Comment by sylware
3 months ago
Don't do drugs mate.
But the right way to fix this, is valve hiring tens to hundreds of advanced system devs in order to QA (replay the games, 100%, at each patch proton side or game side) and technically support (omega-hell, because of the additional ultra-complex layer which is proton) all the games sold on elf/linux+proton. Unless the game devs are ready to deal with the software diarrhea of the debugging hell which is elf/linux+proton, valve, at each transaction which is buying a windows game on a elf/linux platform, a clear disclaimer should be given to the user if no official support is provided, or even blocked if illegal in the country of the transaction.
Obviously, it may backfire.
Don't forget: elf/linux + proton(wine) is a diarrhea of software engineering, 101 example of corporate grade software enshitification. Compared to windows, this "thing", has the decency to be free as in free beer and can be customized deeply, namely, remove tons of things, even though the tantrums of the steam client are seriously annoying and do force upon us very expensive linux "features"... aka only because too few elf/linux system devs at valve are competent enough to generate 'correct' elf binaries for broad elf/linux distro compat.
If the "steamdeck" continues to grow and the steam machine is enough of a success, game devs will be inclined to provide a native elf/linux build, much easier to technically support.
In the meantime, PROTON = 0 BUCKS is the only sane and honest way...
No need for personal attacks.
I don't know about your argument. PC doesn't have official support either. Games say they run on Windows, or whatever, but PC is notorious for tinkering, and for random things happening. And that's on the first party platform, Windows!
Then, for a more streamlined gaming experience, there are the consoles. Games come out for consoles, so they must work on the console, right? Well, they kinda do, and they kinda don't. There is a myriad of issues on consoles as well, most notably performance issues, but there are high-profile other ones as well, like with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077.
Running software, in my opinion, is just not a guaranteed experience like playing a movie, or listening to some music. Sometimes things just don't work, and that's in the name of the game. Sometimes, especially on PC, part of the happiness is to get it to run in the first place. And in this context, Proton works very well. There are millions of people out there enjoying it on the Deck, and I'd wager two orders of magnitude more people playing with other iterations of Wine, be that Lutris, proton-ge, Bottles, etc.
I think this is a case of letting the perfect be the enemy of good.
Ok, if you don't want to understand that technical support is legally required in tons of countries if you sell something, I cannot tell you much more.
I absolutely cannot understand that. I'm aware that actual scams are illegal, as in, advertising a feature, and selling the thing without the feature, for example. But, are they not selling PC and PC software in the countries you refer to? Or if they do, why didn't they sue CD Projekt / GOG / Steam when they launched Cyberpunk 2077, and win a bunch of money?
I just cannot see this logic applied to software. And the lack of documented effort suggests to me that there is more to this than "not perfectly working software = illegal".
Do you have sources on this being illegal, or legal proceedings regarding this issue?
Not to mention, with Steam, you can refund the game if it ends up not working, "within 14 days of purchase and less than 2 hours of playtime".
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