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The Steam Deck is nearly here and with the list of games ever-growing, it’s getting more and more nail-biting for those lucky few who managed to snag one at the right time whether or not their favourites are going to be ‘verified’ or whether they’re going to be relegated to being stuck in the workaround situation.
Valve is using their compatibility layer, Proton, which is designed to take any and all Windows-based games and transfer them to be playable over on Linux, which SteamOS is based on. In fact, SteamOS is based on Manjaro and so far, the ProtonDB for Destiny 2 still has a fat message of “Borked”.
As of right now, the Bungie MMO is stuck in a non-functioning state due to Battle Eye, the security and anti-cheat measure implemented not functioning with Linux. This isn’t even Battle Eye’s fault, as they’ve stated that they can now whitelist any game for Linux as long as the developer gets in touch, which Bungie have yet to do.
Destiny 2 is already on Linux?!
Bungie’s shooter should actually work with the Steam Deck if they were to put the legwork in, as they’ve already made a Linux version of Destiny 2 – technically. The Stadia version of the game is built on Linux, as that’s the operating system powering the streaming service.
Porting this version over would still take a considerable amount of work, but theoretically, there exists a native Linux version of Destiny 2 out there for people to play and seems weird that Bungie hasn’t begun putting the work in, despite the constant forum threads and further questions based on the upcoming handheld’s popularity.
Linux’s gaming support saw a massive boost with Valve’s introduction of Proton, with a majority of the games tested now seemingly either playable or working with caveats. The issue commonly appears to be with online games with anti-cheat software or other middleware causing issues along the line. However, this is far and away better than the stability offered by Wine, another layer for Linux to run Windows programs and the community is actively curating it.