this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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While I appreciate the efforts Valve puts into improving WINE/Proton, lets not forget that they are standing on the shoulders of giants and gaming with WINE was not that bad before the integration in Steam either.
Gaming with Wine was decidedly far worse before Valve started pumping money into it. Back before Proton was officially announced, there was a silent acceleration in Wine compatibility, getting better a rate we weren't used to, and it's in large part due to Valve partnering with CodeWeavers.
I think the point isn't to say Valve's help isn't appreciated, but to give a little reminder to share some gratefulness with the amazing people developing Wine before Valve got involved as well. It was and is an impressive piece of software in its own right. :)
That doesn't mean Valve wasn't a complete game changer. The fact that they managed to make a handheld Linux gaming device popular among gamers rather than just open source fanatics is impressive as hell, and we're all better off.
Oh of course, but I was particularly addressing "gaming with WINE was not that bad before the integration in Steam either", because it really wasn't great, as important and foundational as it was.
I mean, enthusiasts made it work. Compared to nothing, it's a hell of a lot better. PlayOnLinux was also popular.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "that bad". It has certainly gotten a lot better, nobody is denying that.
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Yeah, that's not necessarily the case. Did it kind of work? Sure, if you knew what you were doing. Was it at all the seamless experience that Proton is now? No.
You're correct in giving WINE the credit it's due.
But I couldn't disagree more with the "gaming with WINE was not that bad" statement.
It was horrible. Game updates broke compatibility a thousand times, outdated Wine wrappers were a mess, setting up most games involved convoluted scripts, and even when things magically just worked performance was usually lower (except for some specific CPU bound games).
The results were fine, but the work to get there was quite bad quite often.
UX polish is one of those things that just isn't as fun to do, and isn't as rewarding either. So pumping a bunch of money into it is going to go a long way towards making all the other hard work come out better.
The 10 developers Valve hired have nearly nothing in their Github profile. Proton history is nothing but community based code and a copycat of Wine, just like everyone said in the very start of Proton.
I think their efforts are more for bringing gaming on Linux to more mainstream attention. Not knowing you can game on Linux is a major factor for a lot of people in not switching.
I didn't even know that Proton was Wine, until somewhere else pointed it out here on Lemmy... (granted, I am not a proton user, that's why my lack of context was there, but I follow the Chinese retro handhelds community so that's why I knew why Proton is awesome).
Please don't spread misinformation Valve does not put in effort, they paid people to make Proton, it's the community that makes the code NOT VALVE. A simple github chart can tell you everything.
They directly hired people to work on it... how else would you describe "putting efforts into" when a company does it?
Please don't credit me for writing this comment. It was my hands I employed that did the typing
You can't say Mcdonald's CEO put effort in his work because he hired people to make the food. See how dumb that sounds.
It sounds dumb because no one's saying that, you just made it up. That would be like if someone was directly crediting Gabe Newell with, idk, CS:GO battlepass sales or something. That's not what anyone's saying.
A better comparison would be crediting McDonalds as a company for their work in the handheld apple pie space. Did they outsource the work? Maybe. Did they come up with the recipe themselves? Probably not. But without McDonald's involvement, we wouldn't be able to enjoy hot, fresh, fruit-filled pastries with our Big Macs, and our fast food dessert choices are better for it. See? Much less dumb.
No it still sounds dumb, we know they were built by machines and were sold in packs. You lack basic understand in how certain things work. Game development also applies, Github is still the number one source for the information on Proton Contributors, GitHub data doesn't lie, Valve employees do nothing.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/graphs/contributors
So paying someone to do something doesnt give you any credit? How does companies work then. Please don't credit any company for anything, they just paid people who put in the work? Who are you kidding?