In some cases my 0 minutes played are because I bought it in Steam but had to go get a pirate version to play it in Linux (via Lutris and Wine rather than Steam and Proton) since the Steam version didn’t work in Linux but the pirate one did (probably something to do with the game’s own DRM, which in the pirate version has been cracked)
Which, IMHO, is more sad than just buying a game because it’s cheap and never actually getting around to playing it.
I don’t think there’s a single game on my Steam and GOG libraries that I haven’t been able to run easily, with at most a little tweaking, but I know that it’s not the case for everything and everyone. I see a lot of reports on protondb of some people not being able to run some games at all when others have no issues.
Well, my Steam collection isn’t all that big (I mostly buy from GoG) plus I’ve only changed to Linux about 6 months ago, so out of the 6 Steam games I have tried so far in Linux, only for 1 (The Sims3, an EA game from 2009) has it failed to run from Steam whilst a pirated version ran perfectly fine with Lutris and Wine.
If I remember it correctly since the very beginning this game was problematic even in Windows because of its excessive DRM and if you look at ProtonDB, most recent experiences reported with the Sims 3 are either negative or problematic.
I’ve tweaked a lot of problematic games to get them to run in Linux (mainly GoG games with Wine and Lutris, though in addition to the Sims 3, one of the other 6 Steam games I’ve tried require tweaking in Steam, which for that one worked and I got it to run) plus I know enough about tweaking Wine to get pirated games to run in Lutris (Lutris doesn’t have install scripts for downloaded “releases” like that, so they often requires tracking in the logs the missing DLLs and figuring out what to install with Winetricks or even if the problem requires forcing use of the native DLL in WINEDLLOVERRIDES) so it’s not as if by now I’m devoid of experience at tweaking that stuff.
In summary, my total rate for problems running Steam games under Linux is 33.3%, half of which I could solve with tweaking and half I could not, though it’s a pretty small sample so the error margin is large.
For comparison sake, with Wine and Lutris out of maybe 20 games, looking at my notes - because I write the tweaks down for future reference - 5 required tweaking (so around 25%) and only for 1 of those (10% off the total) I failed to get it to run properly.
Compared to the last time I tried gaming on Linux (maybe a decade ago), it’s incredibly good.
If GOG is your main platform, have you tried Heroic launcher? You can log in to your GOG account with it and it will keep track of your library and can be set up to auto-update like Steam if you wish, and you can set it up to run everything through Proton and has a bunch of workarounds built-in.
I personally had a lot of issues with Lutris, so I gave up on it some time ago, even though people seem to swear by it.
Compared to the last time I tried gaming on Linux (maybe a decade ago), it’s incredibly good
I’ve been blown away by the difference. Gaming would have been the only thing holding me back from switching to Linux full-time, and the only games that I know for sure won’t work are games that I have no interest in playing anyway.
In some cases my 0 minutes played are because I bought it in Steam but had to go get a pirate version to play it in Linux (via Lutris and Wine rather than Steam and Proton) since the Steam version didn’t work in Linux but the pirate one did (probably something to do with the game’s own DRM, which in the pirate version has been cracked)
Which, IMHO, is more sad than just buying a game because it’s cheap and never actually getting around to playing it.
How often does that happen, out of curiosity?
I don’t think there’s a single game on my Steam and GOG libraries that I haven’t been able to run easily, with at most a little tweaking, but I know that it’s not the case for everything and everyone. I see a lot of reports on protondb of some people not being able to run some games at all when others have no issues.
Well, my Steam collection isn’t all that big (I mostly buy from GoG) plus I’ve only changed to Linux about 6 months ago, so out of the 6 Steam games I have tried so far in Linux, only for 1 (The Sims3, an EA game from 2009) has it failed to run from Steam whilst a pirated version ran perfectly fine with Lutris and Wine.
If I remember it correctly since the very beginning this game was problematic even in Windows because of its excessive DRM and if you look at ProtonDB, most recent experiences reported with the Sims 3 are either negative or problematic.
I’ve tweaked a lot of problematic games to get them to run in Linux (mainly GoG games with Wine and Lutris, though in addition to the Sims 3, one of the other 6 Steam games I’ve tried require tweaking in Steam, which for that one worked and I got it to run) plus I know enough about tweaking Wine to get pirated games to run in Lutris (Lutris doesn’t have install scripts for downloaded “releases” like that, so they often requires tracking in the logs the missing DLLs and figuring out what to install with Winetricks or even if the problem requires forcing use of the native DLL in WINEDLLOVERRIDES) so it’s not as if by now I’m devoid of experience at tweaking that stuff.
In summary, my total rate for problems running Steam games under Linux is 33.3%, half of which I could solve with tweaking and half I could not, though it’s a pretty small sample so the error margin is large.
For comparison sake, with Wine and Lutris out of maybe 20 games, looking at my notes - because I write the tweaks down for future reference - 5 required tweaking (so around 25%) and only for 1 of those (10% off the total) I failed to get it to run properly.
Compared to the last time I tried gaming on Linux (maybe a decade ago), it’s incredibly good.
If GOG is your main platform, have you tried Heroic launcher? You can log in to your GOG account with it and it will keep track of your library and can be set up to auto-update like Steam if you wish, and you can set it up to run everything through Proton and has a bunch of workarounds built-in.
I personally had a lot of issues with Lutris, so I gave up on it some time ago, even though people seem to swear by it.
I’ve been blown away by the difference. Gaming would have been the only thing holding me back from switching to Linux full-time, and the only games that I know for sure won’t work are games that I have no interest in playing anyway.