SteamOS is now officially on the list of Linux distributions Epic Games plans to support with its new Epic Games Launcher. In a statement to GamingOnLinux, Epic communications director Jake Jones said the launcher is still in Preview, and that Epic plans to "support as many Linux distributions as...
That’s mostly because games tend to be static software, and some really uptight people that don’t understand that static software doesn’t always need to be secure and bug free really hate the concept of static software on linux; and all the bundled secure packages tend to have drawbacks while modding.
But it’s still a half step and especially blocks off older devices from accessing games that can run just fine under windows on those devices. Between that and the still weird ‘find the right proton version for each game’ step, that hurts adoption because people aren’t going to just play around with settings forever just to play a game.
The solution would be just ship the libraries the games need for the native version bundled with each game. Congrats. You’ve solved the only problem with linux native gaming, and eliminated a whole lot of hassle and compatibility issues.
There’s another reason they’ve been encouraging devs to use Proton on Linux instead of a native build: you’re less likely to ship Linux-only bugs that can’t be replicated on Windows, which saves a ton of debugging (and maintaining a separate dev environment) to fix something a minority of players will ever encounter.
And those Linux-only bugs that do pop up are likely an issue with Proton itself, and Valve directly benefits when bugs in their product are reported.
And this is why I go to GoG for older games, because this is exactly how they handle packaging such games. That, or they tweak them for modern needs.
I realize this isn’t very helpful for people with a 20±year-old Steam library, but it’s a decent way to try to handle the problem if you’re looking for older games today
GOG has done a bit better recently, but they have their own issues. For the longest time neither of the baldur’s gate enhanced editions worked on newer linux distros. They were built against Ubuntu 22.10. This would be fine, but they did not ship the libraries from Ubuntu 22.10. So the easiest way to run these linux native games were download random libraries online and pop them in, which is actually dangerous or run it through steam, or download all of the linux runtimes through steam and copy over or symlink the close-enough versions that the game is expecting.
Which is a ridiculous set of circumstances to go through for a remake of an older game that runs on every single windows version on every single piece of hardware that supports windows past XP.
Again they’ve gotten a bit better, but if you do get GOG games on linux, you will want to start a little folder to collect the random libraries you’ll need for when the team and the publisher just outright forget to include one or two libraries because they thought they weren’t updated enough for it to matter.
Yeah, their Linux support is relatively new-ish, so I expect a slightly bumpy road for a little while before it all gets smoothed out. Such is life.
It’s just that their focus on getting older games to run properly - generally speaking -it’s a lot better than Steam’s