Proton represents Valve's failure to make Linux gaming attractive to game studios.

Not even those that have Android/Linux NDK builds, bother with porting to GNU/Linux.

Besides blaming Microsoft, look inside into the endless reboots of audio stack, GNOME vs KDE vs XFCE vs Sway vs whatever is cool in Linux Desktops this month, X Windows vs Wayland,...

I was a believer, until 2010, then went back into Windows 7. If it wasn't for gaming and .NET, I would probably be on macOS instead.

Taking care of Linux deployments is part of my job, so I know pretty well how it goes today, don't need the have you tried standard Linux forum replies.

> Proton represents Valve's failure to make Linux gaming attractive to game studios.

> Not even those that have Android/Linux NDK builds, bother with porting to GNU/Linux.

It is a huge hassle to make a new build to a new platform. You double build system, release management, and testing. Compared to just one plat. Games are complicated, and testing all the dynamic behaviour is also complicated.

Making just a Win32 build really saves resources.

Also Win32 has been a stable api for a long time. Linux apis tend to change, and old games don't get re-built. The win32 build is therefore also provably a lot more long lived, compered to anything you build on linux.

Thats also important because of the Dont Kill Games effort and so on.