Never? Proton has already replaced Windows for some and I don‘t think it’s going to become any weaker. Valve keeps pushing and making pretty good progress: Even games with anti cheat software are expected to work some time soon.
The Steam console was too early, but the Steam Deck might give Linux gaming a good push (even though I expect many users will install Windows, ha) and shows how committed Valve is to gaming on Linux.
> Even games with anti cheat software are expected to work some time soon.
I'm extremely excited about this, but there is a very sad reality check: anti-cheat vendors have pointed out that a hackable kernel breaks their model. They will most likely aim to detect and block WINE execution.
I mean of course not all games work! But for me personally literally every single game I wanted to play works! Everyone's experience is different. I mostly play single player games.
I love the ProtonDb comments but I am disgusted by the misleading tagging. Like a title marked Platinum will not work out of the box (need various workarounds like copying dlls around, custom flags) , Gold titles will often require custom Proton versions so is IMO an advanced feature, so who the hell is pushing this misleading labels and numbers is IMO making us the Linux users a bunch of dudes that we trick people to believe that things just work.
There's a reason they don't work: Both use incredibly invasive always online DRM. (Despite being single player games!) Even on Windows people have trouble getting both working.
If you play AAA games that are pretty new you're experience will definitely suffer. If you play anything older than 2015-ish and doesn't require another software center to play a game (ubisoft or origin) then it's usually pretty good.
The Steam console was too early, but the Steam Deck might give Linux gaming a good push (even though I expect many users will install Windows, ha) and shows how committed Valve is to gaming on Linux.