alt Hacker NewsBecause people love to celebrate Proton as if it was doing anything for GNU/Linux games, when in reality is another OS/2 take on Windows.
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We don't have to imagine what Linux gaming would be like without Proton.
- CD Projekt Red: released Witcher 2 on Linux, didn't for Witcher 3.
- iD Software: released Doom 3 on Linux, didn't for Doom (2016) or Doom Eternal.
- Epic Games: released Unreal Tournament 2004 on Linux, but didn't for Unreal Tournament 3 or Fortnite. (A Linux port was being worked on for UT3, but it ended up getting cancelled.)
- Larian Studios: released Linux version of Divinity: Original Sin, didn't for Divinity: Original Sin 2 or Baldur's Gate 3
Many studios over the years have made native Linux versions, and many studios stopped because the cost of porting exceeded the revenue it generated. Proton didn't exist when Unreal Tournament 3, Witcher 3, Doom (2016), or Divinity: Original Sin 2 released, so Proton wasn't the reason those studios stopped developing Linux titles -- they stopped because it made no financial sense to continue to make them.
Now, with Proton, 79% of the top 1000 games on Steam are gold or platinum rated on ProtonDB. If you're fine with minor issues, 88% are silver rated or better. For the Steam Deck in particular, there are 5,500 verified games, and 16,526 verified or playable games. So I'd argue Proton is doing quite a lot for people gaming on GNU/Linux machines, since they now have access to a solid majority of the top 1000 games on Steam, both on a Linux desktop and on a handheld.
The practical implication is that one can click one button and buy install and play thousands of games on Linux. Only MS stockholders are liable to care about the implications for Windows.
OS/2's Windows compatibility was borne in the midst of Windows' rapid ascension, of rapid progress and change in the home PC industry.
We aren't in the 90s anymore. Win32 has stalled, Microsoft has a regulatory gun to their head and Wine's compatibility (at least in the domain of games) is extremely good, good enough to allow for a commercial product to be a success while being entirely reliant on it. In what way is any of this comparable to what happened with OS/2 outside of "it runs Windows applications"?
It doesn't have to do anything for GNU/Linux games, that's been an option for years and it's a ghost town a-la Metal-native games. Valve (and the community) are doing the right thing by ignoring the Apple strategy of enforcing distribution terms they will abandon within the decade. Developers that want to program for Linux still can. It's just as stupid as it was when the first Steam Machine rolled out.
By supporting Proton, they are guaranteeing that modern and retro Windows games will be playable on Linux far into the future. Trying to get the next Call of Duty to support Linux natively is, quite literally, a waste of everyone's time that could possibly be involved in the process. I cannot see a single salient reason why Linux users would want developers to release a proprietary, undersupported and easily broken native build when translation can be updated and modified to support practically any runtime.