Linux only needs to hit a “small but not insignificant size market” for the large publishers to start supporting it. They won’t support it if they lose money doing so, but if it continues to grow eventually they will lose money by not supporting it.
Steam machine should provide another bump, just like steam deck.
From a game developer’s perspective (who isn’t a pro linux dev or anything), they can support a platform. They support Windows 10. Or Windows 11. They can support stock Ubuntu. They can support a SteamOS image.
They cannot specifically support your personalized Arch config.
Linux’s fragmentation has always been an issue in this regard, as they can’t legally support thousands of different possible system configurations.
HOWEVER,
I think supporting Proton + SteamOS would be very reasonable for a dev. That is a specific platform, its codebase and infrastructure can stay unified with the Windows version, and support for that would practically mean support in other Linux distros.
Well, it would be massively, massively better if they did some basic validation and tuning in a Proton environment.
Thousands of open-source-dev man-hours patching in hacky workarounds for Windows games not ideal; it’d be far easier for the game dev to fix things (or raise issues) from their end. And those Proton devs have better things they could be doing.
Linux only needs to hit a “small but not insignificant size market” for the large publishers to start supporting it. They won’t support it if they lose money doing so, but if it continues to grow eventually they will lose money by not supporting it.
Steam machine should provide another bump, just like steam deck.
And issue is it needs to be a specific platform.
From a game developer’s perspective (who isn’t a pro linux dev or anything), they can support a platform. They support Windows 10. Or Windows 11. They can support stock Ubuntu. They can support a SteamOS image.
They cannot specifically support your personalized Arch config.
Linux’s fragmentation has always been an issue in this regard, as they can’t legally support thousands of different possible system configurations.
HOWEVER,
I think supporting Proton + SteamOS would be very reasonable for a dev. That is a specific platform, its codebase and infrastructure can stay unified with the Windows version, and support for that would practically mean support in other Linux distros.
And SteamOS by itself is getting big.
Agreed. And truly developers don’t need to actually “support” Linux; mostly they just need to not intentionally block games from working.
Well, it would be massively, massively better if they did some basic validation and tuning in a Proton environment.
Thousands of open-source-dev man-hours patching in hacky workarounds for Windows games not ideal; it’d be far easier for the game dev to fix things (or raise issues) from their end. And those Proton devs have better things they could be doing.
I hope that steamOS causes this, I really hate booting into windows to play battlefield but it’s my only option if i want to play it