How Forza Motorsport can be supported on Steam Deck

[Galactical Edge]

Hey guys, so as you guys may know, this game does not boot on Steam Deck using SteamOS. This is because this game requires an external UWP dependency called "Gaming Services." When you try to launch the game, it will tell you that it needs to be installed. If you go to the website it leads you to and download the repair script from there and run it in Forza Motorsport's Proton prefix, it will fail. This is because it tries to open the Microsoft Store, which isn't available on Proton.

So if any of the developers happen to see this, I have multiple solutions that you guys could implement to get this game working. I'm not exactly sure what Gaming Services is used for, so whatever I propose may or may not work. But here they are:

1. Add a check for Wine in the game's startup (here's a code sample you can use for reference) [gist.github.com] to detect whether the game is running through Proton (since it's just Wine with additional dependencies). If the game detects Wine, you can exempt the game from requiring Gaming Services. This may not work if Gaming Services provides vital functionality for the game.

2. You can ship Gaming Services itself as part of the game's Steamworks packages when the game is running through Proton. When the game is first ran through Proton, Steam will install it into Motorsport's Proton prefix and then the game will run. This will require a little work from Valve to better support UWP applications, but this probably would take the least of your time.

[amirzaim]

Unfortunately, it is Microsoft product.

Microsoft is really known to hate Linux even though they make a relationship with Linux.

[Galactical Edge]

Originally posted by amirzaim:

Unfortunately, it is Microsoft product.

Microsoft is really known to hate Linux even though they make a relationship with Linux.

I'm willing to argue they are, more or less, hands off when it comes to Steam Deck support. This is stated in a blog post when they say "It's up to our studios how they fit Steam Deck integration for their games into their busy schedules."

Like Microsoft didn't stop 343 or The Coalition from adding EAC support for Steam Deck for Halo: MCC and Gears 5.

[elBextown]

Originally posted by amirzaim:

Unfortunately, it is Microsoft product.

Microsoft is really known to hate Linux even though they make a relationship with Linux.

this is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

In the early 2000s, it was hard to imagine Microsoft getting involved in the Linux community. However, the company is now one of the biggest supporters of the open source community. In fact, Microsoft uses its own Linux distribution for its Azure server infrastructure. This distribution, CBL-Mariner, has now been made available to the public on GitHub. CBL-Mariner serves as an internal Linux distribution for Microsoft's cloud infrastructure and edge products and services.

[Galactical Edge]

Originally posted by elBextown:

Originally posted by amirzaim:

Unfortunately, it is Microsoft product.

Microsoft is really known to hate Linux even though they make a relationship with Linux.

this is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

In the early 2000s, it was hard to imagine Microsoft getting involved in the Linux community. However, the company is now one of the biggest supporters of the open source community. In fact, Microsoft uses its own Linux distribution for its Azure server infrastructure. This distribution, CBL-Mariner, has now been made available to the public on GitHub. CBL-Mariner serves as an internal Linux distribution for Microsoft's cloud infrastructure and edge products and services.

Microsoft is avidly supporting the use of Linux in the server space.

But in the Gaming space, they seem very hands off and leave it up to their studios as started before. If you need another example, Psychonauts 2 was released for Mac and Linux.