On the day of Steam Play hitting the big one year anniversary (August 21st), it seems another milestone has been reached in terms of compatibility.

According to ProtonDB, the handy unofficial tracking website, over six thousand games are now working. At time of writing, exactly 6,023 "games work" (quote from their home page) against the 9,134 total of games that currently have user reports to see if they run or not. That's quite an impressive number!

It's worth noting though, that with little over nine thousand games currently reported, Steam does host well over thirty thousand so there's a huge amount that hasn't yet been tested.

Since it's not explained on the ProtonDB website, I reached out to the owner of ProtonDB to explain how they get that "games work" number. They said it "includes all games with at least one gold rating or higher".

How about a question for you to answer in the comments: What does Steam Play mean to you? I'll start.

To me, it's many things. For starters, I do have quite a number of games not available on Linux, left over from purchases before I decided Linux was what I wanted to stick with as my main platform on PC. Some of them are old favourites too so having easy access to them now is a really nice bonus. On top of that, it means also having the chance to play thousands of games not released on Linux over the last few years if I wanted to.

For some additional fun reading: check out this blog post about a Wine bug from the lead Proton Quality Assurance Engineer at CodeWeavers, the company Valve teamed up with to create Proton. Great to see even more behind the scenes info like this.

Another point I want to make, is how Proton can keep older Windows games alive and kicking too and there's people doing just that. Not Linux gaming related but interesting nonetheless.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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khalismur Aug 22, 2019
I was tired of weak performance in two wine games (WoW and PoE) I play and installed window$ to check them out natively. Haven't touched the system outside of work since 2014. I can't help but to think I might keep dual booting for games. The performance is so much better for my weak and old notebook... :-(

Wine is great but it still has a long way to go. Using Lutris with DXVK, I get only 50~80% of windows performance in PoE and WoW, which is a costly trade for my Nvidia 840m notebook I'm not sure I'll keep accepting.

On native games, such as Dota 2 or factorio, there's no performance discrepancy, so I will keep gaming those under Linux for sure.
gustavoyaraujo Aug 22, 2019
Steam Play is just the best thing happened for Linux gamers in the last year, no doubt.
I hope they will fix the issue avoiding me to invite steam friends from Sonic All Star Racing Transformed. Looks like Steam doesn't allow Linux users use the steam invitation system when using Steam Play.
tuubi Aug 22, 2019
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Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoIs very normal that a native Linux game doesn't want to work after an update...
This game I purchased for my mom is a good example :><:
Of course it's not normal. Have you reported that one to the developer?
Comandante Ñoñardo Aug 22, 2019
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoIs very normal that a native Linux game doesn't want to work after an update...
This game I purchased for my mom is a good example :><:
Of course it's not normal. Have you reported that one to the developer?
Yes, and no answer.
This is the error
error while loading shared libraries: libsteam_api.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Purple Library Guy Aug 22, 2019
Quoting: Luke_NukemSome people aren't really categorizing some games very well though. For example Carmageddon: Max Damage had a few Platinum ratings because it, well, runs. But it runs slower than a snail superglued to a bus stuck in a traffic jam.
Nice simile.
Salvatos Aug 22, 2019
QuoteIt's worth noting though, that with little over nine thousand games currently reported, Steam does host well over thirty thousand so there's a huge amount that hasn't yet been tested.
Incidentally, that ratio probably hints at the amount of junk on Steam (but also probably a lot of less-known and older titles that people aren’t interested in testing and replaying at this point).
Comandante Ñoñardo Aug 22, 2019
Quoting: Salvatos
QuoteIt's worth noting though, that with little over nine thousand games currently reported, Steam does host well over thirty thousand so there's a huge amount that hasn't yet been tested.
Incidentally, that ratio probably hints at the amount of junk on Steam (but also probably a lot of less-known and older titles that people aren’t interested in testing and replaying at this point).

Thirty thousand games is what I call overweight... Steam can fall due to it.
Is not the same, but is similar to the mid 80's game crisis.
Steam need a curated system.
KuJo Aug 22, 2019
If the prophet does not come to the mountain, then the mountain must come to the prophet.

Prophet = Games
Mountain = Linux
massatt212 Aug 23, 2019
Once Mortal Kombat 11, Injustice 2, Street Fighter V and Easy Anti Cheat Works on Linux im making my 100% Move need to play Dauntless lol
YoRHa-2B Aug 23, 2019
Quoting: khalismurWine is great but it still has a long way to go. Using Lutris with DXVK, I get only 50~80% of windows performance in PoE and WoW, which is a costly trade for my Nvidia 840m notebook I'm not sure I'll keep accepting.
That's incredibly bad and much worse than expected, even by Nvidia standards. What's your CPU?
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