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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legluondunet Aug 27, 2018
Quoting: GuestIf they start allowing games with native Linux ports to be run under Proton anyway - how are the Linux porters supposed to know whether that was a "real" Linux sale, or a Windows sale thats being run on Linux via Proton... in other words, how do you stop this damaging legitimate Linux sales revenue that should go to the porters like Feral, Aspyr and VP ?
We are talking about Linux native ports that are not maintained or don't work anymore or Windows port has more features... If dev/editor maintained their port, Linux users will not need to use the Windows port, isn't it? Read the issue here:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5638
there are several reasons to ask for this feature.
Last edited by legluondunet on 27 August 2018 at 11:14 pm UTC
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Quoting: scaineBecause of the nature of Proton, I can see a lot of potential abuse of the refund system, along with bad reviews, as Wendigo suggests. Buy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.Reviews aside, can you elaborate on what part of this you consider abuse of the refund system? I would definitely refund a game if I buy it intending to run it via Steam Play and find out it doesn't run well enough. The 2-hour allowance is very well suited for this kind of demo/test run approach.
Quoting: GuestIf they start allowing games with native Linux ports to be run under Proton anyway - how are the Linux porters supposed to know whether that was a "real" Linux sale, or a Windows sale thats being run on Linux via Proton... in other words, how do you stop this damaging legitimate Linux sales revenue that should go to the porters like Feral, Aspyr and VP ?Wouldn't the problem be the opposite since Proton play counts as Linux? i.e. "Bad devs" who no longer support a broken port still get a cut from Steam sales even though people are effectively forced to emulate the Windows version instead of playing their port.
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Quoting: tuubiTaking these into account, here's what works for me:
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/compatdata/[AppID]/pfx" "$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/Proton 3.7 Beta/dist/bin/wine" winecfg
Proton doesn't package winetricks, but if you've got it installed locally, you can use it with Proton's wine executable by pointing the WINE environment variable to the right place, like this:
WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/compatdata/[AppID]/pfx" WINE="$HOME/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/Proton 3.7 Beta/dist/bin/wine" winetricks
Thank you. I haven't had time to play around with any of this as yet, so not having to figure the part about the "/pfx" on the end is a real nicety.
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Quoting: scaineBuy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.
If I understand correctly the way Steam is handling this stuff (I may be wrong), refunding a game after leaving a review for it (crap or not) will remove the review the same time the game is removed from your library (you can only leave review for games you own). :)
Edit: to be clear it seems that I was wrong, refunding a game do not seem to delete a review previously written for it! :)
Last edited by riusma on 5 September 2018 at 10:39 am UTC
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Quoting: PatolaIf people are using the refund system to get refunds after trying a game that doesn't work on Proton, I expect it would usually happen before the developers even realized they had a sale, let alone used the money for anything. They'd check that day and it'd be like oh, a dozen people bought and then refunded since I checked sales last time.Quoting: SalvatosIt generates false sales data. You get "money", pay your expenses, then you have to return the money. That can be a disaster, since that's what developers live by.Quoting: scaineBecause of the nature of Proton, I can see a lot of potential abuse of the refund system, along with bad reviews, as Wendigo suggests. Buy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.Reviews aside, can you elaborate on what part of this you consider abuse of the refund system? I would definitely refund a game if I buy it intending to run it via Steam Play and find out it doesn't run well enough. The 2-hour allowance is very well suited for this kind of demo/test run approach.
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lucifertdark Aug 28, 2018
Some developers will just see Linux sales as extra money without any extra effort on their part as long as the game just works, if it doesn't all they have to do is say "speak to Valve, nothing to do with us", it's a win/win for those developers.
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Quoting: riusmaQuoting: scaineBuy a game, doesn't run in proton, leave a crap review, refund game.
If I understand correctly the way Steam is handling this stuff (I may be wrong), refunding a game after leaving a review for it (crap or not) will remove the review the same time the game is removed from your library (you can only leave review for games you own). :)
You can write the review and refund the game, and the review stays.
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Quoting: PatolaIt generates false sales data. You get "money", pay your expenses, then you have to return the money. That can be a disaster, since that's what developers live by. It might well be in the customer's rights to do that, but it does not change the fact that impacts developers a lot. If the amount of people doing refunds is small, it's tolerable and can be compensated by other means. If it's large, in a barely profitable game which seems to be the majority of titles lately, it might lead to bankrupcy in the worst case.Well I don't know, considering the 2-week limit on no-questions-asked refunds, I'm tempted to say that 1) the devs might not even have received the money from that sale in that time (I don't know how they get their cut from Valve but presumably it's not transferred to their bank account on a per-sale basis), and 2) it's on them if they spend money that they know is still under the refund period.
Of course, you might not consider it "abuse" since each individual is acting in his/her own right. Maybe we can get a better word for it? "Overuse" does not communicate the idea that the developer is being harmed.
I would expect Valve has ways to minimize this. Making too many payments would tank everyone's profits in transfer fees, and I wouldn't be surprised if sales amounts were frozen for 2 weeks so that Valve can handle the majority of refunds on its own without money going back and forth between accounts (Customer -> Valve -> Publisher -> Valve -> Customer would dilute so much of the amount in transfer fees that it would be outright dumb not to prevent it). By using an electronic wallet for both customers and third parties, they can essentially handle the majority of payment operations on their own without fees, excepting only the initial purchase and the actual money transfer to the devs, no matter what happens in between.
So I get your point, but Valve really needs to get a new accountant if that stuff hasn't already been straightened out.
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Quoting: legluondunetQuoting: PatolaThere was already a 4) by other user, so here it goes:
5) Do an improper cross platform build like Reality Pump Studios did with Two Worlds II: Call of the Tenebrae (it has no executable) and use the Linux port slot, effectively preventing steam play from being used. Actually even some games with "proper" Linux ports that are now broken / stopped working is possible, like this bug report for steam client shows.
This issue will be resolved by Valve when you will have the possibility to launch a Windows port with SteamPlay, even if a Linux native port exists. I'm sure they will add soon this feature, it's a very wanted feature on the Proton github, because a lot of Linux native port are not maintained or/and don't work any more.
You can download Windows version of any game using steamcmd. Not sure how to link it to proton then (shouldn't be that difficult), but you can get the binaries if you want.
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