Quoting: tuxintuxedo

without the developer of these games even have to support or cooperate with us

That's quite risky. You pay for a game, but the devs basically give you no guarantee it will work. On the other hand, people who work on Wine and components (or simply Proton) will never see that money while doing the work itself.
Remember, a simple update can change many things in a game. And Proton needs to deal with it somehow. It would be more than necessary to have the developers in the back giving a helping hand.

I covered that aspect in my post already, so I will just say that I take a 5% chance for the game eventually stopping to work on Proton over NOT having Proton and the game never running on Linux in the first place.

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I have very pragmatic view about this: If the game runs on Linux in a way that's indistinguishable from running it on Windows, I don't care if it's a native port or a compatibility layer that makes it run. What matters is that it runs. These tests show that SteamPlay is on par with native ports in performance even now, and it didn't even leave beta yet. At the very least it will give us solid gaming options, without the developer of these games even have to support or cooperate with us. That's at the very least a solid Plan B - maybe even the key to solving gaming on Linux.
I like native ports too, but Linux gaming is currently largely based on the goodwill of exactly two major publishers that support us: Paradox and Square Enix. Take 2 has the odd Linux port, but the vast majority of their games doesn't get ported, so I don't consider them overall Linux friendly. NONE of the other big players do. No EA, no Ubisoft, no Bethesda, no Blizzard, no Warner. And chances for world peace are probably higher than any of these suddenly developing an affection for penguins.

Yes, there are drawbacks. A game that runs flawlessly in WINE/Proton might stop doing so with the next update. That actually happened to The Sims 4 last fall. And since the developer officially doesn't have to care, they don't care. Some intrusive DRM and anti-cheat software doesn't run at all, and due to its nature probably never will.

On the other hand, how many native ports did get launched by developers just pressing the "Export to Linux" button and never testing it on an actual Linux machine even once? I have had a few of these. Also, remember when Loki's native ports stopped working on newer Linux machines because of library updates and distro changes? Native ports aren't the perfect solution either, honestly.

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Quoting: DuncYep. The trouble with this sort of thing, even sprinkled with magical machine-learning pixie dust, is that it only knows what you already own or have on your wishlist. With the limited selection of native Linux games (and my own limited finances), I know that my Steam library doesn't really match my tastes in gaming very well. It's getting closer all the time, to be sure, but there are still major titles that I'd like to play but, for various reasons, can't. At least not yet. Valve's big machine brain doesn't know that, and never can.

And that's not even mentioning the fact that sometimes you want something completely un-like anything you've played before. Human minds aren't machines.

Don't underestimate machine learning. That the algorithm can make deductions from factors OTHER than just what's in your own library or wishlist is the very point of it. E.g. it can it will take Windows users into consideration that might have libraries just like yours, only sans these games not available for Linux. It's not too hard to guess why you didn't buy these games, then.

The filter-bubble issue is real, but honestly, if you have 250+ games in your library, it's not all THAT likely that there are still lots of genres left you'd like but never tried yet. At least I like to think if I remotely liked car racing games, I'd have bought one by now. The sheer mass of the libraries Steam users tend to accumulate because of all these sales gives them a lot of data to work with, so I expect their AI to make pretty good suggestions.

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Having made a little game with it recently, I love this engine and I am excited for the new features, Vulkan support most of them all!
One thing I was missing lately is that the engine doesn't seem to support Steam controllers yet. At least get_connected_joypads() returns empty, even when Steam can see the controller. Also, built-in database support would be neat.

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I remember me being highly critical of WINE only 1-2 years ago, not because I'd have fundamental concerns against it (I don't belong to the "It's bad because it kills native ports" camp), but because at this point it still had almost zero DX11 support, couldn't run anything but very old games I tend to have no interest in, and even those you had to tinker for hours with to maaaaaybe get to run.

Now, almost everything seems to work, and more or less out of the box. WINE is close to becoming an invisible layer to run anything Windows, that almost makes you forget that you're running it on an OS is never was meant to run on.

We might never see a stage when Linux will see most AAA titles ported Windows is getting (we haven't seen a new major studio moving to supporting Linux in all of 2018, so we -lost- momentum, if anything), but thanks to WINE (and SteamPlay) we WILL reach a state when it doesn't matter anymore - because we can play them anyway.

*raises a glass to WINE*

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Quoting: einherjarIf I look at the things like exclusives in Epic Store, Discord, Ubisoft heading away from Steam and so on, I don't think that there will be a lot of AAA Titles on Steam....
So proton perhaps won't bring as AAA Titles, because they don't appear on Steam :-(

I am not aware that Epic had an interesting exclusive other than Fortnite itself, which is that current hype game without the store would probably collapse inside 5 mins.

Ubi - either I am missing something, or they still sell their titles on Steam, they just require a link to UPlay to work.

The only larger publishers I am aware of that consistently refuse to sell on Steam are EA and Blizz, and those have been doing so for a long time now.

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What I really love about Godot is not even the fact that it does everything I want, but that it doesn't somehow make MY game NOT my game...

As a sidenote: In the post-Moore's Law world, where people don't have to replace their PC every 2 years to keep able running newer games, but in a world where also most people still have metered internet, I don't understand the appeal of streaming games, honestly not.

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I am not denying that balance issues have occurred once or twice for people getting the free update, but not the corresponding DLC, but I'd say they are the exception and not the rule.

Personally I think Paradox has occasionally went over the top with releasing super tiny packs in fast cadences for waaay too much money (remember when CK2 DLCs consisted of the actual DLC, PLUS a music pack PLUS a fashion pack?), but they seemed to have learned that lesson now.

The bottom line is that Paradox's model means that games will be supported, enhanced and improved MANY years after release, leaving us with an ever larger and ever better game. Compare that to, say, EA's model, which is releasing the SAME game every year with updates to graphics and other minor things. What's really better? CK2 which was released in 2012 (IIRC) and is STILL growing? Or FIFA? FIFA is still largely the same game it was in 2012, it just looks better. I know what I prefer, but maybe it's just me.

*shrug*

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That's a really pretty game for an Indie! This kind of quality you rarely see outside of a big-budget production. Shame it's first person only, though. Seems to be a genre issue. Not sure why it's so much asked for to give people the option to draw their character on the screen...

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Strange indeed. They must be seeing potential way past the game the devs declared finished last year (but still kept making updates for). I am not complaining, though. PA is a great game and it couldn't have gone to better hands than Paradox. If I think about the most Linux-friendly publisher put there, their name tops the list every single time. I am looking forward to what they can do with it. Better graphics, maybe? More items to build with?

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