Linux

Microsoft generally doesn't worry about losing market share to Linux over games. They don't even worry about losing desktop share for the public sector. Only businesses matter, and they have heavy vendor lock in there as Microsoft Office, Teams, and to a lesser extent, Azure, keep them subscribed/enslaved.

Microsoft also gives a shit ton of money to the Linux Foundation,along with the rest of MMAANG and many other companies. All these companies know Linux runs the back end servers, and its free for them to use however they want, and they have a vested interest in Linux being around for servers as even they are aware it's superior for that specific purpose.

Microsoft runs the Desktop, Apple runs the phone, Google and Amazon compete for cloud, and Meta owns marketing. Sure, they sometimes compete in other spaces like Android and Azure, but those are generally the established fiefdoms.

And Linux is all of their removed, but also all of their main support beam without which nothing works.

The true underdog is BSD.

Valve is solving the chicken-and-egg problem. For a developer, it is costly to maintain a separate build for Linux without the consumer base to justify the effort. And without games, most people will not leave windows.

Proton offers Valve independence from windows without effort and cost for the developers. And without penalties for the gamers as well.

Think of it as the gaming subsystem for Linux.

No, because proton is not Windows. Wine only works on Linux, so it's actually a Linux platform. I consider every developer/publisher who targets proton to actually be targeting Linux, rather than windows. Every single time a windows update breaks something that continues to work on proton I laugh

See also: https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/8/1734336452576620754/?l=czech

I don't understand the logic. Why would Proton make Linux dependent on Windows binaries? It does not make Linux dependent, but enables to use them. I don't see any reason why Valve should demand devs to build Linux builds (plus Valve should not demand it, it should be a decision of the developers, Valve should not have that much power in my opinion).

if microsoft changed their apis wouldnt new games just not work on proton?

The same would happen with changes in Linux. And arguably it is worse on Linux. Windows binaries have a higher chance of working through WINE or Proton, than Linux binaries in the future. Plus developers only need one binary build, instead developing for Linux and Windows. Also if Microsoft changes their API, then only games affected using the new API would be affected. And changes and additions happen all the time and the Proton / WINE devs are working all the time too.

More like proton makes windows binaries not dependent on windows.

Linux builds suck, they're less well maintained than the Windows build. If Valve gave me the option to use Proton by default even when there is a native Linux build, I would enable that in a heartbeat.

why doesnt valve demand devs make linux builds?

Because nobody would do that. Valve is not PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo. Every publisher would rather release games elsewhere than spend resources on Linux builds.

Plus, most Linux builds are terrible and Proton works much better. To make this happen, first of all you'd need Unreal to die and for most bottom game developers to either lose their jobs or to learn actual game development.

Laughs in JVM (but there's like 1 game using it so...)

And old ones wouldn't work on windows...

Honestly I feel like it's better for Devs to have a single endpoint of optimisation, and the proton translates that into proper Linux optimisation.

Most of the times a game has a Linux client I need to manually activate compatibility because it's either not that well supported or the proton version just works better.

At this point, I prefer for Devs to optimise the windows game for proton than to make a Linux version.

Proton is filling a role until Linux gets popular enough. Once there is enough demand for Linux, devs will start making games with Linux support in mind meaning more well compiled native games. While proton is very good it's far from perfect and devs will want people to have the most seamless experience possible with their game.

They tried making devs port their games to linux, but most of them didnt bother as the userbase of steamOS was very small, and the userbase did not grow because the game catalogue was very small.

why doesnt valve demand devs make linux builds?

You mean games aren't listed on Steam unless a Linux build is provided? I know Steam has a de-facto monopoly on PC gaming, but I'm afraid studios would just quit the PC market (or move to another PC store) if Valve were to enforce such a rule.

if microsoft changed their apis wouldnt new games just not work on proton?

It's very unlikely Microsoft would introduce such breaking changes in their APIs. And even if they did, well yes, it would until Proton maintainers add support for these new APIs.

Here’s the thing. You can’t demand developers to anything. Many CEOs have tried, all of them failed. As the owners of the market they’re providing, the best thing they should be doing is make it as easy as possible for devs to do whatever they want on their platform. Proton is exactly that.

I haven't kept up with wine development in many years, but they used to have (and might still) winelib, which allowed you to compile a window app against it to create a native linux binary.

Linux ABI compatibility is a fuck.

Valve archives an acceptable level of Linux game compatibility by shipping ancient Ubuntu libraries.

Honestly Proton is the better option.

if microsoft changed their apis wouldnt new games just not work om proton?

If game developers make use of the new API and wine or proton doesn't add support for the new API. Sure. It happens it's not a big problem just an ongoing effort.

It won't break all existing games just new builds that use the newest APIs that aren't supported.

I think the bigger risk is Microsoft harassing wine or proton developers. Perhaps similar to the oracle google lawsuit about the use of the Java API in the android SDK.

I expect that others will add more, but the unfortunate reality is that counterintuitively, games running on proton often run and work better than Linux native builds. I don't fully understand why, but ironically demanding Linux native builds as they presently exist would be a step backward. To answer your original question: no, this doesn't make anything Linux dependent on anything Windows. Maybe proton is somewhat dependent upon presently existing things in Windows, but proton is the only thing that would break if Windows somehow radically altered the basics of Windows (but I think that would also break backwards compatibility with older Windows software)

I think the bigger issue is making sure everything that should gets back upstream into wine for everyone to benefit