I’d like native builds really, but this kinda discourages that. Then again though, with tiny market share Linux has, it’s understandable devs don’t support it natively. It’s also good to not have to manually enable Proton everytime too.
Oh and I suppose this helps with adoption, one less hurdle for someone to jump through to just play games from their library.
While I agree, I think that getting more games on Linux is far more useful. When Linux is almost 3% very few studios will care much. If they can do a small bit of testing on Proton and maybe work around a bug or two they are far more likely to do that then make and test a native build. If this then gets Linux usage to 5, 10 or 20% that will drive more native builds.
So I agree that it somewhat reduces the incentive to release a native build. But I think that is outweighed by the benefits of making the Linux gaming experience better today which will have a greater impact on availability of native builds in the future.
Absolutely. You are right, the initial uptake is more important right now. Most of the Linux market share on Steam is the Steam Deck right now.
The native builds override the proton comparability layer from running.
Yeah, but I mean when making a decision to natively support Linux, it becomes more likely to skip it as “proton can just handle it”.
So it’s likely we won’t see more native development until Linux desktop adoption is much much higher.
We will be at 10% very soon and yes that’s a valid concern.
First all games will work on linux and then onward the future games will be made for linux from the ground up.
Where’s the source for that? Every statistic I can find puts Linux at about 4% (never above 5 in history) and specifically for Steam, it’s at 2.69%.
It’s at 5.1% according to Pornhub. I know people on the internet like to downplay progress lol.
Fantastic ahaha
A third party ported a game to Linux then stopped keeping it up to date with the Windows version. Your versions have to match for online play, so to play with your Windows buddies, you have to force it to use the latest version on proton. But guess what, the save data is separated between platforms, so you have to create your character again and lose your story progress.
The game is Borderlands 2 BTW.
Civ VI has a Linux build, but one of the DLCs does not. If you install the “complete” pack on Linux without forcing proton, it will just silently skip it and you’ll be left scratching your head about where that content is.
Linux gamers receive significant attention as Proton is now enabled by default
Significant attention = A 0 became a 1, saving you a few clicks after installing Steam.
