I honestly can't comprehend why people keep bothering with 'Native Linux'

PC ports used to be broken as hell in the 2000's, should they have stopped porting games to PC and instead relied on Valve to make an Xbox 360 emulator for their storefront? It'd give better compatibility after all and put less strain on the developers.

It's a shame they've chosen to do that. The desktop Linux market is significantly bigger than the Deck market.

I agree, hope this is temporary. Baldur's Gate 3 runs like complete garbage through Proton to me. Like a third of the game's total CPU usage is just Wine services, the audio is constant crackling with a little bit of the game audio mixed in and it has all kinds of extremely distracting visual bugs I imagine are brought about by Proton as well.

Honestly if anything, the Steam Deck is the one device that DOESN'T need a native port.