I didn’t even mention if the gamer is interested in VR, then they’re going to be limited by what headsets they can use.

I love my Reverb G2, amazing resolution for the price I paid. Part of the price I paid is being locked into windows, since it uses Windows Mixed Reality.

I know this is a bit of a separate thing but it’s still related to gaming so I thought I’d mention it. Still quite minor, especially since most of the better headsets are fully compatible with Linux, but my whole point is that there’s always something niche.

It’s really not disingenuous. EAC is prevalent and there are still plenty of games that simply don’t work with it right now, with very little reason from the player end (like why one game in EAC works while another doesn’t)

Tbh, the only multiplayer games I care about are usually p2p like Phasmophobia or Killing Floor 2. Both of these run fine on Linux and KF2 uses EAC - no issues. However I do enjoy some games of Paladins from time to time, which is unplayable due to anti-cheat. It being the main multiplayer game I play with friends makes it harder to justify switching the desktop PC fully to Linux. Minor work arounds to get working multiplayer in gmes like ROR2, annoying but whatever. Forcing to use proton to access games like Rocket League, fine I guess.

But straight up not working just makes it very hard to actively suggest Linux as an alternative if the gamer wants an easy online experience.

I agree personally, I don’t care about playing Tarkov or CoD these days. That doesn’t mean I’m unaffected by other games with the exact same issue, which is why I disagree that we shouldn’t care about them being playable. Just because we don’t care doesn’t mean other gamers don’t. Even still, the option is kind of why gamers build gaming computers. To be able to play everything they can conceivably throw at it. Before I was on my blizzard boycott a friend bought me the then new Modern Warfare and a group of friends all got together. If I’d have been a Linux only user back then I’d have been left out of the lobby.

I just don’t understand how we expect people to embrace Linux when we’re suggesting it for gaming when ~28% of all CoD players on PC (Windows). We want more widespread adoption of Linux don’t we? That happens by making it accessible, which means a game will work with little to no fiddling in the games that are most popular. If Timmy interested in Linux is getting left out of his friend groups gaming sessions, Timmy might not continue to pursue the OS out of convenience because playing games together is fun. They find a different game together and oops, turns out BF2042 also doesn’t support Linux. Battlefield 1, anyone?

Again, what I’m getting at is if we’re suggesting Linux as a gaming OS then it seems reasonable that the shortcomings are mentioned since there is a high likelihood that a new PC builder will inevitably be interested in one of the games we’ve said we don’t care about* especially if the game is an online multiplayer game. The likelihood of it working right away is low. If a gamer wants to play that game and it’s not supported by Linux, then they probably won’t be using Linux, further pushing back the year of Linux until the end of time.

Bless the Steam Deck for understanding that and attempting to remedy it. It’s biggest accomplishment is that now there are so many games that do just work, so let’s not be disingenuous by pretending all of them do. The work left to be done here is not on proton but with online support.