Looks like they ship with openal 1.21.1 which doesn't yet support pipewire (but pulse - trough pipewire of course).
Recent versions also "moved" system-wide settings /etc/openal/alsoft.conf to /etc/xdg/alsoft.conf (https://github.com/kcat/openal-soft/commit/a2d34e4c2a37931fda58d0a632140da3e2edd5b0) though the former is still checked for and works therefore as well.

It can also contain a priority list:
[general]
drivers=pipewire,pulse,alsa,oss

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Sad statement to make but if you look at native ports that became broken over time due to 3rd parties porting them and it not being done inhouse by the devs themselves at least for those I rather prefer the devs ensuring it runs good on Proton/Wine instead. Even more so if that happens the Linux version usually just stays around on Steam even if the game runs well through Proton/Wine so Linux players get something totally broken instead, sometimes even the game versions lack behind without any clear notice that you get a worse experience with the Linux version. And if you require legacy (steam-)runtimes to run games on Linux there's not much difference than running it through Proton in my humble opinion. We still have way too many things getting broken on Linux through time, just remember the Steam/EAC glibc issue(s), or Indirect Branch Tracking (IBT) with the kernel and NVIDIA driver and so on.

I welcome all the work Valve has done to improve Wine with their Proton fork and for now I'm just happy when I don't need to boot into Windows to play a game. Though there's another storm on the horizon with games running on the deck but not on desktop Linux (Persona 5 on launch and Pentiment being recent examples - which got either fixed in the meantime or workarounds being implemented on the Proton side) but it's another thing worrying me.

Promising something in a Kickstarter campaign and then not fulfulling the promise is another cup of tea though but at least they offer refunds. I'd generally not believe in any peoples talks these days and rather wait for release.

Edit: To mention a real positive title in this regards and in regards to space games: X4: Foundations which is native, utilizing Vulkan and runs beautifully on Linux, they have their own custom engine though so they know their stuff and also do everything inhouse and with the latest (Beta) update they move their physics engine to the open-source Jolt Physics engine (developed on GitHub) which is also used in Horizon Forbidden West.

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We sadly already had and still have other very smiliar cases like that, Persona 5 when it came out, Pentiment. I don't like this trend at all. Nice to see things going well for the Deck but a really concerning development.

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Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: tgurrARC

I don't understand how that could change anything. AFAIK ARC is only necessary if you want to get Audio back from the TV to the Steam Deck.

I never said it does, it just happens to be the input port I connected to as it is one of those where you're able to configure the various "HDMI-Signal formats" as the more advanced ones like VRR for example are not available on every single port.

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Quoting: jdshaldMy experience with the steam deck dock is similar to yours. I'm hoping they update it and make it easier to get it to display on my sony tv without having to unplug and replug it and repower on.

Not sure if we may have different issues as I never got a screen output either way and it just stayed black before doing any changes, but after having thanged the HDMI settings in the configuration of the Sony TV I don't have to unplug/replug/repower.

That said not all HDMI ports have the same set of settings, I've connected mine to HDMI 3 where it says (ARC) on the label next to it and in the TV settings under "HDMI-Signal formats" I've then switched the settings of the "HDMI 3 (eARC/ARC)" port from "Standard format" to "Optimized format", other available ones I can choose from on my TV would be "Optimized format (Dolbly Vision)" and "Optimized format (VRR)".

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It always really amazes me to see games like Victoria in such lists as I personally can't image how you can play such a an input and text-heavy game on a rather small screen. Games like Persona 4|5 on the other hand are a perfect fit from the start. It would be really great if we'd have some additional details from each game about how many users use an external connected screen and their playtimes on each in the form of native deck screen vs. external screen connected.

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Jazz Jackrabbit - Good old memories, not sure if modern computers are too fast to play these classics or if it's my brain that got too slow.

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I had to play with the options of the HDMI ports on an Android based TV (Sony) where I had to switch the one the Steam Deck Dock is connected to from compatibility mode into "4k optimized" or "VRR gamemode" else it didn't show any video signal at all. I did not have to do this when using an Anker USB-C "dock" I bought and used with the Steam Deck before. Hope they'll sort out the compatibility issues with future updates but at least I was able to get it working anyways.

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Only works on the Deck though, not on regular linux distributions, see https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6255 [External Link] with a suggested fix proposed to Proton GE https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/pull/80 [External Link] (didn't test it myself yet) which puts us in the strange situation where things magically work on the deck and don't on regular linux distributions as the relevant changes clearly aren't even to be found in the Valve fork of wine https://github.com/ValveSoftware/wine [External Link] which additionally adds to the mysterium in this specific case.

Can't complain on the Deck though, works and performs great even the fan doesn't spin up most of the time (playing it forced to 30fps) with the official Deck dock on a TV outputting the game in fullhd 1920x1080.

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And meanwhile there's a fork for Python 3 compatibility at https://github.com/Ryochan7/sc-controller [External Link] as upstream still requires obsolete end-of-life legacy Python 2 in 2022.

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