75% of Steam’s Top 1000 Games Run on Linux Now

Valve Software, the company behind the popular gaming platform Steam and blockbusters like Dota 2, Half-Life, and Team Fortress, announced plans in 2018 to improve Windows gaming support for Linux.

Steam Play, a feature that Valve Software released in 2010 to allow cross-platform play on Steam, would be used to improve support. Originally released as a way for gamers to play their games on all platforms without having to purchase games for each platform, Valve Software included a modified version of Wine, called Proton, on Steam Play.

Proton improved compatibility and Linux users on Steam had access to more games using the new feature.

Mike published a guide in 2020 outlining how Linux gamers could play AAA games designed for Windows on their Linux machines using Proton.

The independent protondb database tracks compatibility using user reports. Compatibility has improved significantly in recent years. The site highlights compatibility of the top 10, top 100, and top 1000 games on Steam.

75% of the top 1000 games run on Linux now, and the figure is even higher, at 80%, for the top 100 games. Only the top 10 games are not well represented as only 40% of them run on Linux with no major issues according to the database.

Users have submitted more than 150,000 reports of more than 21,000 games to the site. Of these 21,000 games, more than 17,600 are running according to the site.

The games in the database are ranked using a medal system. Platinum and gold rated games work perfectly, and silver games may have minor issues. Bronze sets may fail or have serious problems.

Borked games don’t work at all or are unplayable, and native Linux games are the complete opposite.

Protondb has a search function that Linux gamers can use to find out if the games they are interested in work well on Linux. All games that match your search term are returned, which means you can search for entire series of games, for example King’s Bounty, Final Fantasy, or Civilization, and get all reported games and their compatibility rating returned.

Compatibility is improving and while there are still games that do not run on Linux, it is clear that compatibility has improved significantly in recent years.

Now you: You play? If so, on what platforms? (via Neowin)

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