I believe somebody has to actually go do it before it is "real".

Much of what information is out on the net is really just bogus reporting that is full of fluff and the only reliable way to sort reality from the dandelion fluff is to eat it yourself and see if it makes you puke.

So, being housebound for a couple of days due to Hurricane Florence, I am going to kick the tires of playing some of my entire rack of Windows only games on Linux Mint 19 using the Proton Wine system that is built into Steam for Linux.

Is this gonna work?   My bet is some will work flawlessly, some will not.   It is also my bet that if you want a game enough to go on the Steam forum for that specific game somebody will know how to make it work (and before long the Steam guys will put it into the standard Steam for Linux device set up stuff).

There are now thousands of old Windows on Steam games that folks already own that rest inside a specialty Steam library marked "Windows ONLY".   These are games you already own the play rights to play, so listen up to what follows.

Go here and read up --    

https://fosspost.org/tutorials/enable-steam-play-on-linux-to-run-windows-games

...... follow the steps but save the link (or this post) as tuning to the procedures is taking place as things evolve.   NOTE PLEASE AFTER YOU DO THESE STEPS ALL OF YOUR GAMES NOW SHOW UP IN ONE BUCKET CALLED "SteamOS-Linux".   This simply means they are good to try, but so far nobody has put out a ranking system for full play-ability vs limping stuff.

Next, pick a particular Windows only game that you want to play on Linux and give it a whirl.   Hit your first problems and go on the Steam forum for that game and ask for help and read up on the issues as they are currently known.  Many times simple changes to the game settings is all that is needed, so try out the settings changes that are recommended.  

Or else just wait a bit for the game's fans to fix all these issues for you.

Poor use of resources.     Many old games don't require very much machine power and these will run great on Linux anyway.   Some games will choke down framerates some, but expect that to change weekly as the games get tweeked some to fit a Steam for Linux and the Proton video drivers for Linux get better and better.

Gabe and his boys support this.   Major game houses support this (they have a library of old games they get to sell all over again to a new market segment).   Gamers support this, they hate what Mickey has become and like tweeking the evil mouse's nose some.



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Windows games all used some form of Digital Rights Management, software keys, etc. etc.

Do you still have  your sign in information for the software keys?

You will need this stuff to play your Windows games on Linux.


So far Alice, the Madness Returns is working and has all its software keys installed.   Works good.

Tomb Raider is working good and required no fiddling at all.

Far Cry 3 won't boot past the start up screens (Up Play copy protection issues -- same thing happened in Windows).    Up Play copy protection scheme is a bad one, and that adds to the failure quotient.

Crysis boots and runs slowly (this has to do with my slow old equipment vs the very magnified Video system requirements that are needed for the game itself, exact same thing happened under Windows).  

BioShock will only run on version 4.1 of OpenGL.    Backing my entire system down to this old software version is possible, but I expect a fix for this obsolete OpenGL version issue to be put inside the game's Steam flatpack structure soon enough.




CONCLUSION:  

Windows games on Steam work pretty durn good for a system that has only been out for a month or two at this point.    The fact that Gabe makes NO DISTINCTION in his system any more for OS simply says he intends for all games to be OS system agnostic going forward.

Gabe can do this by having his system know what OS you are running (and he already knows the  details on what ya got from his update "installation routines") ---- then he can load the appropriate game flatpack with the bits and pieces you need to run that particular game on that particular OS system.

As Windows for ARM becomes more real, I expect this imitative will find more bits and pieces that it can use to work better and better.

Mickey itself could use some of the bits that have been worked up, as can Android and the Linux distros in general.

Flatpacks will certainly get a level of refinement out of this, and we may get closer to a single Snaps/Flatpack standard for all of Linux.