Last Friday, we discussed reports of Steam having secretly made some updates regarding Steam Play, and hints that it could be linked to allowing for those on Linux to run Windows-only games. As of August 21st, Steam has put out a press release announcing the new beta. Multiple games that don't have an official Linux release can now easily be installed from the Steam client, allowing for easy access to the compatible games, listed below.

• Beat Saber
  
• Bejeweled 2 Deluxe
  
• Doki Doki Literature Club!
  
• DOOM
  
• DOOM II: Hell on Earth
  
• DOOM VFR
  
• Fallout Shelter
  
• FATE
  
• FINAL FANTASY VI
  
• Geometry Dash
  
• Google Earth VR
  
• Into The Breach
  
• Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012
  
• Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013
  
• Mount & Blade
  
• Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword
  
• NieR: Automata
  
• PAYDAY: The Heist
  
• QUAKE
  
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
  
• Star Wars: Battlefront 2
  
• Tekken 7
  
• The Last Remnant
  
• Tropico 4
  
• Ultimate Doom
  
• Warhammer® 40,000: Dawn of War® - Dark Crusade
  
• Warhammer® 40,000: Dawn of War® - Soulstorm

Games that originally relied on DirectX will now run through Vulkan, instead. These titles function by running a modified version of WINE, which Valve has dubbed "Proton". For those interested, you can see it on GitHub, where the code has been made open source.

Proton is a tool distribution based on a modified version of Wine. The included improvements to Wine have been designed and funded by Valve, in a joint development effort with CodeWeavers. Here are some examples of what we've been working on together since 2016:

• vkd3d[source.winehq.org], the Direct3D 12 implementation based on Vulkan
  
• The OpenVR and Steamworks native API bridges
  
• Many wined3d performance and functionality fixes for Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11
  
• Overhauled fullscreen and gamepad support
  
• The "esync[github.com]" patchset, for multi-threaded performance improvements

Valve stated that they hope this newly made progress helps developers eventually bring their future titles to Linux, while also assisting them in making the process easier. Though official compatibility is listed only for the above games at this time, you can try to run it with any Steam game, to varying results. According to the Steam post, most games should work, eventually, barring those with excessive DRM or anti-cheat systems.

Source

 

[CuriousTommy]

And that's really good! If people fork it and improve proton, the devs of Proton can then take their code and implement it. It's a win-win! Even Wine can benefit from this, everyone is a winner here and especially the Linux community.

To be fair, the losers would probably be the paid 3rd party porters (Feral Interactive, Aspyr Media, etc). However, I also think this is a win-win in terms of the big picture.

Stopped using Linux a few years ago when oracle dropped java support for it.

That interesting, I didn't know that... but there is also OpenJDK, which works just as fine.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Am I the only one thinking that for an initial release that this is kind of pitiful? All I see are a bunch of small games.

Well, not really. Those are just games that have been extensively tested to work well with it. You tick a couple boxes in settings and you can try any game in your library. Depending on your hardware, many will work. If you're like me and rocking an older GPU which can't utilize Vulkan, you'll have a harder time. Plus it's not released. It's in beta.

 

[orangy57]

real talk, why would you ever want to run vr content on linux

 

[WildDog]

(I hope they don't go too creative on the gamepad this time)

What??? The Steam controller is THE best controller for PC Gaming. The Xbox elite would be the king IF it wasn't so expensive.

Anyway, let's see what happens to this project. They said that the performance is much better than with Wine...

real talk, why would you ever want to run vr content on linux

Why would not want to run VR content on Linux???
If they get good drivers and polish a few things, it would be the same as using Windows.

The doom thinking of microsoft attempting to seize control over every program on their OS at this point is as stupid as a paper company trying to control what people are writing on their product: the very means of that freedom is what sells the product in the first place.

In what Universe people buys Windows for their "freedom", companies buy bulk license of Windows, because it is streamlined, Microsoft has a decent support for Companies, every single user in their companies most likely knows already how to use window.
Plus you are barking at the wrong tree, Apple are the ones with control issues... Did you try to compile an application for MacOs or Ios?? Good luck without having an Apple Developer account and the 99 per month...

 

[Ericthegreat]

so provided that it's properly implemented in the Linux drivers

No