learnings from the beta program, which will inform the future of Chromebook gaming.

Apparently what they learned about that future is, there won't be one.

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Very low pressure, huh. So, quite different from PowerWash Simulator!

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On the question of how well Proton works vs. native, the thing about some of your points is that people expect Proton not to work. I mean, yeah, they figure it will work most of the time, but failure is part of the normal parameters of using a thing like Proton; if it works that's a positive. Whereas people expect native to work, reasonably enough, and if it doesn't that's a negative.

Nobody reports it to the devs when they try a Windows game in Proton and it doesn't work; they know it's not supported. And nobody is going to buy a game with a native version, start with Proton instead, find it doesn't work, and then complain on a forum that Proton didn't work, only to have the native version recommended. It's not a symmetrical thing when it comes to how and whether people complain, so I think it's plausible you could see more complaints about native even if Proton doesn't on average work as well.

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Nowadays doesn't everyone just target the Steam runtime? And before that, didn't everyone just target Ubuntu, and then maybe add others if they thought about it?

I do think it might be worth having a project that basically reproduces some relevant old libraries and stuff so as to run old Linux games and other older, not-updated software. Presumably it could be as simple as a Flatpak with some old stuff in it. Maybe you'd also want some kind of layer for translating sound and things. You could call it LINE. :grin:

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I suppose arguably Valve could say "If you want to sell your game on Valve's platform Steam, and that game has anti-cheat, that anti-cheat will run on Valve's Steam Deck or you are not selling your game on Steam".

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This game is still breaking the "1800s crime all happens in London" rule. :grin:

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. . . If you're a normal computer user, never trust the recommendation of someone who says a piece of software is their favourite alternative to using the CLI. :tongue:

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But, isn't native Linux also an open source layer? Proton is just an open source layer on top of the open source layer, translating into the other open source layer. I don't see how that makes things more open source. If that were true we could make it the most open source of all by adding three more open source translation layers each translating to the next.

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Potential destruction of the multiverse never looked so cute.

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Native Linux builds tend to be lacking in basic features and far buggier in general

So is that a statistic or an anecdote? Because my anecdote is, nearly all the games I play are native, and I never have any problems. When I have problems it's nearly always with a Proton game not working, even though I play far fewer Proton games. Although lately my main annoyance is for some reason my Dosbox Steam games are just not starting at all. I haven't played MOO2 in ages now because of that.
So I'd be wary of this kind of generalization. We both have anecdotes pointing in different directions, but I doubt either of us have data.

As to the usefulness or otherwise of native Linux builds, Liam's perspective makes complete sense as long as you assume Microsoft will never again be very actively hostile to Linux. This might be the case, but it seems to me like a poor gamble. Proton is a great idea and I support it strongly, but this is not an either/or thing. It's like the American civil rights movement--there's been a lot of argument over whether King was good and Malcolm X was bad or the other way around, but it is a stupid argument because they needed both (You can tell because the authorities wanted both of them dead, and probably had both of them killed). It's not that one was bad and the other was good, it's that one was the bad cop and the other was the good cop. King could implicitly say "You can deal with me being polite and nonviolent, or you can deal with Malcolm." Native Linux and Proton are not quite the same dynamic, but they are both important and I really don't think it's wise to discount either.

Put it this way: Proton is not the end game. Even if an awful lot of games right now either run on Proton because they're legacy Windows games, or are written now for Windows with some consciousness of Proton, we also want a vigorous native Linux game-writing platform. I mean, how silly would it be if we achieve world domination market share and to write a game for the world dominant platform, you have to write for DX12 on legacy Windows so a translation layer can translate it?!

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