Valve has unleashed Proton 8.0 complete with support for a bunch of fresh games, including some big-name titles that are now playable on the Steam Deck, plus there’s a raft of fixes for various problems too.
Proton is the compatibility layer used to run Windows games, and it powers SteamOS, the (Linux-based) operating system of the Steam Deck. So these are important advancements for Valve’s handheld – and there are some specific fixes for the device, to boot.
The big news is support has been introduced for Dead Space 2023 and Forspoken, along with Nioh 2 and a whole lot of other games. The full list is as follows:
ForspokenSamurai MaidenDead Space (2023)CreativerseNioh 2 – The Complete EditionOne Piece: Pirate Warriors 4Atelier MeruruAtelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious PaintingsAtelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book DXBlue ReflectionAtelier Rorona: The Alchemist of ArlandDisney Dreamlight ValleyRomance of the Three Kingdoms XIVToGather:IslandWarriors Orochi 3 Ultimate Definitive EditionExceed – Gun Bullet ChildrenGungrave G.O.R.E.Chex Quest HD
As Gaming on Linux reports, Proton 8 requires a GPU that supports Vulkan 1.3 (and yes, the Steam Deck is good to go on that front – all relatively modern graphics cards will be fine).
Proton 8.0 also makes specific changes for the Steam Deck, notably improving the way sleep/resume works with Tiny Tina’s Wonderland on the handheld, and fixing a gremlin that causes the on-screen keyboard to pop up when starting A Plague Tale: Innocence (and A Plague Tale: Requiem).
There’s also improved multi-touch support with Proton 8.0, and the cure for an issue with the 2K Games launcher failing. Oh, and if you were experiencing crashes when returning from a player profile in Football Manager 2023, that bug has been banished.
Analysis: Full Steam Deck ahead
It’s clearly good to see a sizeable chunk of new games being brought into the fold for the Steam Deck (and Linux gaming more broadly, of course, whatever device you’re using). As well as the continued work smoothing over issues that various games have with the handheld.
Naturally, there can be gremlins in the works with any new release, and we’ve seen reports (from Reddit and Gaming on Linux) that Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is broken with the new version of Proton. It’ll crash upon opening, with an Xbox login window appearing before hanging.
This is a slightly odd one in that apparently the game was fine in testing for this release of Proton, but hopefully the glitch should be resolved soon enough. Besides, there is a workaround in that you can go offline to open the game, we’re told by a forum poster from Gaming on Linux.