Comment by dmos62
1 day ago
So it became more straightforward to release games on Linux? Sounds like a positive. Or, is the gripe about distinction of released for vs playable on?
1 day ago
So it became more straightforward to release games on Linux? Sounds like a positive. Or, is the gripe about distinction of released for vs playable on?
> So it became more straightforward to release games on Linux? Sounds like a positive.
No, not really. Many of the common game engines already support Linux out of the box. Unity, for example, already makes building for Linux basically equivalent to building for Windows or Mac. Proton has disincentivized building for Linux even in cases where doing so is already as straightforward and low-effort as could be.
> Or, is the gripe about distinction of released for vs playable on?
Yes. Most of these games were already playable on Linux under Wine, even if it took a bit more effort on the part of the user to get things up and running. The rise in Linux usage started motivating native Linux ports for a few years, and there's a large library of native Linux games out there. But Proton has been removing the incentives to build native Linux ports by making that Windows compatibility "just work".
The result is now that there are more games where Linux compatibility still running on top of an emulation layer -- but one that's a bit less straightforward for users to configure directly as they would with Wine -- and a bit less performant than they might otherwise be.
It also means that Linux compatibility for these games is more closely coupled to the Steam ecosystem. Whereas a game with a native Linux build might distribute that build through Steam, GOG, Humble, itch.io, etc., now the non-Steam platforms have only Windows builds. Sure, these can usually still be played under Wine in the traditional fashion, but that represents a regression away from native Linux support.