Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Chronarius

Quoting: scaineBased on my own experience then, I suspect that the vast, vast majority of support issues are logged by Linux users who are using any distro that isn't Ubuntu. Because, honestly, what else can it be??

Or am I somehow magically blessed with this near-perfect experience?

Exactly! This is my experience as well. Ubuntu has become the standard for gaming on Linux.

Very true. Pity they decided to bugger it up with the 32-bit library mess.

And then un-bugger it. And I'm not bothered anyway, as I'll use Ubuntu Mate 18.04 (or possibly 20.04) as the base until 2023/25 and hopefully we'll have a better solution by then. That whole thing is a storm-in-a-teacup as far as I'm concerned.

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Yeah, Mirv, that second question would be interesting. I'm extremely "tech-savvy" generally but not really all that tech-savvy about Linux, so I'd challenge that assumption, "all/most Linux users are techies".

Conversely, I use Ubuntu (the "official" platform for running games on Steam) and have only filed bug reports for two games in my nearly 6 years of Linux-only gaming, both recently. One two months ago filed with Chronicon, where the dev didn't know why it doesn't launch on Ubuntu 16.04, but noted that they only support 18.04, and that was that (in that support thread, in fact, Liam helped by noting that it ran on 18.10). And one for a Lime error I was experiencing in Dicey Dungeons, which the dev suspected was an easy fix... and it was. It's now perfect again.

Based on my own experience then, I suspect that the vast, vast majority of support issues are logged by Linux users who are using any distro that isn't Ubuntu. Because, honestly, what else can it be??

Or am I somehow magically blessed with this near-perfect experience?

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Quoting: ChronariusOnce again, how does he get his numbers? Which sales count for Linux? Which for Windows?

Steam gives you those figures. Whatever platform the game is played on attributes the sale. If there's no playtime in the first two weeks, the platform of sale is used for attribution, I think? Need to be careful with that one though, as the default sale platform for attribution is "Windows", so if the game is bought on Android or Steam Play, then not played, I think you end up counting as a Windows sale.

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Looks just absolutely beautiful. What puts me off a fair bit is the "beat your old boss-self" mechanic. I play these games in a very min/max way, so when I defeat the game's boss, I like to do it in a fairly brutal, overkill way. If I then have to play again, knowing that the horror waiting at the end of the story is my old min/maxed, brutal, overkill self... I lose motivation to play. Both because it'll be really hard, but also because I form an attachment to my heroes.

I hated Warcraft 3 for pulling the same stunt with Arthas. "Hey, play this awesome paladin for 10 missions, form an attachment to how pure and powerful he is, powering him up hugely along the way! Haha! Fooled you! Arthas is now the bad guy and you'll fight him later on."

Urgh. :D

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As an aside, I'm delighted that the dev chose to support us because while it an absolutley superb game, if it was Windows only, I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. I've still hardly spent a penny on Windows games that work through Proton and that's unlikely to change for a few years yet.

Great game. Money well spent.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: Mountain ManCopyrights and IPs must be vigorously protected, or they can be forfeited by default. That's just how the law works.

Trademark on a common term shouldn't even exist in the first place. They didn't create the name, so it's not theirs to claim.

"Shouldn't" is irrelevant though. Amazon, Windows, Lynx, Apple, Jaguar... hell, even Ubuntu, or Fedora will run into this. Then there's all the brands that were uniquely worded brands and now can be found in a dictionary, like Hoover or even Google.

Band names in particular can be bad for this right enough: Nirvana, The Doors, Queen, Kiss, etc.

I'm not even sure I agree with "shouldn't". This is just how trademark or brand protection works. If it didn't, you'd be swimming in clones with the same name.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: Guest

When you pick a non-Steam game on Linux, it often cuts off the full path to it so it won't launch.

Often isn't technically correct. It only cuts off if there is a space in the path or the .exe name.
Steam will place the cut off section into the "Set Launch Options" You can copy and paste that bit back into your "Target"

Isn't that essentially covered by the word "often"?? Often, as in most times, but not always??

If you don't have a space in your folder or .exe names then it would be never.
I would say "often" only fits if the reason it happens is uncertain and it happens 25% or more

It's nothing to do with certainty (when I cut a deck of cards, I often get a heart, for example). I have no idea why your claim that "often isn't technically correct" wound me up so much to be honest...

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Quoting: Guest

When you pick a non-Steam game on Linux, it often cuts off the full path to it so it won't launch.

Often isn't technically correct. It only cuts off if there is a space in the path or the .exe name.
Steam will place the cut off section into the "Set Launch Options" You can copy and paste that bit back into your "Target"

Isn't that essentially covered by the word "often"?? Often, as in most times, but not always??

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Quoting: fagnerlnThis is a REALLY nice article, congratulations!

The only point that I don't agree is about the rating in Protondb, a lot of Platinum ratings have a lot of workarounds, so I don't think that if X game has platinum rating is good to go. I suggest to study about every game that you want to play, if someone can run, so try it by yourself

Everyone's mileage will vary with this. It's still a beta and the only guarantees Valve are making currently is the official whitelisted games.

Quoting: BrisseNice guide. Small nitpick: The definition of the gold rating is "runs perfectly after tweaks", so there is a good chance these require manual intervention as well. My last gold rated report was Dark Souls Remastered which at first doesn't launch at all, but after installing vcrun2017 with winetricks works perfectly. Could be off-putting to newbies even though it's a simple tweak. Buying a gold rated game thinking it should work fine and then for it to immediately CTD at launch can be quite scary for newbies I would imagine. The ability to refund takes away some of the anxiety though.

While you're technically correct, if any winetricks/protontricks is required, I'd personally rate silver. A "tweak" in my opinion is adding one of the switches to the start up, or dealing with a weird resolution on first run. Opening a shell, installing new software, researching the command you need to run (including what the appid is of the game you're patching)...? Too much hassle. Insta-silver for me. At least I'm being more harsh instead of less harsh, since I agree that many of the platinum titles have little issues too. For example, Deep Rock Galactic is platinum and still doesn't have working voice chat - you can hear, but can't speak. Meanwhile Hellblade is gold but ran like a native game for me.

But as I say, it's beta.

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Quoting: BeamboomAre there ever any reason to run anything but the latest version of Steam Play on any game, ever?

I think there's been the odd regression, but nothing major. The only real reason I could think of is that it'll guarantee that a whitelisted game will run "as intended".

Great guide though. Thanks for this - the gifs tell the story better than words ever can. It's nice to have a guide on a Linux technology that doesn't need you to open a bash shell!

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