It's primarily only the AAA multiplayer games that have that, not just AAA games in general.

Just browse the Deck Verified page for example: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/verified & https://store.steampowered.com/greatondeck/

Forza Horizon 6 and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resync'd are both listed, and both are very recent, major AAA game launches. With top-tier Linux compatibility.

It is staggering how different the situation is now as compared to just a couple years ago. Steam Deck (and associated investments by Valve) are damn near a revolution. It's a perfect storm of the incumbent turning to shit at the same time the underdog really got its act together.

If you or your friend group is really into a game that doesn't have Linux support yeah that's a bummer, especially when it's just because of the kernel level anticheat that's horrifying in its own right (triply so when it's for a PVE game, cough cough, helldivers 2, cough cough). But I don't think that's most people anymore. The more casual and indie game scene these days is huge, and of course single player games in general continue to be super popular.

> If you play AAA games with kernel anti-cheat then Wine and Proton are basically non-starters.

Kernel-level spyware, and Wine/Proton are the non-starters?

I don't think you and the person you replied to will reach an agreement.

"Kernel anti-cheat" and "spyware" is exactly what i mean. Thry do have millions of players. But that's like 20-30 games out of 1000s that run just fine.

Let's rephrase that statement. My game probably works fine on linux and if it doesn't there is an active community read to support it BUT the person, I purchased this game from said no.