Steam on Linux use has hit an all-time high! With the Steam Survey results for October 2025 coming out this evening, Steam on Linux has finally cracked the 3% threshold! A few months back Steam on Linux was close to 3% before stumbling a bit but now it’s above that elusive threshold. The only time Steam on Linux use was close to the 3% mark was when Steam on Linux initially debuted a decade ago and at that time the overall Steam user-base was much smaller than it is today. Long story short, thanks to the ongoing success of Valve’s Steam Deck and other handhelds plus Steam Play (Proton) working out so well, these October numbers are the best yet.
how much to make all the big shooter games allow linux on their anticheats
Been playing ARC Raiders on Linux the past couple of days.
I can’t get the damn thing to load on my machine -_-
Did you try with Proton-GE? Regular Proton would not load for me for some reason.
I did, I tried multiple Proton versions, tried experimental and tried it with the bleeding edge beta option.
None of them acted differently, all if them loaded the black screen with the loading icon bottom right and then crashed and gave no details on why it crashed at all.
Proton-GE is a 3rd party tool I always use when a game doesn’t start with a Valve Proton version
Ah OK. I have refunded it now so can’t try as I spent nearly 2 hours “in game” time trying to get the thing working and didn’t want to go past that 2 hour threshold and then be stuck with an expensive game I couldn’t play.
I would really recommend you take a look at ProtonDB when it comes to troubleshooting like that, it is one of if not the best resources for that kind of stuff
Thanks for the recommendation :)
What does the log say? PROTON_LOG=1 launch parameter and then check your home directory.
for some reason mine crashes if i tab out while it’s loading into a map. fwiw.
I had a problem loading it during the playtest (black screen, forever loading icon) and had to install Proton EasyAntiCheat Runtime for it to start up properly. Never had a problem launching the playtest or full game after that!
Thanks for the suggestion, that is one of the things I tried that did not work though :(
Did you report it on the proton github issue thread (if there’s one already open)? Just to get the conversation going
I think it will more likely happen if windows kicks games out of kernel space.
There’s little reason to force them out given games run temporarily. We’re more likely to see security products move out of the kernel first since they run full time and from boot (meaning there’s stronger implications if they fail in kernel space e.g. Crowdstrike). And even then, they’re not forcing them out, just offering APIs in user space to negate the need to be running in the kernel for those use cases.
I’d love to see games denied the ability to run drivers in kernel space on Windows but I don’t think we’ll see that any time soon.
Sorry to say, but game anticheats can also run whenever like the malware they are.
Yes but many don’t. And the risk impact of BSODing gaming computers vs business systems is dramatically different.
We won’t see MS do anything about kernel drivers until the majority of security industry has moved to whatever new userspace APIs MS release.
Even then, do gaming anti cheat developers really care?
IMO simply vote with your wallet and don’t buy games that need kernel drivers and still fail to address cheaters who always find a way around.
Vanguard literally always spies on your PC from a most privileged location
What’s that got to do with MS’s decision to kick them out? What’s the Venn diagram of mission critical systems and systems running Valorant/League?
I’m not disagreeing that these bullshitty kernel drivers running from boot exist, I’m stating that MS aren’t going to do shit about it if even more risky kernel drivers aren’t planned to be removed from the OS and there’s plenty of other popular anti cheat drivers that are only loaded at runtime.
I think the point is that, if Microsoft actually makes an API for the features that kernel-level software needs. They are going to boot everyone out of the kernel, mission critical systems and anti-cheat systems included.
I know people in the working group in the cybersecurity space working with MS on these APIs and this really isn’t their plan. They aren’t doing it to kick people out - cybersecurity want out for themselves as no one wants to do a CrowdStrike.
There are countless other use cases for kernel drivers that won’t be in scope of the APIs being drafted.
I read somewhere that Mac started to get more support for previously windows only apps once they hit 5% market share.
It’s been like a decade since I’ve read that, so who knows the source.
Cs2 and tf2 is already on here, idk what you’re talking about