Quoting: Mal

Quoting: CatKillerA game that isn't native and accidentally works in Proton is worth maybe 10%. It could stop working at any time.

I also believe that buy a "new" game because it works well on proton is nuts. It works today, it's easy anti cheat tomorrow. Eventually though new games become old games. Old games -> no more development cycles. No dev cycles -> no (or close to null) risk of proton breaking.

Yep. By the time a game gets to 90% off, devs are unlikely to still be making breaking changes.

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Before getting too excited, keep in mind it's yet another high-end gamer and high performance workstation model. We have something of a lack of low-mid end devices since these high-end options seem to be what gets people talking, even though we would love to see more low end stuff too.

It's not marketing, it's economies of scale. Cheap things can only be cheap if you can sell a lot of them, and the Linux laptop market just isn't that big even if you could capture all of it. Which means that high end boutique models are the only ones worth making unless you can sell a shedload of the same machine with Windows on, like Dell or Lenovo. When the market is bigger, or if it's supplemented by another income stream, it can sustain low margin devices like Chromebooks.

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Quoting: axredneckWhat about a native game that works better in Proton?

What about it? Assuming it's not the fraudulent case, where they sell you a Linux game but don't actually test or support it (which you shouldn't buy), but a standard fully-tested and fully-supported native product (which is worth full price) then your choosing to run it in Proton is no one else's business.

What one needs, as the buyer of a product, is to know that the supplier is going to try their hardest to make sure that the product is fit for purpose, and to have recourse if it isn't. If a dev never tests on the platform you're using they can't do the former, and if they can shrug off complaints because your platform is unsupported you don't get the latter. Which makes their product not worth as much.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: CatKillerA game that isn't native but deliberately works in Proton (so the developer tests in Proton and fixes their game if it stops working) is worth something like 50%.

I'm honestly curious, mostly because of how I often see people claim that's all we need/don't need native ports, are there any devs that have actually done that? As in actually support the game through Proton and bill Linux as officially supported, not them just saying to give it a try or that people got it working.

No Man's Sky is the well-known one: they've had specific things in their changelog about fixing things for the game in Proton.

Every game, if you look at their Steam forum, will have a thread of people asking for Linux support. If a dev responds there you can get an idea about their familiarity and testing regime. Some just wash their hands of the whole thing, but others are more supportive.

Some devs will chime in on Proton's github, or there'll be feedback there from another channel.

Having devs engaged like that, and proactively looking for solutions even if they aren't quite ready to make the step to fully supporting a native build, is still worthwhile, I think. Not full price worthwhile, to me, but significant.

The only mechanism currently for having front page Store support for something running through Proton is to have it whitelisted, which means that Valve's taken over support instead of the dev. Testing in Proton and having a not-entirely-supported-but-tested Linux build available don't show on the Store page. Perhaps we'll get another category if Valve release their rumoured handheld. Unfortunately, the "we just hit the export to Linux button but don't actually test anything at all" does show on the Store page, and those aren't games that people should buy.

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Quoting: DorritIt's good to see Proton going from strength to strength, but I still play mostly native Linux; both as a matter of principle and because there are so many good titles available.

I've mentioned my sliding scale before, but I'll quickly run through it again.

A game that isn't native and doesn't work in Proton is worth nothing (obviously).

A game that isn't native and accidentally works in Proton is worth maybe 10%. It could stop working at any time.

A game that isn't native but deliberately works in Proton (so the developer tests in Proton and fixes their game if it stops working) is worth something like 50%.

A native game is worth full price.

The games that I buy (or wishlist) all count as Linux sales, so the dev gets feedback that there's a market. The sliding scale incentivises better support from the dev. More tux more bucks.

I'll also add that I've already got more games than I've got time to play, and a relatively long wishlist, so the non-native games also get pretty low priority.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeI kind of hate that most motherboards have completely dropped PCI support. I still have a decent amount of PCI cards that are good enough backups for some purposes (like my very first video card, the Matrox Millennium II).

RIP my M-Audio Audiophile 2496.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThere are some dedicated PhysX cards on eBay. Weirdly PCIe, my memory through the years would have insisted that they were PCI!

I think the early Ageia ones were PCI. I also seem to recall some cards having PCI connections on one side and PCIe connections on the other. Ah, technology transitional periods. No AGP ones, though, because that would be taken up by your graphics card.

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Life is Strange: True Colors will be launching for Stadia on September 10.

I wonder if that means they'll release a native version? Some (but not all) of the Life Is Strange games were ported by Feral. This one only currently lists Windows support. Already having a Stadia version's got to encourage a native version at some point, right?

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Intel have open source drivers too for their graphics so that will be great.

And critically they manage to get support lined up well in advance of the launch of their hardware, which AMD have historically struggled with.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: CatKillerThe PPUs definitely existed. I doubt that many got sold, because the business case for them was rubbish, but you could get pre-built gaming machines with them in. The technology was also in a bunch of console games before Nvidia bought Ageia.

I googled and found some... on Geocities. (So that's the age we're talking about. :D )

http://www.geocities.ws/nagaty_h/hardware/asus_physx_p1.htm [External Link]

Well, not quite Geocities' heyday, but it was a while ago. It was the PS3 era, and MySpace was the world's biggest social network. AMD had a really terrible open source driver and a really terrible proprietary driver (I won't say the name in case it triggers flashbacks), and were selling off their fabs because they'd run out of money. Intel was switching to the Core architecture after the failures of Netburst and Itanium. YouTube was full of videos showing off Compiz, and Ubuntu had released a "Long Term Support" version called Dapper Drake.

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