Last Friday, we discussed reports of Steam having secretly made some updates regarding Steam Play, and hints that it could be linked to allowing for those on Linux to run Windows-only games. As of August 21st, Steam has put out a press release announcing the new beta. Multiple games that don't have an official Linux release can now easily be installed from the Steam client, allowing for easy access to the compatible games, listed below.

• Beat Saber
  
• Bejeweled 2 Deluxe
  
• Doki Doki Literature Club!
  
• DOOM
  
• DOOM II: Hell on Earth
  
• DOOM VFR
  
• Fallout Shelter
  
• FATE
  
• FINAL FANTASY VI
  
• Geometry Dash
  
• Google Earth VR
  
• Into The Breach
  
• Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
  
• Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013
  
• Mount & Blade
  
• Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword
  
• NieR: Automata
  
• PAYDAY: The Heist
  
• QUAKE
  
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
  
• Star Wars: Battlefront 2
  
• Tekken 7
  
• The Last Remnant
  
• Tropico 4
  
• Ultimate Doom
  
• Warhammer® 40,000: Dawn of War® - Dark Crusade
  
• Warhammer® 40,000: Dawn of War® - Soulstorm

Games that originally relied on DirectX will now run through Vulkan, instead. These titles function by running a modified version of WINE, which Valve has dubbed "Proton". For those interested, you can see it on GitHub, where the code has been made open source.

Proton is a tool distribution based on a modified version of Wine. The included improvements to Wine have been designed and funded by Valve, in a joint development effort with CodeWeavers. Here are some examples of what we've been working on together since 2016:

• vkd3d[source.winehq.org], the Direct3D 12 implementation based on Vulkan
  
• The OpenVR and Steamworks native API bridges
  
• Many wined3d performance and functionality fixes for Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11
  
• Overhauled fullscreen and gamepad support
  
• The "esync[github.com]" patchset, for multi-threaded performance improvements

Valve stated that they hope this newly made progress helps developers eventually bring their future titles to Linux, while also assisting them in making the process easier. Though official compatibility is listed only for the above games at this time, you can try to run it with any Steam game, to varying results. According to the Steam post, most games should work, eventually, barring those with excessive DRM or anti-cheat systems.

Source

 

[VitaType]

Guess a big company with experience in gaming working to improve Wine is a win.

 

[trogoldito]

Awesome news.

But will it support raytracing? No way this will work out well without giving people the ability to see an off screen explosion reflected in a person’s eye. All about them gigarays man.

 

[Minox]

Awesome news.

But will it support raytracing? No way this will work out well without giving people the ability to see an off screen explosion reflected in a person’s eye. All about them gigarays man.

Raytracing relies on the GPU and its driver's abilities so provided that it's properly implemented in the Linux drivers and that everything is mapped correctly in Wine I don't see why they wouldn't work.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Valve, paving the way for the Steam Machine 2nd failure edition. (I hope they don't go too creative on the gamepad this time)

 

[tech3475]

Valve, paving the way for the Steam Machine 2nd failure edition. (I hope they don't go too creative on the gamepad this time)

I thought this was just life support.

 

[The Catboy]

So they just went with my suggestion?

Better idea, hear me out, help improve WINE. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel when someone's already working on a wheel. They will both be helping the open source community and also looking good doing it.

 

[Taleweaver]

Absolutely incredible news. After the rumour I really had my fingers crossed. Seems this is actually happening!

Awesome news.

But will it support raytracing? No way this will work out well without giving people the ability to see an off screen explosion reflected in a person’s eye. All about them gigarays man.

Just search for your game in the winehq database. It's built on user reports, so it might be hit and miss. Still...I haven't come across anyone labeling a game as "garbage" because they couldn't see the explosion-reflection in someone's eye. You could be the first one.

Valve, paving the way for the Steam Machine 2nd failure edition. (I hope they don't go too creative on the gamepad this time)

Those steam machines were, simply put, released way too early (...and that's an euphemism for "they were released WAAAAAAAAAAAY to early"). SteamOS wasn't up to snuff, and as much as I hate to say it: it still isn't (a quiet status update notwithstanding, the operating system simply is no match for the popular linux operating systems. It's currently in spot 94 on the popularity meter).
Even more than that: those machines aimed at...no one, really. Tech nerds knew how to built a computer of equal/better specs for a lower price point and newbies were just told "same experience as on windows but with less games". It was so dead in the water that I honestly wonder what the developers were thinking in the first place (especially since there were SO MANY of them).

It's still (way) too early for anything hardware related, it's still a good step in the right direction. And not a minor one either: there are plenty of windows games with a 'platinum' label, meaning they can be played through wine perfectly. All that's holding the players back is the hassle of setting things up each time (even a platinum-quality game needs to be installed through wine). It was better a few years ago than, say five years ago, but still not up to today's "click and play" attitude. This method seems to address exactly that.

...and not only that: it looks like they have a good mix of starting games: new and old, indie and from AAA-studios. That'll draw attention. And I certainly intend to (re)visit a part of my 'windows-only' games through wine. If for nothing else: in the hope of getting it added to the list.

 

[Athlon-pv]

Raytracing relies on the GPU and its driver's abilities so provided that it's properly implemented in the Linux drivers and that everything is mapped correctly in Wine I don't see why they wouldn't work.

That is not how Nvidia tends to operate. The problems regarding the open version supported by DX12 or Vulkan does not mean that Nvidia optimized titles will actually work that way.

https://developer.nvidia.com/optix

Nvidia keeps doing this...

 

[Dr.Hacknik]

Now I have more reason to ditch WIndows 10 completely and use Solus from now on. Since they're improving Wine support. And I can probably add Windows games to my library from executables.

 

[Deleted User]

I don't use Linux, but this might convince me to finally move.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Eh the reasons Valve started down the Steambox path are still valid. Namely Windows S. Just look at the latest OSX now, you have to explicitly allow permission to every single app you install that isn't Apple approved. MS will eventually go that route, even if it takes another decade. Even if the Linux avenue is doomed, its going to become their only option at some point.

 

[sarkwalvein]

I don't use Linux, but this might convince me to finally move.

It still may have its caveats, I mean... it's wine based caveats.
What caveats? may you ask.
Well, imagine you are playing something light as hell, as a Visual Novel.
When using Wine the CPU may never idle, and if you are playing on a laptop that means go fuck yourself battery life.
What is the PTSD like experience I am talking about? /s
Well, I remember playing both Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate0 on my MBP (not Linux IKR, but Unix enough with up-to-date wine installed through brew), and the damn thing worked "perfectly" but drained a battery that normally lasts 10+ hours in just 2 hours (and it felt hot as if I were playing Crysis™*1 on it)

*1: old meme, don't sue me.

 

[Deleted User]

It still may have its caveats, I mean... it's wine based caveats.

I used wine on mac for nearly 5 years, so I know all about that. It worked decently enough, even Crysis 1 and 2 ran well along with a few others.

It also had a ridiculous amount of glitches! I remember Shadow of Chernobyl being especially weird with Wine back then, but those are good memoires.

 

[tunip3]

Does proton support Vs

 

[leerpsp]

there are a lot of people who have youtube videos showing them playing games that are not on the list with steam play and they are working bug free and some even run better on linux then windows.

 

[GensokyoIceFairy]

disregard this message

 

[Taleweaver]

Eh the reasons Valve started down the Steambox path are still valid. Namely Windows S. Just look at the latest OSX now, you have to explicitly allow permission to every single app you install that isn't Apple approved. MS will eventually go that route, even if it takes another decade. Even if the Linux avenue is doomed, its going to become their only option at some point.

I'm...really not sure what you're saying here. Of course you have to allow permission for every single app you install. It's like that on apple, windows (today...not in a decade), android and at least on the linux distributions I've used. It's only standard safety procedure: rather be more cautious when installing programs (making it harder for malicious programs to install in the background) than being too lacking about it and end up with bug manifestations like the average Joe has on windows xp.

The doom thinking of microsoft attempting to seize control over every program on their OS at this point is as stupid as a paper company trying to control what people are writing on their product: the very means of that freedom is what sells the product in the first place. The moment microsoft decides that "homebrew" is no longer allowed on windows, the best they can hope for is companies not upgrading or bailing out of windows. More likely, they'll get multiple sues for that practice (again: a lot of companies adopted windows because it allowed their programmers to write programs to fit their specific needs. As such, they are reliying on their "homebrew" program to work their business).

EDIT:

there are a lot of people who have youtube videos showing them playing games that are not on the list with steam play and they are working bug free and some even run better on linux then windows.

What? Already? Hmm...thus far I've only seen one guy playing hitman 2.

Of course, playing windows games on linux, or even windows steam games on linux isn't really new. It was just a bit cumbersome to set up (last time I tried it). You had to install and configure wine...then download and install the steam installer executable through wine. This would work, albeit in a clunky way (the least i remember is the font being pretty weird). Then you could install windows games (or windows-versions of multiplatform games) on that same virtual hard drive you'd designated to steam. If the game worked correctly, this was fine, but if it was possible to then also set special flags for not-platinum games or using a different wine-version, then I certainly didn't know how to do that.

 

[lordelan]

As a Linux fan that's why I love Valve. They don't take the WINE code to push their system behind "closed doors" (like Team Xecuter does) but put their fork in an open git.
Also this makes it easier for people to decide to go with Linux. Keep in mind that this is only the beginning. The list of compatible games will grow over time.
Also these are only the games Valve officially announced (so they are running in most of the cases) while many other games might run in the near future as well, even if they're not officially labeled as compatible.
Let's wait for a year and look where this went.

 

[Deleted User]

snip