alt Hacker NewsFinding a way to get the multiplayer studios to get Linux support for their competitive games like Valve does could crack a wedge in the market for mainstream users to get in, particularly in those who don't want to pay the Windows tax (not everyone is willing to experiment or go unlicensed).
I can't prove it, but the Steam Deck has probably torn down a lot of barriers for mainstream use among the crowd that care about the game more than the OS. Getting some of the other games (League, Vanguard, Warzone, BF6, etc.) or whatever is popular in those segments onboard might be the critical mass that justifies fixing all the rough edges that get fixed when a big pile of users are represented.
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Yeah, anti-cheat support is probably the biggest barrier right now. The Steam Deck already showed that many gamers do not really care about the OS as long as their favorite games work smoothly.
Anecdotally, it took less time for me to install Devuan (not even one of the “easier” distros) and steam and start downloading games on a new machine than it took me to figure out how to decrapify vanilla win 11 after first boot.
If you want statistics, Linux’s gaming market share is 2x that of MacOS.
The barriers to gaming on Linux have never been lower. They’re certainly much lower than the barriers to running windows games on windows were back in the Win 95 - XP SP2 days (when I jumped ship).