Suggestion: Allow installs of Windows programs through Wine, in cases where a Linux binary either doesn't exist or hasn't been added

[Star-X]

Much easier than having two separate Steam installs; 1 on Linux and 1 on Wine.

[Cat on Linux]

why only 2 installs? :) I have 3 wine prefixes for different types of games. I doubt your suggestion will be taken into consideration as it's not exactly the thing we need in the first place. you can always run your game from menus or shortcut, in this case you can have as many wine prefixes as you need. is it that hard to do couple of clicks so you want Valve to include cross platform calls to windows software on Linux platform because of that? do you realize how much effort it would take to fullfill such silly wishes? Will we get any real Linux ports if steam will have windows executables? Who will install and configure wine for each game? Do you want steam to become Play on Linux and to have zillions of wine bottles? there's much more questions about implementation of this feature.

However, I would rather see steam for Linux to work PROPERLY and BUG FREE rather than adding something I can achieve in 1 click.

[Acute]

Take a look at this: https://github.com/xomachine/SteamForwarder

[Marlock]

OP suggested installing, not just running windows steam games on wine from linux steam.

Running windows steam games that you have already downloaded is much easier than downloading them on linux without running windows steam to do it.

His request is an old one and makes perfect intuitive sense from a user POV.

Unfortunately there are a dozen threads and most likely several requests on github about this and Valve is not likely to change their stance on this matter.

Possible reasons for this not happening:

1- Steam provides DRM (digital rights manegement, aka anti-piracy protection) services for games it distributes and are contractually bound to do so. The reason you can only download and run steam games from steam launcher is that restricting game file distribution is their main DRM service. If not, they could just let people log to Steam and download game installers from their website (GOG does this because they distribute DRM-less games and Humble Store does it for their DRM-free games too).

2- Steam is most likely contractually bound to distributing a game only under the platforms a game dev has agreed to distribute their game on. This agreement could be revised on a game per game basis if devs agree to allow such expanded distribution, but then we get to reason 3.

3- Even if they place a million warnings and disclaimers before windows games are downloaded or run under linux, users are likely to flood Valve and the game devs with support requests involving windows games running under wine if they offer this possibility... which ties in to reason 4.

4- Wine is getting better with time but if you used it enough (directly, through Play-on-Linux or through Lutris) you will know how each game works radically better, worse or not at all depending on wine version and configs, etc. It is still a potential support nightmare.


Also, it is important to notice that not all linux gamers consider this a good idea because of possible long term effects over native linux game support and professional porting of games to linux.

Will a sudden flood of windows games help linux gaming get more popular or will it hurt porting and native development more than it helps? Hard to know...

Personaly I would like to see it happen, but don't expect it will anytime soon.

[Marlock]

Originally posted by Pray:

Take a look at this: https://github.com/xomachine/SteamForwarder

Wow, that's one very complete solution there!

Downloads, installs, creates wine launching scripts for each game for easy steam custom shortcut creation!

First time I heard about it.