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Valve Introduces Proton Next

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Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#111

Post by boudin »

gatonegro wrote: post #54
zamalek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a talk by GabeN years ago, where he explained his business philosophy (which also had to do with his exit from Microsoft). It was strikingly simple: treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well (even if the majority of customers don't understand that... yet).

> treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well. It's really won me over, I can say that much. When I was using Windows, I favoured buying games from GOG over Steam whenever possible. DRM and all that. Ever since I moved to Linux, it's been the opposite. GOG couldn't care less about Linux compatibility, and while you can get their stuff going through some combination of Wine/Lutris script…

I wouldn't put GOG in the same basket as other stores like EGS though, they did make some efforts and officially packaged and distributed games for Linux quite early. It's not the same effort as Valve but it's still to their credit (I'm saying that as a Linux user).

Nowdays, Heroic Game Launcher is the easiest option to play GOG games though (as well as EGS ones) https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#112

Post by chairmanwow1 »

bombcar wrote: post #101
MikusR wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> treat your customers well That's why it took a lawsuit to get refund support for Steam.

Valve’s customers are the studios. Only half-sarcastically.

Not really. More like hostage to distribution. If you list your game on Steam, you can't list your game for a cheaper price anywhere else on the internet.

People put up with that because they still come out ahead by listing on Steam.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#113

Post by mattbee »

opan wrote: post #38
mattbee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is. And I noticed quite early on: the Steam games which had problems were the ones with native Linux ports - wonky display settings, or controller not recognised or something like that. The fix is always to tell it to "force" a version of Proton, which caused Steam to go and download the Win32 build instead.

I get the feeling people hit a bad game or two and stopped checking, so I just want to say native ports actually work fine in my experience, both before and after Proton's birth. Terraria, Garry's Mod, Valve's own titles, and Starbound should all work fine to name a few. I fear we'll get fewer proper native ports because of Proton, so it's hard for me to get excited about it. Especially with how it seems to be on by…

I'm sure there are lots of working Linux ports! I was just saying that when I _did_ have a problem with a game on my Deck, disabling the Linux port fixed it.

Where are the compromises for a developer in using Proton? There's one binary for them to ship (and update), they get to use industry-standard tools, and Valve makes sure it works on other platforms for free.

Surely the result is more games you can run on a Linux system?

Or rather - nobody cares when Windows leans on layers of backwards-compatibility to run a binary perfectly, why does anyone care when Linux does the same?

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#114

Post by girvo »

soulofmischief wrote: post #100
MikusR wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> treat your customers well That's why it took a lawsuit to get refund support for Steam.

That lawsuit specifically had to do with meeting Australian guidelines. I personally have had zero complaints with the Steam refund system here in America.

They didn’t have a refund system initially.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#116

Post by Keyframe »

zamalek wrote: post #25
manchmalscott wrote: post #19

Valve's continual focus on Linux (SteamOS 1.0 was released eight years ago) is honestly incredible, Proton even sometimes works better than native Linux builds. Truly nobody else (in the gaming space) is doing it like Valve are. I saw a talk[1] from a KDE dev talking about features Valve sponsored to be added to KDE Plasma and it's things that are useful for everyone outside the context of the steam deck. The only th…

I watched a talk by GabeN years ago, where he explained his business philosophy (which also had to do with his exit from Microsoft). It was strikingly simple: treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well (even if the majority of customers don't understand that... yet).

Yet fleecing game developers with 30% cut on sales at the same time. It's a soft big cushion to talk profound thoughts from. Reminds me of billionaires giving advice like "you just have to believe and work hard"... yeah, but that's a low baseline you have to have anyways.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#117

Post by ACS_Solver »

kilolima wrote: post #29
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #20

Using Proton feels like magic. The fact that you can run games made for a totally different OS, which isn't even based on Unix or Linux is a big feat in itself. Valve is just a single company pushing for Linux gaming and the results have been excellent. Linux is the perfect candidate too. Efficient, open, easy to modify and adapt. I hope more companies follow Valve and realize the true untapped potential of Linux sys…

Why is it magic? Wine has been around since forever. It's not like Valve wrote most of the underlying code proton runs on. And what's with all the valve/steam hype from people that should know better? At the end of the day you are using a DRM front end (steam) that fragments the mod ecosystem and obfuscates the process of installing and running the software you paid for on your own computer.

The initial release of Proton felt like magic to me.

I tried many games with Wine across many years, from versions well before Wine 1.0 to 4.0, I also tried CodeWeavers something (Crossover?) when that was a thing. A few games worked very well, for example I remember running a newly-released Civ4 almost seamlessly. But most games didn't. Some would be playable but with graphical or audio glitches, performance or stability issues. Others wouldn't be playable no matter what. Tinkering with dll overrides, wineprefixes and all that was often necessary.

Then Proton came and, almost overnight, the Linux gaming experience improved more than in the previous fifteen years of Wine-based attempts. A few years later now, my default expectation has changed to games just working on Linux, unless they use a rootkit-style anti-cheat system. Most games I played under Proton have worked with native-like quality, I could as well be running them on a Windows gaming rig. A few games worked with minor issues such as a few seconds of garbled audio on startup or slower startup. There's only one recent game where I had to give up on Proton, and that game is supposed to run well according to ProtonDB, I just couldn't it right on my system.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#118

Post by IshKebab »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #112
bombcar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve’s customers are the studios. Only half-sarcastically.

Not really. More like hostage to distribution. If you list your game on Steam, you can't list your game for a cheaper price anywhere else on the internet. People put up with that because they still come out ahead by listing on Steam.

In fairness Steam's prices are very reasonable. I imagine there are ways around it anyway.

Re: Valve Introduces Proton Next

#120

Post by IshKebab »

impulser_ wrote: post #107

Why doesn't Apple put this much effort into bring MacOS into the same realm as Windows in terms of gaming? You would think they would invest more money and time taking away one of the last major advantages of Windows vs. MacOS. Microsoft obviously sees gaming as one of the big advantages to Windows, hence why they have been buying up gaming studios and combining Xbox and Windows into the one gaming platform.

They probably would prefer to parlay iPhone games to Mac, then they have tight control over them and can offer things Microsoft can't.
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