As we speculated previously, Valve have now officially announced their new version of 'Steam Play' for Linux gaming using a modified distribution of Wine called Proton, which is available on GitHub.
What does it do? In short: it allows you to play Windows games on Linux, directly through the Steam client as if they were a Linux game.
What many people suspected turned out to be true, DXVK development was actually funded by Valve. They actually employed the DXVK developer since February 2018. On top of that, they also helped to fund: vkd3d (Direct3D 12 implementation based on Vulkan), OpenVR and Steamworks native API bridges, wined3d performance and functionality fixes for Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11 and more.
The amount of work that has gone into this—it's ridiculous.
Here's what they say it improves:
- Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support.
- DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, resulting in improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact.
- Fullscreen support has been improved: fullscreen games will be seamlessly stretched to the desired display without interfering with the native monitor resolution or requiring the use of a virtual desktop.
- Improved game controller support: games will automatically recognize all controllers supported by Steam. Expect more out-of-the-box controller compatibility than even the original version of the game.
- Performance for multi-threaded games has been greatly improved compared to vanilla Wine.
It currently has a limited set of games that are supported, but even so it's quite an impressive list that they're putting out there. Which includes DOOM, FINAL FANTASY VI, Into The Breach, NieR: Automata, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and more. They will enable many more titles as progress on it all continues.
To be clear, this is available right now. To get it, you need to be in the Steam Client Beta.
There will be drawbacks, like possible performance issues and games that rely on some DRM might likely never be supported, but even so the amount of possibilities this opens up has literally split my head open with Thor's mighty hammer.
Holy shit. Please excuse the language, but honestly, I'm physically shaking right now I don't quite know how to process this.
Update #1: I spoke to Valve earlier, about how buying Windows games to play with this system counts, they said this:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.Hey Liam, the normal algorithm is in effect, so if at the end of the two weeks you have more playtime on Linux, it'll be a Linux sale. Proton counts as Linux.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: GuestThing is, I feel Valve have been exceptionally clear on the situation. Who people choose to champion is their business.Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: GuestSo now that I've had time to think about this news more, I thought I'd try add more discussion points.Let's be clear though, Valve did fund the development of DXVK - so essentially, yes they did make. They've been funding it through all but the first what, two releases?
Disclaimer: I personally find it odd that people are praising Valve so much here. Valve didn't make wine. Or dxvk. Or actually any of the tools that make this possible. They're just packaging it into Steam.
I meant its original creation - I didn't think Valve was responsible for that?
Just really want to point out that Valve see and fund things that are very useful, and that's not to be underestimated, but I personally dislike the treatment that it's all and entirely Valve doing everything.
In the case of DXVK, they couldn't have been clearer even noting when funding started. The point is, while Valve didn't start these projects, it is the one that's pulling them together, funding them and making something bigger out of it. That benefits everyone too, since it's open source.
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Quoting: EhvisQuoting: fabertaweEdit: It would be nice if there was a way to differentiate the proton compatible games in my list. A separate drop down category on the Library menu would be nice.
I actually put all the Windows games in a "Windows" category. This category disappears when I select Linux games. But it would reappear if any of those games suddenly becomes available on Linux. I don't have a proton supported game, but this may work for that as well. (unless you turn proton on for all win games of course)
I just added STALKER to a "Proton" category and it's listed separately at the top of my game list, so that's something. Thanks for the info.
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Mohandevir Aug 22, 2018
Lego StarWars The Force Awakens, Lego Marvel's Avengers and Witcher3 seem to be working great even without being "whitelisted".
I don't know if it's been mentionned, this thread is way too long to read through, but Proton might become a Windows programming standard to create a Linux "plug&play" experience. Hiring qualified Linux developpers seem to be a problem for many game studios. If they start programming their Windows build with Proton in mind, they will have to maintain only one build, thus reducing the cost of Linux development. The resulting experience, as per Valve say, should be 1:1 on both platform. Linux will get more quality supported titles this way... I see it as a Win-Win situation.
In a couple of years, if ever Linux gets a 5% to 10% Steam market share and depending on what happens with UWP, we might see true linux native builds of new games, but at the moment, I think it's the best solution for Linux gaming adoption.
Anyway, let's face it, even Feral ports are still "hacked windows build". Why not use Proton then?.
Edit: Typo.
Edit2: Further testing shows that both Lego games crashes at specific points while playing. Snif! Witcher 3 is fine though.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 22 August 2018 at 8:01 pm UTC
I don't know if it's been mentionned, this thread is way too long to read through, but Proton might become a Windows programming standard to create a Linux "plug&play" experience. Hiring qualified Linux developpers seem to be a problem for many game studios. If they start programming their Windows build with Proton in mind, they will have to maintain only one build, thus reducing the cost of Linux development. The resulting experience, as per Valve say, should be 1:1 on both platform. Linux will get more quality supported titles this way... I see it as a Win-Win situation.
In a couple of years, if ever Linux gets a 5% to 10% Steam market share and depending on what happens with UWP, we might see true linux native builds of new games, but at the moment, I think it's the best solution for Linux gaming adoption.
Anyway, let's face it, even Feral ports are still "hacked windows build". Why not use Proton then?.
Edit: Typo.
Edit2: Further testing shows that both Lego games crashes at specific points while playing. Snif! Witcher 3 is fine though.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 22 August 2018 at 8:01 pm UTC
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So tested Dishonoured and Skyrim so far both work fine and with controller support performance isnt brilliant i ll be honest if you normally play at 1080p chances are you are going to have to dip it down to 900p to get playable frame rates but they are not whitelisted yet and room for further improvement. I have 386 steam games in my library many from my time dual booting or back about 4 years ago when i was windows only.If anyone has a game they must know if works if i have it ill be happy to say if its playable or not
Last edited by Whitewolfe80 on 22 August 2018 at 2:11 pm UTC
Last edited by Whitewolfe80 on 22 August 2018 at 2:11 pm UTC
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Quoting: fabertaweWow... big news, big thread (and I'm late to the party as usual!). I have actually read every post
Just re-installed STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl for the hell of it, to test. Played it a looong time ago, back when I had a Windows partition. Enjoyed all three games immensely as it happens.
This is a double edged sword for me though. The fact purchases count as a Linux sale is great, especially as there are potentially a lot of very good games which can be had cheaply in the sales. But... if I'm buying a Windows game then I'm not spending that money on a Linux native game. Which is even worse these days as I have such a backlog of titles to wade through that I'm spending less on games anyway.
Interesting times ahead!
Edit: It would be nice if there was a way to differentiate the proton compatible games in my list. A separate drop down category on the Library menu would be nice.
Whole point is that already.
Many long time Linux users like you or me still care about native ports and we will be still caring.
But with that rate , Linux user base is not enough for native ports.
When userbase expand , they will eventually consider native ports because that is a compability layer. Not an exact solution , just a workaround for expanding Linux user base.
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Quoting: GuestJust really want to point out that Valve see and fund things that are very useful, and that's not to be underestimated, but I personally dislike the treatment that it's all and entirely Valve doing everything.
It's hard to understand your point of view!
My question is why did the winehq developers not take the burden to make wine an out of the box feeling?
Don't take me wrong, I know howto use wine and my few windows games I have do run well with wine from winehq.
Currently more windows games run with newest wine than proton. But this will change in the next months.
Simply click install in the Steam Client and it configures the game for you automatically is what Linux needs - not all Linux users are geeks.
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rafaelcgs10 Aug 22, 2018
Dark Souls Works, but you need to disable Steam Controller system to use a joystick.
Could not make DSfix work. I Don't know why.
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Quoting: liamdaweSo...Skyrim when?
I actually have Skyrim SE in my library, tried the SteamPlay stuff and the game runs, but seems like the fullscreen window is loosing mouse focus somehow, so I cannot use a mouse in game :).
I also tried several other titles, and some of them worked. It is however quite annoying that you cant close some windows (at least on Gnome's overview)
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Not sure if this has been posted, but I am 32 pages late and that is a bit much to catch up while I'm at work.
There is a community-driven list of games that run or crash with Steam Play/Proton, it is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ3_odz8JzEVK80vkku-b6FsICWb45xGf4VYnzYz5cNSMVQ-5BA2WoHBGAScw96MgLj1ONA7Cx0tyGa/pubhtml#
Since the official whitelisting process can take some time, is probably more conservative, and does not show what has been tested but failed, it might be worth posting this list in the GOL article so that people know about it. There are 50k reads on the article at the moment, imagine if even a small percentage of those people were documenting about the tests they are currently doing with their game library.
While the testing from the community is not necessarily exhaustive, seeing if a game fails terribly or runs smoothly on someone else's computer would help deciding whether to download 50 GB off Steam and try.
Last edited by Kabouik on 22 August 2018 at 2:52 pm UTC
There is a community-driven list of games that run or crash with Steam Play/Proton, it is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ3_odz8JzEVK80vkku-b6FsICWb45xGf4VYnzYz5cNSMVQ-5BA2WoHBGAScw96MgLj1ONA7Cx0tyGa/pubhtml#
Since the official whitelisting process can take some time, is probably more conservative, and does not show what has been tested but failed, it might be worth posting this list in the GOL article so that people know about it. There are 50k reads on the article at the moment, imagine if even a small percentage of those people were documenting about the tests they are currently doing with their game library.
While the testing from the community is not necessarily exhaustive, seeing if a game fails terribly or runs smoothly on someone else's computer would help deciding whether to download 50 GB off Steam and try.
Last edited by Kabouik on 22 August 2018 at 2:52 pm UTC
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: liamdaweQuoting: GuestThing is, I feel Valve have been exceptionally clear on the situation. Who people choose to champion is their business.Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: GuestSo now that I've had time to think about this news more, I thought I'd try add more discussion points.Let's be clear though, Valve did fund the development of DXVK - so essentially, yes they did make. They've been funding it through all but the first what, two releases?
Disclaimer: I personally find it odd that people are praising Valve so much here. Valve didn't make wine. Or dxvk. Or actually any of the tools that make this possible. They're just packaging it into Steam.
I meant its original creation - I didn't think Valve was responsible for that?
Just really want to point out that Valve see and fund things that are very useful, and that's not to be underestimated, but I personally dislike the treatment that it's all and entirely Valve doing everything.
In the case of DXVK, they couldn't have been clearer even noting when funding started. The point is, while Valve didn't start these projects, it is the one that's pulling them together, funding them and making something bigger out of it. That benefits everyone too, since it's open source.
Oh absolutely, it's a good thing, and I don't mean to diminish the work Valve is doing. But Valve isn't doing quite as much as people think - for example, Valve isn't making any game work through wine directly. Well, that can be argued via dxvk, but the point I guess I'm trying to make is that while the impact might be large to users, the effort itself from Valve is actually not equivalent.
If it makes people feel better I can point out really great things Valve have done (mostly around Vulkan tooling and drivers). But I have to ask: if wine didn't exist, if dxvk didn't exist, would Valve have tried to create either?
If Valve wasn't involved neither DXVK or Wine would be in such a mainstream , accessible form.
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