It either runs on Linux or refund

One of the refunds reasons you can select is "the game doesn't run on my PC". This is completely valid.

Or do as I do.
Buy game.
Never play it.
I have a problem.
- Or as I do:
  Watch videos of Cyberpunk
  Think of buying it
  Realize I still haven’t finished Mass Effect
  Never actually buy Cyberpunk.
  Currently I’m thinking of Baldur’s gate 3, but you know… I’ll probably get around to it in a few years.
  
  Buying any game after 3-5 years is the way to go. The bugs are fixed, patches are out, so mods are stable and most of the time you can find a sale where it costs 10-20€. And if you forget about it before that time, that means the game was not worth it
  
  You’re allowed to get another game even if you haven’t finished a previous one. You’re only here for like 80ish years so why not sample all that interests you?
  
  It's not that great tbh. I spent maybe 6 hours in it and didn't get hooked. With BG3 however, I'm at 60 hours and I can't put it down
  
  It’s ok, just watch what Cyberpunk was like on Day One and it’ll kill your interest again.
- Same, not enough space?

Complex and recent games run on Linux these days.
Not allowing run a game in Linux is, nowadays, a choice from its developer rather then a causality. Proton is a really powerful tool!
If a game don't run in Linux, via Proton or natively, that's dev issue that actively blocked Linux.
- It is almost always due to the anticheat programs.
  
  Still... There are anticheats that allow Linux, like EAC, Hyperion and many others... If they choose one that does not allow Linux, or choose one that allow Linux but block it, it's a dev issue
- Roblox is working on it there is unofficial way using grapejuice coming soon.
  
  What? I thought Steam VR wasn't working, I'v checked recently. How did you get it working?

Blaming the Publishers and Devs because it's actually pretty hard to fuck up a game so that it doesn't work on proton these days
- rt

If there's a game that can't run on Linux in the current year then that's intentional and it's not worth anyone's money.
- You almost have to go out of your way to make a game incompatible with linux. Considering wine/proton and their various forks cover the vast majority of things at this point.
  Even with ACs, the two most used ones completely support Linux. One is completely out of the box, maybe even as far as linux support being opt out. The other requires you to contact its developers to enable compatibility their end iirc.
- I don't agree. There are cases with Windows only root kits for DRM, but there are also games that don't work because of bugs. You see games coming out that barely work on Windows.
- Yeah, there's this very obscure match-3 game I wanted to play because of nostalgia. The series peaked with 3 and 4 (and those are the ones we played on the family computer circa 2015) and worked perfectly on Windows. Now 3 works perfectly (in terms of compatibility) but 4 was better (in terms of gameplay). 4 is marked as borked, last I checked. For anyone wondering, it's The Treasures of Montezuma series.

I've been gaming exclusively on Linux since 2014. Gaming on Linux is so good nowadays, thanks to Proton, there are so many amazing titles available to play. Proton makes it all easy - thanks to it, it's just a matter of hitting install and play on Steam (in most cases).
There are so many of them, If something doesn't run on Linux, I just don't care. My backlog of great games is so big, who cares about some singular titles that are not available.
I've recently been playing Baldurs Gate 3, ARMORED CORE VI, Anno 1800 and Battlebit Remastered on my Ubuntu rig. All run great. Neither need any special tweaks (I own them on Steam).
BG3 and Battlebit Remastered are especially stellar.
I recommend BG3 to anyone who likes true roleplaying games with great writing, reactivity and player agency.
Battlebit Remastered is a great multiplayer title with massive 256 player battles and it sits somewhere between Battlefield and Squad (a mixture of arcade and mil-sim elements).
- Modern (post DS2) From Software games tend to run flawlessly on Linux. They are one of the greatest developers now. No bullshit, just greatness all around.
  I heard a lot of BG3, although I dont have any doubt that it is a great game, I dont think it suits my taste. Battlebit tho, I'll check that otu.
  
  It had nothing to do with From Software but Elden Ring actually ran better on Linux than on any other platform shortly after release (there was a silly bug that affected performance on all platforms that Valve fixed within Proton.)
- What are your specs? I'm trying to see if BG3 min reqs are a little bit over estimated
  
  I have i7-7700k, GTX 1070 (nvidia driver version: 535.86.05), 16 GB ram, running the game off an SSD.
  The game has been improving in a tremendous manner since release. They've been releasing meaningful patches really often. I've been playing it since the full release, and it's been awesome to witness it improve so quickly in so many aspects.
  Since the latest performance updates, I haven't noticed the game dropping below 60 fps (it now sits mostly in the 60-80fps range) at 1080p, high settings, FSR set to off.
- This comment sounds like chatgpt
  
  I'm just some meatbag, unfortunately, though I'd happily merge with machine If I could.
  
  I started reading it in that macOS Daniel robot voice that so many annoying YouTube videos use
- This kind of mentality only works if you don't play games with other people.
  Multiplayer only folk usually have a friend group that plays multiple games. If they don't work in Linux you're SOL.
  Back when I tried to use Linux and never boot Windows a good 2/3rd of games I couldn't participate in and was left behind. So while it's better than it was, it's still not good.
  
  It's the internet, mate. The world is your oyster.
  Get friends that only game on linux.
- Isn't it still true that a Nvidia card is better for gaming with Linux than AMD or Intel?
  
  I believe that AMD has flipped the script on this in recent years. From what I recall, AMD has been actively releasing a large amount (if not all) of their drivers as open source for integration into the Mesa driver (which I think is the same driver than handles Intel graphics as well). Arguably speaking AMD GPUs work more out-of-the-box now than NVidia do.
  That said, I switched to an AMD card about a year ago as an upgrade from an Nvidia. My Nvidia never gave me issues, it was just getting a little long in the tooth (gtx 1050 ti upgraded to a RT 6600)
  
  Not for VR, unfortunately. Have a valve index collecting dust, streaming to the quest 2 via ALVR runs better.
  
  Isn't it still true that a Nvidia card is better for gaming with Linux than AMD or Intel?
  No. Intel has best drivers, AMD has decent drivers. Both are well-integrated into system. On nvidia there are nouveau and blob. Nouveau supports not every feature, blob just breaks system.

Especially if they use an engine that natively supports Linux, they have no excuse not to release a Linux version.
- There are tons of reasons my dude. You can still have platform-dependant technologies in your game even if the base engine itself supports linux.
- Yes, they do. There is more than just the engine at play on compatibility. The main reason is actually usually the anti cheat.
  
  Looking at Destiny. Game worked okay on Linux before they integrated Battleye, which HAS Linux support, but Bungie just doesn't want to interact with it.

For me Linux gaming is Steam/Proton. If is works with Steam/Proton, I am playing them. I find that native Linux games are not updated regularly or at all. And Steam wants games to run with the Steam deck. And they are willing work to make that happen.
And game companies know there are a lot of Steam decks out there. And it is not hard to put some effort to see that it runs on that equipment.
All this is a big help for the Linux community. Many gamers don't know that they don't need to buy windows to game. Linux/Steam/Proton is a great option. That is why I make a point to tell people that I am playing Baldur's Gate 3 on my Linux Ubuntu gaming PC. This is how I found out that Linux can play games and switch from Windows. Another Linux gamer told me it was possible.
- Agreed. It’s just so sad to me that GOG to this day does not seem to understand their target audience. Seems to me that people who value DRM-free Games overlap vastly with the group of Linux users and still GOG Galaxy is not available on Linux. I would absolutely love GOG Galaxy natively on Linux with Proton integration. Sure we can run it with Lutris etc. but this has been asked from GOG for years. I tried buying everything on GOG instead of Steam until that point where that whole Proton and Steam Deck integration happened. Now I buy everything on steam, just for convenience. I would love to buy everything from GOG but there are just to many hoops to jump through.
  
  Yes I think you're right, there's probably a significant overlap in the target audience of GOG and Linux users. I guess the reason why GOG hasn't released a Linux version of GOG Galaxy might be because a large portion of their catalogue is Windows and doesn't want to include something like Proton or Wine support. I don't think it absolves them from criticism however.
- @Hairyblue @Uluganda yeah I care less about a Linux native game than a game that has DRM and anti cheat that works with proton. I’ve found that all the games I play on Linux that run on proton run so well on X11 (haven’t gone to Wayland yet).
  
  Considering wine and thus proton don't support Wayland the games will just run through XWayland so should perform the same as on X11. Personally haven't encountered any issues outside of things that are caused by X11 limitations
- If there is one, I tend to use the native Linux version when I can, just to do my miniscule part to encourage devs to support native Linux, though on one or two games I have noticed bugs in the native Linux version that were fixed in the Windows/Proton version. That said, I am still quite thankful and impressed with how well Proton works for anything I use it with.
  
  As someone new to Linux the fact that I could just check a box on steam and suddenly I could install and run the witcher 3 blew my mind. I had no idea. Last I checked on Linux gaming the solution was install windows 😂
- Yeah I announce it in my steam gamer tag.

Yeah I can't play rainbow 6 siege since I switched to Linux but I'm staying strong. Fuck ubisoft. And fuck my friends for trying to make me go back to windoz.
- The fact that it even supports vulkan, and BattleEye has a Linux version, they just don't use it
  
  They just don't like linux. Even if you run it in a VM with VFIO they will still ban you.
  
  And, that their UPlay (Don't care aboyt the rename) launcher is probably one of the other companies, useless launcher which work the best via wine.
  
  And apex legends started randomly banning Linux users again, how hard is it to fix the game that earns them millions of dollars every year? Unbelievable.

I'd just like to interject for moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, Steam/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Steam plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning Steam system made useful by Steam Proton, DXVK, and vital Wine components comprising a full OS as defined by Valve.
- I love you Richard Steaman
- No, it is actually GNU/Linux+Steam 😒🤓
  (Please don't take this comment seriously, it's a joke)
  
  Too late, I now have "GNU/Linux+Steam" stuck in my neck beard, ready to be spewed forth at every opportunity.
- heil the almighty proton compatibility layer

Wine and DXVK made it increadably easy to support Linux and if a company doesn't even put in that much effort or intentionally breaks the game for you it's certainly not worth your money! I pirate rather than use the refund window but the principal is the same since I do buy good games after all.
- Cries in pipeline hacks for DirectX. Didn't Space Engineers do this?
  
  I am not really sure what you mean with that tbh

I mean, it is not a fault on Linux's end. We have all the tools we need in the form of wine and dxvk, it's the game which fails to work due to some obscure dependency or a mandatory rootkit. One great example is genshin- the game itself works flawlessly, but it has a rootkit which obviously does not work on Linux and you have to patch it out.

A reminder that on last steam report, Linux overcome Mac as second in usage operating system. They don't have to excuse of only support the top 2 OS.
Instead to refund is to negative review, games companies are much more affected by losing a positive rating that a refund.
- Who is "they"? Not all game companies can afford to support multiple platforms. You're not entitled for developers to support your preferred platform nor does it make sense yo give a negative review unless they lied in the product description.
  
  It does make sense if they sell in a store for with support to multiple platforms and they only support the paid one.
  
  https://github.com/LaG1924/AltCraft
  0 money, few lines of config and win/mac/lin/bsd/haiku support
- I'm all for Linux but IMO it's not quite ready for general public yet. Even distros like Mint are buggy and requires multiple restart every day. I would install it on my dad's computer, but it's not stable enough yet. But I think it's a question of a few years, maybe months before it's there.
  EDIT: since people are asking, here are a few bugs that I encounterd over the last week or so. I'm a audio/multimedia worker so obviously I push my computers farther then average user. Still, I'm happy to know many people have manage to get it stable
  2 days ago, Ssomething went wrong with cinnamon. At first all the dektop would not appears when waking up from sleep. Had to restart every time or disable sleep. At some point, even restart would bring me a window saying Cinnamon session could not be loaded. I had to reinstall it from Grub. I dont see average users being able to do that. *It's actually not fixed, sleep will mess up Cinnamon.
  yesterday, I tried to get my DAW (Reaper) to work with one of my audio interfaces. Drivers would not work correctly, sound was glitching. I messed up with pulse audio for 2 hours but never got it to work.
  this morning, te infamous NVIDIA driver wouldn't let me turn off the mirror mode (I have a projector connected to the computer), I had to reboot.
  This morning also, I discoverd that Timeshift now only launch from the terminal.
  Over the past week, I had to completly reinstall mint, because I installed and uninstalled some audio extension and it messed up the OS. Since then many apps that use to ne there dont show up in the software manager, updating the repo doesn't work, so I had to manually install using terminal.
  I've been fighting to get Da vinci resolve to work, tho it's supposed to work natively. Took me around 4-5 hours overall.
  I ACTUALLY LOVE LINUX. Indual boot it on my main PC an even installed it on my old 2015 MacBook. I think windows is garbage and full of bloatware, I hate apple but consider macOS a pretty good OS, but I think both are more stable for your average user.
  I sincerely wish I could install Mint on my dad's computer but I'm pretty sure he would me need my help at least twice a week . I dont see him or your average user playing with the terminal to install a basic app. I know it's getting closer, but IMO it's not there yet.
  
  You need multiple restarts a day?
  What are you doing?
  
  Even distros like Mint are buggy and requires multiple restart every day.
  There is something wrong with your installation. Other people just restart to update the kernel often once a week/month. So you might as well tell us what's making you restart Mint so often.
  
  I suck at tech and have never had to do this. What the hell are you doing to Mint?
  
  what on earth are you doing that requires multiple restarts a day??
  
  I recommend Fedora instead of Mint. It's a much more daily ready distro oriented for Workstations.
  I always had problems with Mint especially with the older kernels it uses.
  Fedora uses gnome which is very stable.
  In regards to audio. It uses pipewire and works well in my experience. Less latency and relatively plug and play. I use Bitwig however.
  DaVinci is known to be difficult, however there are some automations for setting it up in Fedora.

Jesus lol.
This is probably true for big games, but I wouldn't get angry at any small developer for not supporting Linux. It's just not worth it/still such a small base.
- Most of the time indie games actually do run on Linux, it's the games from big studios that don't (in my experience)
  
  This
  
  all the indies I play run completely without issues, even those that don't use major game engines like celeste and rain world
- Most off-the-shelf game engines these days have been well tested with Proton.
- Luckily most of the small inde games always support Linux. Most of those devs don't have a need or time to go out of their way to botch the support.
- True. But small developers should support community owned things, as they are on their side. It's not profitable in spreadsheet, but healthy for whole ecosystem.
  Remember Windows creators are the ones having a dream for everything being on XBox and Microsoft Store.

At this point I wouldn't be suprised that some dev companies are taking Microsoft kickback money under the table. There is really no excuse for a game not to work on Linux natively on 2023.
- Well, the thing is that developers need to go out of their way to intentionally break Linux support. The community does 99% of the work in most cases. Launchers, along with anti-cheat are the most egregious.
  Anti-cheat I can semi-understand, the developer has to do some work, but popular anti-cheats support Linux no problem.
  Launchers, however are 100% useless other than Steam itself, I wish Valve would ban third-party launchers. I wouldn't be surprised though if some publishers would pull their games from Steam if Valve outright banned them.
- @Rooty @Uluganda you mean apart from the extra work it takes for devs to give support to the platform, a platform where they will get less than 1% of sales.
  saying "theres no excuse" is just delusional
  
  what kind of support mate? jesus I hate this argument. As if publisher do anything out of the ordinary to provide linux compatbility. All the work was done by valve already or is still being done.
  
  Steam decks and other deck PCs are rapidly gaining ground, not to mention that steam runs natively on Linux. The "less than 1% marketshare" meme is 20 years old at this point and no longer relevant. Once again, there is no excuse.

Honestly, the 2 hour refund window is the perfect length to see how bad the Linux compatibility is. A half hour to try a few tweaks, if I care enough to. Another hour to see if there are subtle bugs or intermittant crashes.
I definitely have tried to run a few games I wouldn't have bothered with otherwise.
- The infinite refund window offered by piracy also works, mind you
  Also sometimes due to DRM/launcher shit the pirate version actually works much easier on wine/proton. I've downloaded cracked versions of games I actually bought in the past due to this
  
  I hate to admit I had to do it with Nioh Complete Edition. I dont know but my store downloaded copy just refused to load. When it did, it had 15fps for a while and then crashed. Meanwhile, when I played the pirated version, it worked good. It stuttered for the first 20 minutes, but once all the caches were built it worked amazingly. Bummer I cant use the online feature.
  
  I've fallen so far out of the loop with games piracy.
  I gather that there are repacks now for Linux? Or do you dl the windows version then just run it through proton?
  
  I had this with the Sims, I bought and paid for the game legit but trying to run it through steam it kept trying to load the origin store for auth or something which was a pain in the ass and I couldn't get it to run reliably.
  I ended up using a crack just because it ran without any BS!
- Refund window is great until the devs decide to change up their anticheat to something less compatible later (fall guys, rocket league, nearly happened to battlebit) or there is instability that only appears late in the game you can't find in 2 hours (Jedi fallen order, Horizon zero dawn) or the publisher decides to update their stupid launcher and break compatibility that way (EA comes to mind)
  Even if something works today, with how modern game devs operate it's certainly not guaranteed to work tomorrow, and that's a problem.
  
  Customers have more power than companies would like you to believe. Politely explain the situation to customer support, and ask for a refund. If they refuse, mention that you purchased a game that was promised to work for at least several months, and you haven't received the product you paid for. Because of that, you're considering charging back through your bank. If that doesn't work, say you'll charge back if they don't refund. If that doesn't work, actually charge back through your bank. Banks are surprisingly cool about it as long as you don't do it too often. Of course, you need to buy the game directly (no account balance) from a credit card.
  Just don't be a jerk to the support person, because it's almost certainly not their fault. It's also less likely to get you what you want. They'd rather give you what you want so you go away, and you just need to give them reasons that they can relay to their supervisor if necessary.

My experience is that all games run on Linux these days. Wine, DXVK and Vulkan are really good. The only games that don't run are those that explicitly ban Linux users with some creepy anti-cheat.

A friend recently asked me to play a game with him that had an anticheat that Intentinay made it impossible to play the game on linux
I had both linux and windows on my computer, but windows was broken
I tried to make a virtual machine and install windows on it, but i couldnt install it
He blamed all the problems on linux
- Unfortunately for him, the game devs are the problem
- I had the same with Genshin Impact; it refuses to install on Linux due to “cheating rootkits”, it even refuses to install on a Windows 11 VM in VirtualBox!
  How does it do that‽
  
  VB is easy to detect

Ok, hear me out. Linux is not an easy platform to develop for because it's in constant flux where systems and libraries come, change and go constantly. Linux itself is a somewhat slippery concept (if we expand from the kernel) where "works on linux" can really mean it's been tested on one particular distro. Debian stable and rolling releases are not the same. Unless I am completely mistaken, I can see why major developers are hesitant to support linux, whatever it even is. Is Android linux?
Now, I'm all for this message. Given how OSs have been developing, I advocate for linux adoption and wish people would "vote with their wallet". Otherwise things just will not change. Well, not for better, if recent history is anything to go by. I just feel that this problem has more prongs than we like to admit, being linux enthusiasts.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- Not really the case anymore because of proton, game devs develop for Windows and proton and then it'll run on anything that can run proton, Linux, android, Mac or otherwise in the future
  From what I hear thanks to proton it's incredibly easy to develop for Linux, as long as you don't use one of the anticheats that doesn't support it or intentionally prevent it from running in proton you're fine
  
  Well, yeah, but I think the issue is that the best way to develop for linux is to make a Windows binary. I don't like that. Developers actively sabotaging Wine/Proton compatibility is kind of malicious though.
- You could bundle your specific versions of libraries. And link it statically. Like most games do anyways.
  
  Pretty sure that's not just a Linux thing either.
  
  But why? What libraries are causing problems? Zlib? SDL? Actually SDL better kept dynamically linked because SDL sometimes adds support for new interfaces(wayland, egl).
- Linux game devs should be targeting the Steam Linux Runtime which provides a stable environment.
- it's in constant flux where systems and libraries come, change and go constantly.
  Same applies to every non-deprecated OS.
- Valve should release their distro tbh
- I had some issues running the native version of Prey 2006 because of that

In my experience, the effort to fix Linux issues serve as a good litmus test as to how well supported the game is in general.
At least with games that aren't from big studios.

Linux compatibility or I send it back!

If it's anti cheat stopping it I blame the game. If it's a bug or poor performance I just say oh well it will work one day.

To be fair, game programming is very often hot garbage. Most things I run do not respond for a while at startup. How difficult can it be to decouple your threads?
- Don't cross the streams

There's some BS happening around Linux support from some devs. e.g. Metro Exodus is Linux native, Metro Exodus Enhanced is Windows only and doesn't work with AMD GPUs.
I bought the game twice (made a mistake and bought it on Epic at launch and now bought it again on Steam to support Linux development and companies that release native builds).
I'm disappointed to see I'm unable to play the Enhanced version.

Blaming myself because I put the CD in upside down
- CD? What's that grampa?

I've recently started gaming on linux with surprisingly little problem, given that the last time I tried was about 15 years ago. I don't even know what proton is, but I just installed steam and then my games.. surprisingly on some slightly older games (tf2, HL2) I get a huge FPS boost in Linux compared to windows. Not sure why that would be.
- I'm not completely sure about it, but I believe both TF2 and HL2 are native ports that Valve did themselves. Could be the reason.
- Proton is basically Wine bundled with other software, like DXVK and VKD3D, to run windows games.
  You have to enable it in the Configuration window inside of Steam if you haven't done that yet. Enabling it is all you have to do and it will be used automatically.
  
  Ah thanks, I don't think I have enabled it. Will that allow me to try out windows-only games in Linux? That's crazy.. literally no more reasons to go back to Windows..
- surprisingly on some slightly older games (tf2, HL2) I get a huge FPS boost in Linux compared to windows
  Oh, I remember watching video on youtube on that topic. Short answer: because opensource. Long answer: because developers better understood how to optimize. Same optimizations slightly boosted FPS on windows.
  I don't even know what proton is
  Valve games run natively on Linux, so no need in proton.

I've had issue with Stray not detecting my game controller. Went to the customer service and they told me it only runs on Windows...
I've successfully run it, only missing the controller support. Turns out I needed to install the udev support to solve it.
- Weird. stray ran great on my deck out of the box via proton. Glad you got to play it though!
  
  It was missing a udev setting. Fixed it by installing a package.

Paladins is a pain for this. Game runs fine on proton, and all it needs is some work with EAC to enable linux on multiplayer but despite all the requests they've yet to bother.
- Same thing with Post Scriptum, even though the devs other game, Squad, works perfectly fine with proton...
- Ny friend, if you play Paladins, you have much bigger problems than EAC
  
  It was a pretty fun game to play on the Switch ngl. Might just give in and play overwatch tho
- I'm pretty sure it's rather simple for the developer to enable EAC for Linux. (https://www.protondb.com/news/steam-deck-eac-update)
  I've noticed a lot more games that I can play now with EAC. I don't know why some devs are dragging their feet on this.
  
  Halo MCC devs complained the port to EAC is harder than Valve claimed but even they went to the effort to enable it.
  I have no idea what could hold up other devs to do the same.

If a game cant be run on linux, thats usually intentional. Microshit at least gives discounts to the developer if the game runs only on their shit. Also m$ have some of components that ultimately lock things to wincrap, for example d3d is meant to do this. Microsoft is a cancerm just like google become one
- Time to flip it around. Windows is a cancer.
  Funnily enough, Ballmer backtracked on his "Linux is a cancer" when he saw Satya Nadella (current M$ CEO), make M$ (and its shareholders, which includes Ballmer), a lot of money off Linux through Cloud, or more specifically, Azure.
  
  I think microsoft is the cancer (and google), not just windows alone. Teams is also like a crime against human kind, just like office, and the xbox publisher octopus.

I'm blaming companies making a windows and linux version of a software while the linux version is wastly inferior, full of bugs and unstable. I do love the OS but the software experience sometimes ruining it.
- Yeah as long as proton works fine I'd rather use that over a buggy port. Usually works better for the devs too since they can target one API and binary and just debug whatever makes proton poop itself afterwards.

I was just thinking about this the other day...like games are optized for windows usually, but windows is not optimized for games. A fresh Windows 10 runs at 2gb ram on idle. It all went down hill for gamers when Microsoft killed xp
- RAM is the cheapest upgrade possible, unless you're trying to run a game on 8GB in 2023 idk why you'd be that concerned with RAM usage.
  
  Perpetual software bloat should not be encouraged; idling at 2GB is fucking insane
  
  Me running on lxde using 512mb: 😎
  
  RAM is the cheapest upgrade possible
  Unless you use laptop with soldered-in RAM and insane pricing options.
  
  Trying on 6GB. As a Linux user I usually don't need more RAM, so haven't added any yet.
- Meh swap is pretty crazy, I am squeezing modded Minecraft in 4gb ram on win10, it takes about 10 minutes to load, but by the time the first few chunks are rendered I think most pages are swapped to disk, letting java take almost the full 4 gigs. Don't ask why I'm doing this, exactly 😅

everything is changing

I had a heck of a time trying to get It Takes Two to work on my machine. Apparently every game that launches the EA App from Steam is broken now and needs a custom fix using ProtonTricks.
After a while of searching, I found this guide and it was a lifesaver.
https://steamdeckhq.com/tips-and-guides/fixing-ea-play-blank-screen-for-ea-games-on-steam/
These are sadly the kind of issues that scare people away from Linux gaming. The stuff that works, works great. But when something is not supported, it can be a real pain to find a fix.
- I believe this was fixed in the latest Proton Experimental. It's working for both Titanfall 2 and Sims 4
  
  Is that so? I last tried a few weeks ago. That's good that they fixed this long standing issue.

This is the way.

As a GOG customer, I'll take anything they are giving away, even if I can't run it.
I can always install it in someone's computer for them to enjoy.

- Steam version of BG2 EE worked flawlessly for me. It's been discounted down to like 3€ a few times
  
  The Steam version might be using the steam runtime, which would explain why you aren't having dependency issues.
- Previous Baldur's Gate games came out on old ass consoles, you can play it emulated without a hitch. I know I definitely played BG2 on Dolphin
  
  That's not Baldurs Gate, it's Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance which is a completely different game that was on consoles. It was an Action RPG as opposed to an RPG.
  But it was also great fun. Especially with a friend.
  
  You can play Baldur's Gate on all sorts of machines using GemRB. Not the enhanced version though.

Gaming on Linux has evolved by leaps and bounds. We're now at the point where only a select few Windows games (usually due to the anti cheat) won't run.

I'll buy Windows games at full price only if the developer has made efforts to better support Linux users (say by fixing a bug that only affects Linux users).

Does "plays on linux" mean native , or just 'works fine with WINE (edit: or proton, apparently)'?
- There are plenty of games that are very specifically targeting Proton compatibility at a very minimum thanks to the Steam Deck, so I'm perfectly happy with any game that's developed with that in mind.
  
  Being verified on Steam Desk is my parameter for deciding if I'll consider a game or not, even if I don't have a Steam Deck (yet). I'm perfectly fine with that, not asking for a Linux native version as long as the game works as it should on Proton.
- Proton* Proton is the way. Granted, proton uses wine... but, makes getting games running nearly effortless is the majority of cases.
  Also, has a nice website, protondb.com, which tells you how well / if a game works on linux.
- I'm on Linux Mint right now and when I go my library and toggle the "Show only games that run on Linux" button, nothing happens. I don't think Valve cares about the distinction, so long as it runs.
  
  if you have proton enabled the library shows all games as linux compatible. If you disable proton in the steam settings on linux the filter will only show games that run natively

Refund?? 🏴‍☠️

Or spend a lot of time reverse engineering the game and fixing shit, and completely losing interest in playing once the game is running perfectly.
- I don't know some of my favorite projects are open source engine recreations like OpenMW and re3 for example. If they don't get shut down by the owner of the IP some of them can be in development for years

I think you have the pictures the wrong way round. At least it isn't sarcastic this way. And the meme is supposed to be.

i bought asseto corsa on sale once, it didn't even start i still have it though, as it was reaaally cheap maybe someday it'll run

Now that is based as hell.

This is the way.

It may be silly but I usually will blindly buy a game, find out it doesn't work, then wait for a few years until it does. Because it will. Even if someone has to reverse engineer the game engine to use the game assets.
- That's silly and dumb on top, because games rapidly lose value. The $60 game you buy today (and don't play) costs $40 in a year. And will be in a $12 Humble Bundle with 9 other games in 3-5 years tops.
  I already get enough games in bundles that I don't play, when I actually buy a game (even on sale) I only do it if I want to play it immediately. Otherwise in the future it will be cheaper anyway and have plenty of updates on top (if it didn't get abandoned).
  
  The thing is: I'd never buy a €60 game, because money is hard to earn. I have clear priorities, games are just a hobby.
  Most of the games I buy are either old and more suitable to run on lower end hardware, or discounted, or bundles. I hate multiplayer games, so I won't jump on the latest hyped up AAA franchise either. I'm a proud member of /c/patientgamers and /c/retrogamers.
  My comment was meant as a tribute to how much gaming on Linux has improved, and to the people that make it happen.
- How often does that happen though? Usually these games get a couple updates early on to fix major bugs, and once it’s stable it’s never touched again.
  On the Mac side it’s been a real sad story because so many old 32bit and/or x86 games simply can’t run anymore.
  
  The work that is going into Wine, Proton, DosBox, ScummVM, Luxtorpeda and all the other compatibility tools is what makes me quite positive that any game I buy will eventually get supported.
  Sometimes that assumption will fail, but it's a very small percentage of the games I own. I can live with that.
- Personally I prefer to get a refund with the explicit reason "Game wont run on proton" It gives clear quantifiable feedback to valve and the developer that they lost this money because it wouldnt run on linux.
  Or at least I would if that had happened recently. Last time a game wouldnt run for me was ace combat 7.
  
  Seems like a good idea, I might start doing just that.

Minecraft and Dota2 run on Linux :)

ngl i consistently have a better experience running games through wine than using their native versions. linux ports are often completely dysfunctional and it sucks ass

All games (theoretically) run on Linux -- cloud gaming is a thing. Even if you may say "B-but muh input lag" its extremely doable and reliable as of now.
- Not everyone has fast and reliable internet connection
  
  This. My current connection is the most speed I've ever had and the most you can get in my area without spending a ton on business class, but cloud gaming is atrocious at best. I'm not gonna move to the city so I can get gigabit for a half decent price while spending 4 or 5 times more on housing.
  
  Only if you don't have a job -- even Africa and Afghanistan has decent internet nowadays.

Close. It either natively runs well on Linux, or refund. No Proton, no Wine. Made natively for Linux and runs well, supporting X11 and that Wayland crap. Otherwise "gamers" will once again blame Linux... again. And there is nothing worse than whiny gamers blaming Linux.
- Personally, if Wine/Proton is officially supported I am fine to pay. If they don't support native Linux or official Wine/Proton support then I pass. I really don't care what tools/libraries they use as long as the result is supported and the game runs well.
  
  The problem there is Linux will get blamed when there is a problem. Best just not to have games at all, then.

Blaming the purchaser for not checking beforehand if it will work. ProtonDB is a good source.
- ProtonDB recently told me civ 3 didn’t work or had major issues. Here I am playing flawlessly.
  
  Did you submit that to protondb?
- And also not always accurate 💩 soo no, still the game's fault
  
  How is it the game's fault? They never said it would run on Linux.
- I used to just check WineHQ and if it has Gold or above, you can definitely make it run

I blame Linux distros for being too complicated and unintuitive for 95% of the population, which in turn gives it a negligible market share from a game development perspective.
- Huh? Have you touched a GNOME-based distro recently? It's easier to install and use than Windows 11
  
  seriously though the installation experience on kde/gnome is so much nicer than windows, if the hardware is compatible and the tpm/secure boot bullshit is turned off