I think you're mistaking what is the battle and what is the war, here.
Linux user share is the war. Linux native game share is a battle, which will ultimately be won automatically if the wider war is won. And lost automatically if the wider war is lost.

The Linux user share war is won by people switching to Linux and buying devices, say to play games on, which happen to have Linux on them. And one big question people will ask when considering whether to switch, or to buy such a device, is "Can I play my games?"

If the answer is entirely or mostly "No", they will not switch or buy. We saw this with the Steam Machine, which admittedly had other problems, but that was key among them. Even "sorta half and half" is not good enough.

If the answer is entirely or mostly "Yes", they may switch or buy. We see this now with the Steam Deck, which is selling very well. Since the introduction of the Steam Deck, the Linux share on Steam has gone from less than 1% to approaching 2.5%. Some of that is from the Deck itself, some is from increases in desktop Linux. Both of these increases are certainly dependent on the effectiveness of Proton.

If this increase continues for a few more years, Linux will be hitting numbers that make it worth money to pay attention to. Then native Linux games will certainly increase. I think that since Proton became a big thing, native Linux titles have decreased some, but it hasn't been nearly as much as I was expecting. The ease of using Proton seems to have been offset somewhat by increased buzz around the Steam Deck and SteamOS. But, if Linux user share had kept stagnating, native Linux game share would also, and probably in fact have continued to decline.

So, if someone wanting native Linux games were given a magic wand, which they could wave to kill Proton so developers wanting to target Linux would have to go native, this would be tactically a bare win in the very short term, but strategically disastrous. They would be fools to wave that wand.

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Heh. You could totally combine this with the power washing game:
Step 1. Clean the thing
so you can then
Step 2. Paint the thing

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Lester?
"Here lies Lester More
Four slugs from a .44
No Les, no more."

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So is the DRM just a blind spot, or is there some technical reason that stuff can't, or is very hard to make, run in Wine?

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In any case, the number of games marked playable and supported has little to do with the number of cames you can actually play effectively. Most games just haven't been tested. And, these days most of the games that don't pass have more to do with the Steam Deck as a physical device, like not working well with small screens or controllers or whatever, than with Linux. Those wouldn't work on the Deck even if you for some bizarre reason installed Windows.

The gap is not that big. The important issue at this point is not so much actual incompatibility, it's more the anti-cheat situation.

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Nice music. Sounds a bit like The Arcade Fire.

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Well now. That's a nice big round number. You could put that on an ad.

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The devs sound nice.

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@Tevur Hey, I'll have you know some of the stuff I pull out of my ass is absolutely amazing!
. . . Hang on, that didn't end up sounding quite the way I'd hoped . . .

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@neolith, I regret not having added some emoticons, but the spirit in which I said that was a bit subtle for the kind of flavouring they can give. I was intending a certain sarcastic levity, a mild hyperbole meant to convey my withering contempt. If I actually banned such a thing, it would not be for stupidity. Rather, it would be because I don't buy into the paradox of tolerance. The one group one need not tolerate is the intolerant, because they would break the whole tolerance system. There's a certain irony in your objecting to banning a mod that's not to my taste, which mod in turn is conveying the desire to ban things that are not to someone's taste. And let's not forget that if I were someone running a mod manager I would not be the government--I would have no responsibility to host a mod I don't like. If people want an obnoxious mod they can host it at obnoxiousmods.com, it's not my problem.

(Incidentally, what makes it stupid rather than merely intolerant is that apparently, the game by default sets the pronoun based on the body type you choose. So you don't even have to pay attention to its ability to set pronouns--you just ignore it if you're already doing the default. So the idea is that you go to the trouble of acquiring and activating this mod, just so you can be secure in the knowledge that you can no longer possibly do what you would never normally even notice you could do. The insecurity level this implies to me is staggering)

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