Dealing with games that just won't run on Linux

I use Proton Experimental to play my games and they all work without exception. I'm in my late 30s, so I no longer play competitive games that have a kernel rootkit, I mean kernel anti-cheat.

Basically, Linux gaming is like this: If you want to play competitive games with anti-cheat, stay or play in Windows. For all other games, play in Linux.

I don't buy games that won't run on linux.

this rarely happens, but when i run into a game that doesn't work i - check protondb.com to see if someone else has already found a solution. trying different proton versions can sometimes help as well

Dual boot, although I usually prefer to drop it rather than go to the trouble.

I wouldn't recommend virtualization, not only do you lose performance when you need it most, but (depending on the devices and system) setting everything up properly can be very tedious.

aside from leaving them behind

Why are we conforming to fit the software's needs instead of vice-versa? Fuck the devs who can't be assed to make it work for proton at the least. This isn't my job, I'm not being paid to use software that goes against my values. There's tens of thousands of games out there and I'm gonna let myself get so hung up on the few hundred that don't work that i just go back to m$?

Fuck. That. They deserve to get left behind. No piece of media is worth compronising on my values to consume.

First things first: This hasn't happened to me in ages. I even stopped looking at ProtonDB. Stuff just runs.

However, if a game I buy really wouldn't run on Linux, I would just refund it (if possible) and play something else. I have a pile of shame that could fill a hundred lifetimes, I really don't need to play this one particular game.

I have a dual boot partition, but honestly the games that don't run are so few and far between that I really don't bother..

It's like if you bought a Playstation, how do you play Xbox games? Unless it's really worth it, you just don't.

This might come off as an easy way out to your question, but very simply I just don't bother with games that don't run on linux. There's enough really great titles that run great on linux, especially with the help of proton.

I can't be bothered with using windows anymore. It's so bad. It's very very bad, I rather do something else than have to play games under windows. I'll only use windows if I absolutely m must, like for when I'm at work.

For my sins, I do dual boot Windows 10. Though with wine and proton I reckon I can get ~80-90% of games to work.

I'd love to go 100% Linux, and I do my best to only buy games that support Linux. But there are sadly some old games and multiplayer games with friends that I still can't quite convince to work.

I switched fully to Linux on my main gaming PC about 18 months ago. Honestly Proton has become so good that I really haven't had to dual-boot Windows or run a VM or anything. I even bought a licence for CrossOver when I first switched but ended up not needing it.

For the few games that really won't run (after trying what I find in ProtonDB and PCGW) I really do either A) wait for fixes, or B) just leave them behind. With a library of like 2500 games it's not hard to find something else to play.

These are the only games I recall not working at all for me:

• Beyond Good & Evil (GOG) - Might be fixed now
• Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Steam) - Might be fixed now
• Dauntless (EGS) - Broken due to Easy Anti-Cheat

I prefer to stand by companies that support my OS of choice. If they support me, I will pay them back. Otherwise I would be supporting them in ignoring my choices, so I put my money where my mouth is.

I do without.

no way am I bothering with installing windows, in a VM or elsewhere.

I used to have a second partition with Windows for such cases, but over time I just stopped bothering with those games.

Now I just refund if it doesn't work and move on in my to-play list.

I still have a Windows VM for some applications and for doing firmware updates but I never bothered to set it up for playing games.

Generally, Proton is enough for gaming.

I use Tiny11 when I have to use Windows to run games.

This modified Windows edition has no ads, no Edge browser, no forced online microsoft account, and no forced updates, so it’s a tolerable Windows edition.

Dualbooting is the easiest, IMO.

I had a shrunk down windows partition and a tiny portion of HDD space to install the couple games that only worked on windows.

I've since nuked both partitions, as some of the games now do work on Linux, and the rest were no longer enough to actually make be boot into windows to play.

Nowadays I just play something else, so many games out there that work flawlessly (thanks to wine/proton). I also did virtualization successfully for some time but it can take a while to get it right. The best and simplest solution is to get a separate SSD just for windows and dual boot.

When I had to worry about that,I dual-booted. It's the simplest solution. I don't really play multiplayer PC games anyway, and multiplayer anti-cheat is 90%+ of the reason games won't run on Linux nowadays with the advancements made to Proton, so I don't really have that problem anymore and I haven't had any Windows on my system in a few years.

I usually go on protondb and try whatever people tried until it works. Right now I'm playing on nvidia geforce 1050 ti with proprietary drivers on Bazzite and somehow it just works. For games that run badly natively on Steam I switch to Proton.

You might have a different experience than I do since I only play games that are at least 3 years old and never online competitive games.

It kinda depends on what games you are using.

If they are online only with anti cheat dual booting is the only viable solution because most anti cheat’s that don’t work with Linux/proton will flag you as cheating if you try to use a vm.

If its some older game its prolly better to use a vm for that OS, lien a lot of old games for windows XP or windows 95 are like that. For really old ones you can just use dosbox which is very tried and true.

If it’s just some random game that doesn’t work I either A: figure it will get working in some way eventually or B: give up on ever playing it again.

I think I’m at the point where if a new game comes out and it didn’t work on Linux I just wouldn’t buy it. But I might be an outlier since most of the games I like usually get a Linux port or will work with proton anyways

If I actually care about the game, I submit a ticket, asking for portability. This isn't really a thing anymore though, as usually the games that are incompatible with wine are games I don't want to play anyways (anticheat, cancerous drm). As for installing Windows, there is no game, and will be no game that is important enough to me to make me install corporate malware to play it, even in a VM, purely out of spite.

Everything I want to play that doesn't work on Linux is available on GeForce Now.

I dual boot anyway to use some features on my scanner, so I might as well use that in case something doesn't run. So far I've been able to move all games I play to Linux. Older games tend to run better than on Windows, in my experience.

Before going with dual boot I was considering running a VM, which seems way cooler but also very tricky to set up properly with passthrough and all that.

If it doesn't work in Wine (the only reason I've encountered so far is DRM), I just run it in a Windows VM. I play mostly visual novels, so it's not that much slower. For Anti-Cheat games, I boot into my Windows 10 installation. I still haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with that installation come October 2025.

My solution is "have a large game collection, and move on to the next game". The odd bad game will likely get better in a future version of Wine. Proton 9-something even picked up support for some of the fussier Japanese VNs (but not well enough for IMHHW, alas).

I still have some games that I can only run on my PS3, but I don't really use it much.

If it doesn't work I try a few things from protondb I try lutris then I give up and refund the game.

What games are you playing? I have not encountered anything so far that has needed more than proton-ge, and even then it's only a couple of games that don't just work out of the box. I guess I primarily play indie games though, nothing that would have like anti-cheat which I understand is a hurdle.

Dual boot

Not the answer ya want, I RARELY play AAA games. Honestly haven't run into a game that wouldn't run so far.

I also have a dual-boot, with fresh install of Windows I debloated as much as possible, that I use for games that I can't get to run even after trying protondb.com. However, it has only happened one or two times since I switched more than half a year ago, and I usually just give up on and refund games that I can't get to work on Steam. I have a lot of other things to play, and usually I wasn't that much dead set on playing that particular one. I do make sure to post on the forums of the game when that happens, though.

I've also recently stumbled upon https://windowsxlite.com/24H2ProV2/, which should be a debloated and minimized Windows (4Gb installed size is mindblowing, considering that all my Windows VMs have like 40Gb freshly installed). The site looks shady, but it was recommended to me by my coleague who works in cybersecurity, so I hope he knows what he's doing. I haven't got the time to test it yet, but it does mention that it should work for games, so who knows.

All games run perfectly. if it doesnt it bc if the anti-cheat the devs dont enable. I just dont play their games. simple as. Fuck them

I have a small windows install on a second SSD that I dual boot with. Most of my games work on Linux so I rarely have to boot over.

I was a total Rust junkie, I was playing 40 hours a week. Then they dropped support for the Linux client and wouldn't let Proton users do EAC. I had to stop cold turkey. But I fucking did it, because fuck capital-driven operating systems designed to exploit me and my own computer against me.

I stopped playing games. Honestly, they are more boring than lying around watching flys buzz.

I have a Windows dual boot for the (nowadays rather rare) cases where a game won't run in Linux.

Interestingly, I spent a while trying to get League of Legends working with their new rootkit requirements... But my Windows-using friends weren't comfortable playing the game any more.

All of them i've actually wanted to try out I was able to stream via the xbox game pass website in a browser. It is not a perfect experience, but it is "good enough" on a decent internet connection. I understand that if you physically have an xbox you can also run the game on that and stream it to your linux desktop for much better performance and latency, but I have not tried this myself.

That said, it is pretty rare. The only ones I've tried that with were fortnite (a friend wanted to play the lego game mode, but it was short lived - starved for content, lol) and starfield (it was free on game pass and I wasn't sure I wanted to buy it).

A "ez" solution would be simply stay on Windows and leave Linux as a novelty. A somewhat complicated solution -- double booting (apparently Windows can be a privacy nightmare even while dual-booting). A quite hard one would be installing Linux and running Windows on a VM with GPU passthrough. The "are you bleeping kidding me?" approach would be buying another PC just to run Linux while leaving your "main" PC for Windows.

"Is there a sane approach for this?" -- yep, there is! Which is, buying a console and use it solely for gaming while leaving your main PC for daily browsing and everything else (i.e Linux).