this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Linux Gaming

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[–] MudMan@fedia.io -1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Oh. Well, no duh.

Did they ever explain why this wasn't on by default before? Was there a practical reason for it at all? It's one of those things you do once and never think about again, but it's weird that you even had to.

I guess maybe they thought that having some games try to launch and fail by default would look bad? They've recently added compatibility ratings to non-SteamOS Linux systems, so maybe that's the difference now? Still a weirdly annoying choice originally, though.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It was because Proton was still very new relatively speaking, the understanding being that it's potentially fussy and buggy enough that only people with an understanding they're running via a compatibility layer should use it to e.g. reduce game refunds.

I actually really liked the choice. Hopefully we can still at least turn SteamPlay off if we want to, and SteamPlay games are clearly labeled as such vs. native Linux versions.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 3 days ago

As far as I understand it the option remain on the menu, they just changed the default.

I would have been less annoyed at the default being off if the client asked you if you want to switch it on when you click on a non-native game. They instead have the toggle hidden away in their already cluttered and annoying Settings menu, at least on the desktop version.

Likewise, I think the answer to your issue would be to just give you a warning splash screen when booting under Proton the first time. That's fairly established UX language on Steam, they do the same when you hit the controller compatibility layer for the first time and when you try to play games with small UI elements on handheld.