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  • Honestly, by now there are so many great open source games. Along with open source engines where you just have to buy the assets. Play all of those and you can probably have fun for the rest of your life. And if not, go on itch and filter by open source to fill the rest of your time.

    I mean, my own Diarrhea 4 will probably amuse you for a whole minute.

  • The purist, non-conformist, jaded subhuman terrorist
    From flesh to steel and blood to bleed, I fight to exist

    ~ Edgecrusher, Fear Factory

  • are these purists who have never heard of Proton here in the room with us, OP?

    • I'm an idealistic purist, but I don't refuse to use proton, I use it all the time.

      My issue is that proton has enabled devs to put their head in the sand for Linux support.

      It has shifted from -> we won't support Linux because nobody uses it to -> we won't support Linux because it works with proton.

      So as a long term solution, proton enables bad practices from devs and continues the proliferation of libraries like directX

      • There was a time in the 2010s where some fairly large games had native Linux versions:

        • Alien: Isolation
        • Ark: Survival Evolved
        • BioShock: Infinite
        • Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel (albeit with broken multiplayer caused by mismatched game versions)
        • Cities: Skylines
        • Dead Island
        • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
        • Europa Universalis IV
        • Hearts of Iron IV
        • Hitman (2016)
        • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
        • Shadow Warrior (2013) (notable for inspiring Doom 2016 and being a precursor to the current wave of boomer shooters)
        • War Thunder
        • XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and XCOM 2

        That, along with Valve games (and by extension a lot of mods and custom server content) and basically every indie game you'd get from the Humble Bundle or itch.io having a native Linux version made it possible to be a Linux gamer before Proton was even a twinkle in Gabe's eye. That was especially the case for me, since the types of games that tended to run on Linux were the sort of games I wanted to play anyway.

        Fast forward to today and even Valve can't be arsed to make a native Linux version of Deadlock. All of Frictional's games from 2007 to 2020 had a Linux version, until 2023 when Amnesia: The Bunker didn't have one.

        I'm glad we have Proton: it runs Arx Fatalis better than modern windows does, let's me play Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Fallout: New Vegas, and a slew of other games. It also opens Linux gaming up to a wider audience and removes a lot of the anxiety someone might have about switching over from wondering if they'll be able to play everything they're interested in. But in exchange for that we're definitely paying the price in actual native games, and to some degree further entrenching Windows as the standard.

        It appears that the Civilization series is one notable exception to this trend, with V (2010), VI (2016) and VII (2025) all having Linux versions.

      • Yes, that's valid, but I think it's very much so short term thinking.

        eventually if enough windows things are supported on linux, the question will become why use windows?

        once everything works out of the box, laptop manufacturers will say "why are we paying microsoft this licensing fee"

        there would have been no other way to win the war, this gives us a chance in the very long term.

        eventually publishers may say "why do we support windows?"

        the next pillar that I think will fall in our favor is anticheat, once that goes down the sky is the limit for our longterm prospects

    • I've met one, back on Reddit

      He was one of the most insufferable people I ever had the displeasure of interacting with. Not because of this in particular but yeah.

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