Is that last 10% all about DRM and anti-cheat?
Probably… with many cases of “we could support Linux without any problem but we don’t do because we just don’t want to” included.
Game devs don’t need to do much, or anything. Proton, wine, DXVK ecosystem supports almost everything out of the box.
That’s my point. It would often just run so they go out of their way to not support Linux.
If they run fine, then what is the problem?
I’ve seen native linux ports of games that ran worse than the win/proton version.
I was talking about the 10% that don’t run and how that is not a Linux problem but artificially created by publishers to not support games on Linux that could in fact run perfectly fine.
The majority of “we don’t support Linux because of DRM or anti-cheat”-cases are simply lies. They don’t want them to work on Linux so they put in extra checks to prevent it.
Basically yes.
I tried playing the BC Piezophile demo recently but it kept crashing on the main menu.
I’m someone who doesn’t do tinkering. If it doesn’t work then I move on to a different game until it or proton updates.
I would recommend checking protondb once if something isn’t working. Simply using a different proton version or adding a launch parameter that others share can often work. I don’t understand half the stuff I copy paste but it does work well so worth spending a minute to check it.
I don’t have the patience for even that minimal amount of troubleshooting. So I just leave it be until it fixes itself.
there is a single game i can think of that straight up refuses to run under wine for actual technical reasons and that’s gnoll hack because it apparently uses some extremely specific parts of the .net library that wine can’t do
As someone who chiefly plays single player games: yup, that tracks. I’ve played Cyberpunk 2077, Nioh, Yakuza Kiwami 1 & 2, the list goes on. All on Linux, no issues. In fact, over the past two years the only game that absolutely refused to run is an obscure title called DeathSprint 66.
What’s the best distro for my desktop? I’ve been mucking around with some on an old laptop but haven’t attempted any gaming on it outside of some simple emulation.
Ive had the least trouble with kubuntu. Im running steam vr and it doesnt officially support all wayland distros.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/18A4-1E10-8A94-3DDALinux mint installs easily (to be fair they all do), is familiar to Windows interface and has a big button to install nvidia drivers.
Mint or CachyOS.
CachyOS runs 10% faster but it’s Arch-based so it’s not as easy as Mint.
Good to know, I’m hesitant to go 100% arch on everything until I have a better handle on CLI.
tbf, data shows that less than 60% valve games release this year runs on linux with no issue and 30% runs with major or minor issues. This stat is stables for years, so we could generalize it; however it do not represents actual gamers experience; very few games represent the majority of gametime, and a lot of them do not run on linux.
Moreover, when the hardware hardly meet the requirements, some people experience crash on linux where stable on windows.
do not represents actual gamers experience
My experience gaming on Linux the past few years is that I have not encountered a single game that hasn’t worked. And 90%+ work with no tinkering whatsoever.
some people experience crash on linux where stable on windows.
FUD much? I’m not saying it’s not true… but like the opposite has to be true too. So without actual data to say it’s significant it’s really just not help much in any way, just creating doubt.
very few games represent the majority of gametime, and a lot of them do not run on linux.
Same, which ones? What’s your dataset?
Top 10 played games on steam :¹
- CS GO : compatible Linux
- Dota 2 : compatible Linux
- Battlefield 6 : not compatible
- ARC Raiders : not compatible
- PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS : not compatible
- Path of Exile : not compatible
- Rust : not compatible
- R.E.P.O : not compatible
- Banana : compatible Linux
- Bongo Cat : not compatible
So 3/10, and 2 of them are made by valve with an explicit orientation toward Linux. Because I’m unemployed, I computed playtime of those games²:
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- Counter-Strike 2 : 36,07 %
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- Dota 2 : 21,54 %
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- Battlefield™ 6 : 10,46 %
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- ARC Raiders : 8,16 %
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- PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS : 6,78 %
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- Path of Exile : 4,08 %
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- Rust : 3,93 %
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- Banana : 3,24 %
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- R.E.P.O. : 3,08 %
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- Bongo cat : 2,67 %
Tbf, I didn’t expect that Linux Games represent ~ 50% of playtime of the top 10. This quite impressive, and it does underline an interesting trend. However, I think a lot of people use their personal experience to other, with no regards for the social contexte. I got 3 different computers, I’m used to Linux, and I couldn’t play to almost every games. Because I’m too poor to get the right hardware, because my friends do not play on compatible games, and gaming is a social experience. My point is not that we shall not make FOSS propaganda’ my point is that software need to be produce regarding the need of the people in our diversity in order to make FOSS mainstream. Everybody is not in IT, in the US with a engineer wages.
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