So basically their own fork of Wine? A DirectX Linux wrapper backed and supported by Valve. And most likely it will come with SteamOS 3.0 which is rumored to be launched soon (pending Valve Time)<p><a href="https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/looks-like-steamos-30-is-on-the-way-codenamed-clockwerk.12208" rel="nofollow">https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/looks-like-steamos-30...</a><p>It's also important because Valve drops the support of XP and Vista in January 2019.<p><a href="https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFCM-4577" rel="nofollow">https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1558-AFC...</a>
I hope such games are marked in the store to differentiate them from games made by developers who actually make an effort to support Linux. Relying on a shim made by Valve to support a game on an OS that developers did not target sounds like a recipe for a really bad, unstable time. I'd also rather not give money to developers who make a decision not to support Linux.
To me, the article reads like Steam Play could be a wrapper over WINE and maybe DXVK (or similar).<p>That would be awesome! Tools like PlayOnLinux and Lutris already exist, and are met with so much love from anyone I introduce to them.<p>The community around windows on linux gaming could use support from a large player like steam. If it increases adoption of linux as well, it will help improve wider adoption of native Linux gaming further.<p>I have been using WINE for gaming exclusively since I started gaming a couple years ago. It has always been a pleasant experience for me.<p>I am excited for the future and optimistic about this speculation. It's not "year of the linux desktop" (cellphones might mean that never comes), but it is always nice to see better, user-friendly resources.
Many new titles seem to support Linux. Old titles largely don’t.<p>Even if a Wine-ish compatibly layer adds some performance overhead, the PC that sits behind my TV is losing Windows pretty quickly once this comes out. Managing Windows is a PIA compared to slapping Xubuntu on a system.
This is really great. I've been worried that Valve might drop their linux support that was only really there in the first place to spite microsoft for the app store. I don't think they'll ever succeed in getting 10%+ steam users over to linux but damn am i glad that they are doing it anyways