> stick to a gaming service like Stadia.

And when Google shuts it down in a couple of years, you will lose your entire library you spent money on. You can see by the selection of launch games how Stadia was another Google toy project. Or the fact that the new Chromecast won't have Stadia support until 2021.

At least with Steam, you know that the games will remain in your library and you can buy and install Windows and play them in the future if, for any reason, Linux support gets dropped.

> And when Google shuts it down in a couple of years, you will lose your entire library you spent money on

As a casual gamer I don't really care. I play games once, twice at most, and forget about them forever. I guess that's true for vast majority of casual gamers.

Same way I have thrown away all my PlayStation 2/3 disks, and never looked back.

I consider myself a casual gamer, and I play Skyrim all the time. There are also games that do not have an end goal or a set story that you can play forever a few hours a week when you have time(Minecraft,Sims ...) . Just wanted to show that not all casual games are play once or twice and then you delete them forever.

If Steam stops working you don't have games anymore.

It depends what "stops working" means? I have an old Mac where Steam isn't officially supported anymore, but I can still run all the games that I installed on it. The Steam client simply stopped updating and the last version that worked still works fine. Put the Steam client in offline mode and it works.

Or you mean Valve shutting down Steam? Then yes, it could be a problem for some games that use Steam servers for online multiplayer. But, Steam is Valve's core business with proven track record and many loyal customers. It's much more likely that Stadia would shut down then Steam going away.

Not quite. With Steam you can download the game files. Yes getting them to run without steam is a little trickier, but its not quite the same as stadia. That's a total loss of any form of ownership.

Most of the time you can just launch the game executable and it works fine for most games

I cannot imagine casual player doing such things. It's only a theoretical possibility.

Any mass-extinction event for Steam would most likely mean an application/tool would be widely distributed which removes drm from their already-installed games.

You can download the files but it's not your game it's just some gamefiles that most likely won't work without steam / internet.

Tomorrow Steam shutdowns you lose every games, period.

No you don't. Devs don't have to use Steam's DRM if they don't want to, so you won't lose every game. Period.

Most games do use DRM. However, you can use Steam client in offline mode as long as you were last logged into your primary account. So, even if Steam shuts down, you can still run the games on your computer.

So, you really won't lose any game.

This is just blatantly false

>If you have Linux, you are likely a casual gamer, and your best option is to stick to a gaming service like Stadia.

If you're a casual gamer you don't care about high end 3d graphics which completely eliminates the need for Stadia.

Stadia has a worse selection of games than even just native Linux and Proton lets you play most Windows games which has an even bigger selection.

> completely eliminates the need for Stadia

Having games working flawlessly, and not having to purchase the hardware, and do long downloads and installs is quite useful, especially for casual gamers.

> Stadia has a worse selection of games

Give it (or some alternative gaming service) more time.

So far Valve is doing good. But in the long term, it is dead end.

How do people see linux gaming? All the games I play run just fine on linux, doom eternal atleast 60fps, rocket league 100fps+, MGS V, deus ex, etc. no problem. I cant imagine them being much better on windows.

Preformance was never a problem. Some games worked even better on Wine than native Windows. The thing is that you're never 100% sure it will be 100% compatible.

If you have two computers in your home, one Windows, one Linux and you, for example, share your Steam libraries with other gamers in your family, then it's great. If something doesn't work on Linux, you always have Windows around.

But, if you only have Linux, then you need to do some research before every purchase.

I generally don't bother researching beforehand thanks to Steam's excellent return policy.

Well Epic killed Linux support for Rocket League awhile ago so it's a bit redundant how it performs

They killed native Linux support. It runs perfectly with Proton. Actually, better than it did natively for me.

But if you're Valve, and your windows catalogue of games run on Linux, you can sell cheap consoles to play your catalogue of games

If they plan on doing that they should do to hardware what they did to their software. Have a single set of fixed hardware so you only need to test it once for the commercial part of Proton. What they did with Steam Machines was pure madness but maybe they see something I don't. I know that there are multiple runtimes by now but you get the idea.

I think possibly one of the goals of Proton is to allow for a gaming streaming service like Stadia without needing to pay the Microsoft tax, or to tweak the Linux kernel in other ways as to increase RoI.

Wishful/Crazy thinking?

The goal of Proton is probably to have an alternative ready in case Microsoft decides to go Apple and require 30% payment for everything that runs on their OS. They started to lean that way with UWP and Windows Store and it made Valve work on Linux compatibility since.

I don't think your distinction works. There's a very large group of people with relatively good computers (so they don't need something like Stadia) who can't really be considered pro either.

I count myself in that group, and Proton has been a godsend. It finally allows me to completely avoid my Windows partition (Windows 7, which isn't supported anymore), while keeping my large Steam library almost entirely functional.

For me, one of the bioshock games crashes constantly on win 10 but works flawlessly on ubuntu. Go figure.

That's some odd gatekeeping there. By "pro" do you mean professional? As in makes money playing games? Sure, you're probably right but I'm not sure how !pro == casual.

You are right.

Not professionals, let's say, people who play at least 20 titles per year. People who play all major new games. Or people who play at least 5 hours a week. People who care what the mouse model is. People who really care about screen refresh rate. People who are into gaming.

You've just described me, a happy Linux user & gamer.

My 1440p 120hz ultrawide works perfectly with my 1080ti (which will be upgraded to a 3080 once there is some stock). Xorg and libinput both support disabling mouse acceleration so no issues there.

Thanks to Proton Glorious Eggroll I've been playing Doom Eternal, RdR2, H:ZD and many other non native titles for a lot more than 5 hours a week. I've also got my seperate VR box running on Linux with my Index which has provided hours of fun in HL: Alyx, Boneworks, and other admittedly more casual games like Beat Saber, Superhot, and Pistol Whip.

I do eshew all RGB though, maybe that makes me a filthy casual by some arbitrary standard, maybe you could add that to your gatekeeping list?

> I do eshew all RGB though, maybe that makes me a filthy casual by some arbitrary standard

I’d say what makes you a “casual” is that you didn’t list a multiplayer game. If you’re not sweating against other players, then you probably prefer to keep it casual. That’s fine!

But if I can’t play Overwatch, the latest Call of Duty, Escape from Tarkov, etc on Linux, then I wouldn’t bother. I think it’s more about multiplayer when talking about casual vs more serious.

Overwatch seems to work pretty well with Lutris and DXVK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMEHaSVrk1I

Of course your mileage may vary depending on the type of GPU. (My RX 5700 XT worked well, though you have to wait a few minutes after opening the game for the shader compilations to finish.)

Multiplayer is pretty much the only area Linux falls down due to anticheat.

With that said Titanfall 2 works and I can get pretty sweaty in that, csgo also works natively though I've not played for years. I used to play R6: Seige a lot before ditching my dual boot which I miss but dualbooting gets old when you have to shut down everything just to switch OS.

There is work to get anticheat working in Linux but it's kinda a pipedream as Linux is still seen as a haven for cheaters by anticheat developers so it feels like a never ending arms race rather than something that seems likely to happen any time soon.

Does Stadia actually run on Linux? If so, I think that has tons of mp games, yes?

Maybe it actually is worthwhile to support it as a vehicle to get anticheat on Linux?

I've not checked anything to do with Stadia - or any other game streaming service - as they don't really appeal to me. Who needs lag single player games? :D

With that said there are anticheats which work on linux like Battleye but only with linux native versions of games which negates all the proton work unfortunately. IIRC Valve are working with AC developers to get it working via wine/proton but I'm not holding my breath.

A curious outcome, considering Stadia servers run Linux!

This also proves that some game companies clearly have internal Linux builds of their games that they can't/won't actually publish on Linux.

Stadia isn't a great option for anyone. You just need to dual boot unless you want random issues popping up every other day. With Steam OS dead I'm not sure who this is even for.

I can't imagine more than a significant of users will only purchase a game with Linux compatibility. Which the Epic store not supporting Linux your increasingly missing out on more and more games if your Linux only .

I will say I did have tons of fun in my desktop Linux days. Recently I've found it more a pain in the butt though. I feel like an old man. Windows npm and Python are now good enough I don't feel a need to run Linux locally. WSL for anything that doesn't work right

Not sure Valve are doing this all for me but I certainly thank them for their efforts.

As for games sold by the EGS, they work fine via Proton (baring those with anticheat) and you can even get the EGS working via wine trivially.

I can't speak to your experiences with the Linux desktop but it's certainly my platform of choice both professionally and for personal use. Each to their own as they say.

I'm very happy that Valve (and all the other contributors) putting all this effort into getting as many games as possible to run on my platform of choice.