I’ve recently moved my whole game library over to Linux and stopped dual booting. Everything runs great on Linux, I just run it through Steam’s Proton layer.
Therein lies the problem. Even my non-Steam games I run through Steam since it’s so convenient with Proton. My experience with using straight up wine, winetricks, Lutris etc. had been much more clunky in comparison and less reliable for getting things running.
While it’s working fine for now, what do I do if I’m offline and Steam decides this is one of those days offline mode doesn’t work? What if I get banned from Steam?
Has anyone had any luck replicating their Proton setup outside of Steam? Or simply just running a Proton game outside of Steam after getting it set up using Steam?
As the only platform that cares about gamers I would say it’s your only choice under Windows also. Unless you pay for boxed versions and then rip/crack them so your not messing with physical media constantly, but then disk space becomes and issue fast.
This is fair but I’m also worried about introducing a new dependency for a game that normally does not rely on Steam.
It is a bit of weighing the convenience of Steam dealing with your catalog of games, making them all just a download away, and keeping them outside of Steam and needing to come up with your own currarion method. And if you are buying (licensing it - because apparently nobody actually owns their games) the game outside one of these storefronts, you still have DRM to deal with most likely anyway.
Just have to weigh the pros vs cons.
I mean the only good alternative to Steam is GOG but there you’re not dealing with DRM.