Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you'
Unpopular opinion: if I have to fudge with Wine instead of Proton, I simply will not bother. It's 2024. I'm not going to fiddle with configs, or get a setup together just to play a single game. That's ridiculous. A game should 100% be one click to run, whether it's native or not. and if that's not what is expected in 2024, Linux get it together. sincerely: a full time Linux gamer that is a single parent and doesn't have time to fiddle just to play a game. Wine and most of its front ends need a major overhaul.
Then just use Proton? You don't need Steam for it.
And sitting there and demanding "Linux" to get it "together" because it is 2024 is rather ignorant due to the fact that it is not Linux' fault that the software in question needs additional workarounds in order to make it run.
People out there are using their freetime to come up with solutions for problems caused by corporations using proprietary libraries and software.
I don't think that your opinion is unpopular.
I get what you want, I do wish the same, and a lot of peoole would agree with it as well, but the context in which we operate here matters a lot.
I'm not aware of how things are now, but at least previously you couldn't really use Proton outside of Steam.
So I assume OC defends Steam as the only platform that can smoothly run games with Proton instead of regular Wine, which does not work as well for certain games and/or requires tedious configuration.
You are right about proton. But the tedious configuration part is not true. Proton and ge-wine(now UMU) do the same thing, i.e applying custom patches. Wine base package is not expected to do this.