Sometimes you see developers posting on /r/linux_gaming and generally the consensus from the community is mostly "just make sure proton works" which is pretty telling.

It's sort of a philosophical bummer as an old head to see that native compatibility, or maybe more accurately, native mindshare, being discarded even by a relatively evangelical crowd but,

- as a Linux Gamer, I totally get it - proton versions just work, linux versions probably did work at some point, on some machines.

- as a Developer, I totally get it - target windows cause that's 97% of your installs, target proton cause that's the rest of your market and you can probably target proton "for free". Focus on making a great game not glibc issues.

I mostly worry about what happens when Gabe retires and Valve pivots to the long squeeze. Don't think proton fits in that world view, but I also don't know how much work Proton needs in the future vs the initial hill climb and proof-of-success. I guess we'll get DX13 at some point, but maybe I'll just retire from new games and just keep playing Factorio until I die (which, incidentally does have a fantastic native version, but Wube is an extreme outlier.)

1. I think targeting compatibility is 99% as good as targeting native.

2. You’re discarding the shifting software landscape. Steam OS and Linux are trending towards higher PC gaming market share. macOS has proven you don’t need much market share to force widespread (but not universal) compatibility.

3. I don’t see the value in a purist attitude around Linux gaming. The whole point of video games is entertainment. I’m much less concerned with if my video game is directly calling open source libraries then if my {serious software} is directly calling open source libraries.