Setting aside issues with anti-cheat, clunky launchers, or games that just aren’t optimized well, I’m curious about which specific games you wish had full Proton compatibility and ran smoothly on the Steam Deck. Maybe if we gather a list of popular titles, we can draw some attention to them and help improve support or performance down the line.
5 Answers
If we look past anti-cheat problems, I guess I’d want classic racing games like WRC Generations to be more seamlessly playable. Some of these run okay but not perfectly tuned for the Deck’s hardware yet. Same goes for EA games like Far Cry and F1 — I’d love them working well since I mainly game on the Deck now.
There are some niche games I’d love to see improved Proton support for. Blood and Bacon, for example, needs a bit of tweaking with protontricks right now. Also Bionic Commando Rearmed is technically Proton gold status but still kinda broken on the Steam Deck due to PhysX and sound issues. It’d be great if these got more attention so they work out of the box without hassle.
Honestly, if you ignore kernel-level anti-cheat stuff, almost every game I tried runs fine on Proton. I’ve had success even with The Division 2 using Proton’s Easy Anti-Cheat support. Some games like Metal Slug Awakening had issues specifically on the Steam Deck OLED model, but got fixed recently. There are a few indie games where performance tanks below playable frames, but those are rare. Valve is pretty responsive on GitHub if you file issues, so that helps get things improved over time.
I’ve run into trouble mostly with some Ubisoft games. Despite Proton working great for lots of titles, Ubisoft’s launcher has been a headache for years. Sometimes you can’t even activate the game with a Steam key, which sucks if you just want to jump into multiplayer, like with Assassin’s Creed. It’s weird because some people say Ubisoft games run fine, but for me, the launcher issues block the experience more than anything else.
I’d love to see Fortnite supported properly on Proton. I know it’s a pain with anti-cheat systems, but a lot of my friends play it, and it would be awesome to join them easily on Steam Deck without fiddling around.
Well, the OP said to ignore anti-cheat issues, but yeah, Fortnite definitely struggles because of that. Hopefully someday it becomes possible without all the restrictions.
Yeah, I’m seeing that Proton’s support has come a long way. I was surprised old classics like KOTOR or Jade Empire sometimes run smoother on Proton than native Windows!