Gaming

It depends, on the situation, if you are playing open source games then no, at least for the most part, of playing closed source games that only works on windows then yes, I am just answering the question are we over reliant on steam. I have made open source games and here is a list of them and they run in linux: Bowling_Mega_Mix: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/Bowling_Mega_Mix Untitled_Knight_Game: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/Untitled_Knight_Game The_Game_Of_Trusters: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/The_Game_Of_Trusters Quest_For_Chalice: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/Quest_For_Chalice Bug_Invasion: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/Bug_Invasion

I hope this helps you.

Yeah, Proton runs outside of Steam in Heroic and Lutris. That's basically what the umu project is about. I think it works in Bottles as well.

Almost everything Valve has done for Linux gaming is open source and will remain even if they go away and lock everything down tomorrow.

You should be able to select "GE-Proton(Latest)" as your runner in Lutris. But if its missing for some reason, https://github.com/gloriouseggroll/proton-ge-custom

I haven’t noticed any major issues between using Lutris and Steam for the games I play.

They'll streamline better over time. These open source WINE frontends/orchestrators may as well have 2 eras, before and after Proton. Before Proton they had little developer interest so development was slow. After Proton, influx of users and more developers interest in working on open source Linux gaming tools and Lutris rapidly got better and Heroic popped up. PlayOnLinux got left to historic obscurity in the history of Linux gaming

So I'm not concerned about Steam reliance. Everything outside of Steam is so much easier because of Valves open source contribution and the growth of the community. Pretty much because of Valve, Lutris/Heroic/etc became better at a faster pace and will continue getting because of what Steam did for Linux gaming in the past decade

I’ve run Proton without Steam for a few games. You’ve pretty much got the same code that Steam uses and most of their changes make it upstream eventually, so they’re not holding you hostage with being able to run your games. It just might get less convenient. There are other Linux game launchers that have good compatibility.

Steam and the company behind it have done wonders for Linux. They’ve given publishers a reason to care, they are providing strength and resources to fix bugs and libraries they care about, and generally have done very well in sharing their contributions with the community.

I do think this is a valid concern that we need to keep in mind, but I don’t think that we are at risk just yet. Valve is a business but as businesses go, they’re pretty cool.

I've been trying to not use Steam on linux for a while now unless necessary (I have too many games there). GoG + Heroic keeps me pretty sane. Otherwise it's Lutris for starting them (which I'll agree is VERY clunky but you can get things done). I think we're actually getting over the hill of "Linux gaming means Steam" that we've been on since the SteamDeck launched.

While it’s working fine for now, what do I do if I’m offline and Steam decides this is one of those days offline mode doesn’t work? What if I get banned from Steam?

This is a pretty valid-ish concern I would say. It's one of the reasons I'm using GoG mainly now (which yes, still buying licences so similar concerns just maybe not as great or maybe I'm kidding myself)

No, because it's open source. Keep on chuggin

Yes. However, before they started supporting and prefering linux, and working on proton then getting any game working on linux was a real mess and the average person couldn't do it for most games.

Sadly most other games stores in the digital space like gog don't give a shit about linux, thus there is still no galaxy on linux, nor are their preservation efforts coming to linux for a long time.

I wouldn't say we're over-reliant on Steam, but maybe on Valve to some extent.

If Valve would suddenly stop all their work on/around Linux, that'd certainly affect Proton and also things like the open AMD GPU drivers. Sure, others would likely continue their work (it's not like they're doing it all alone now anyway), but Valve certainly brings a lot of expertise and also commercial interest.

i miss going to a store and getting a game in a box with a manual :(

A touch, yes. I'm much happier being reliant on steam than Microsoft. They're not incredibly indispensible either, you can do this stuff without them.

I use Heroic more than I use Steam. It comes with a wine manager built in for Proton-GE, and if you have Steam Proton installed it can access that too. I use Proton Plus to get GE-Proton on Steam but I don't even have to do that for Heroic.

Yes. But there is nothing we can do about it more than party that whenever it turns to shit their open source contributions are able to stand on their own

We definitely are, Valve has single-handedly made Linux a viable gaming platform, but in the process became indispensable. Thanks to Gabe they've been rather good in that respect. However, whoever replaces him might not be as good as him.

I use Steam only for games purchased from Steam and Heroic for Epic, GOG, etc..

Heroic makes it much easier to manage games. Custom prefixes for each game with winetricks, mangohud checkbox, environment variables and so on. If the interface was better/modern with some sort of tabbed layout, I would use it for my Steam games as well.

As the only platform that cares about gamers I would say it's your only choice under Windows also. Unless you pay for boxed versions and then rip/crack them so your not messing with physical media constantly, but then disk space becomes and issue fast.

Let's just hope Gabe never dies or retires....

Has anyone had any luck replicating their Proton setup outside of Steam? Or simply just running a Proton game outside of Steam after getting it set up using Steam?

I have run many Windows games outside of Steam.

I prefer to set up each one manually: Create a Wine prefix, install the game (or copy it from an existing installation), install a few key libraries like DXVK and a Visual C++ runtime, make a launch script with game-specific environment settings or launch options. Tools like Lutris and Bottles can automate much of this, in case you need a little help or just find a GUI more convenient.

This is my usual approach to non-Steam games (especially GOG), but even Steam games can be convinced to work offline with the help of a Steam emulator. It wouldn't work with a game encumbered by DRM (e.g. Denuvo) unless a cracked version could be located, but in my experience, that's a minority of Steam games that I categorically avoid in the first place.

So, I'm not worried about my game library vanishing if I ever lose access to Steam for whatever reason. Most (if not all) of it could be recovered with a bit of effort.

I do not game on Linux exclusively, but I am very comfortable with this situation. Imagine being reliant on epic games instead. Valve is actively working on gaming on Linux and they should earn some money for the efforts, software doesn’t maintain itself… yet.