Not Valve's fault that user-space Linux is run by a bunch of unpaid headless chicken with no overarching vision, sense of momentum and direction, while Win32 is a rock-stable API that games are already using.
Until there is a Linus figure that coordinates the userspace and organises a common platform API with long term support for closed-source software, Proton is the only pragmatic choice.
Valve want to get off Windows ASAP, not necessarily waste money chasing windmills driven by silly ideology that native is better.
I love Linux, I have used it for 25 years, and even I accept that native games run WORSE than their Proton counterpart.
> unpaid headless chicken with no overarching vision
systemd, GNOME, mesa etc all have developers who are being paid by companies for their work (Red Hat, Microsoft, Canonical, SUSE etc). That said, you're not wrong on the 'no overarching vision' part, see Wayland.
> Linus figure that coordinates the userspace and organises a common platform API
Flatpak with the freedesktop runtimes are just this, that said some companies (e.g. Canonical) are trying to sabotage these efforts and Ubuntu not shipping with Flatpak is the biggest hurdle.
Flatpak is not a common userspace library, just a set of sandboxed functions (i.e. portals).
What we need is something that groups Qt/GTK, pipewire, part of systemd, part of flatpak, part of Wayland into a single library, a bit like Win32 is. And the guarantee that it remains stable even for closed source projects. For example Linux is free to change its internals and requires everything to be open, so drivers can be adapted whenever the APIs change. This is not good enough for a desktop API.
Until there is a Linus figure that coordinates the userspace and organises a common platform API with long term support for closed-source software, Proton is the only pragmatic choice.
Valve want to get off Windows ASAP, not necessarily waste money chasing windmills driven by silly ideology that native is better.
I love Linux, I have used it for 25 years, and even I accept that native games run WORSE than their Proton counterpart.