In March Linux Proton Users Will No Longer Be Able to Play The Game

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Originally Posted by BristolRuss

I am not anti Linux or pro Windows. I sympathize with the people that this will affect. But at the end of the day it is SE's game, and if they want to make changes that doesn't violate the ToS then that is their prerogative. They don't support Linux as a platform and so Linux users can't complain too loudly if they are suddenly cut off. That is a risk you were taking by playing on an unsupported system.

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For someone without a bias, you're sure coming up with a lot of excuses to dismiss the concerns of Linux users.

My own personal view is that Linux runs better on my system than Windows, even as I'm running on a Ryzen 2600, so I would rather avoid the bloatware that is Windows for the extra performance Linux offers me. Doubly so for being poor and wanting to avoid having to shell out money wherever I can.

I understand most don't have the capability to use Linux, so this is purely a matter of preference for me. But if the shoe were on the other foot, I certainly wouldn't say that Windows users should walk on eggshells when complaining about a game that isn't supported on their platform but generally works well on it.

Anyway, the point of all this is that SE could make one simple change and this wouldn't just be a non-issue for Linux users, but also actually increase stability and performance of the launcher in Windows as well. Eliminating MSHTML and using the CEF that's already shipped with all versions of the launcher anyway would fix a lot of the issues people were having even in Windows while still ensuring Steam Deck compatibility and not cutting off an entire section of the playerbase. It's a poor design decision at the very least, and the problems it causes -- both Windows and Linux alike -- are wholly unnecessary since the solution is already there and would take minimal effort on their end to implement.

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Originally Posted by HereInPlainSight

No one is realistically asking for devs to target Linux as a whole. People are asking them not to hose Proton compatibility, which is a much more stable -- and more importantly, static -- target.



I love how you effectively just said 'stop trying to play games on the Steam Deck,' which is, by design, made to play games on Linux, made by the largest distribution platform of PC games around. Nice. Makes you sound like you're really here with a good faith argument.

In other news -- the game itself works great in Linux. Solid performance. The new launcher's a cludge of outdated technology and the game already packs CEF into every install, which lets Linux run the old launcher just fine. (I'm pretty sure the default installation via Steam still activates the old launcher for compatibility, even.) Just allow Steam users to opt out of this change and there's no problem -- not for Linux users or for Windows users who don't want to have to launch through Steam, for any one of a number of reasons people have been outlining in the other thread. Square will have done its due diligence in trying to honor contracts with Valve while still allowing users to have the final say in whether or not they want this particular brand of security.

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lol steamdeck will bomb like every other hardware attempt Valve makes. Linux is not and never will be a gaming OS despite valves attempts to make it so. It accounts for 1% of steams population yet more than half the support tickets for developers that support linux are from linux users because of how unintuitive and how much jank you have to do to get a game to run on linux. Linux is and always will be a dev tool for IT and nothing else. It will never be good for gaming and it will never be good as a daily driver for your every day user.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

lol steamdeck will bomb like every other hardware attempt Valve makes. Linux is not and never will be a gaming OS despite valves attempts to make it so. It accounts for 1% of steams population yet more than half the support tickets for developers that support linux are from linux users because of how unintuitive and how much jank you have to do to get a game to run on linux. Linux is and always will be a dev tool for IT and nothing else. It will never be good for gaming and it will never be good as a daily driver for your every day user.

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Yeah, the guy you're trying to reference walked back what he said: https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/10...238800384?s=19 . Although, even then, if you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt despite clearly being an unreliable narrator by his own admission, that was in the age of OpenGL, before the age of DXVK and Vulkan in general.

So your data's wrong, outdated, and when you get right down to it, unsupported. Here's another data point: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/com...ver_38_of_bug/

But, for summary's sake, the dev said that Linux was less than 6% of his sales, but almost 40% of his bug reports. Roughly 400 bug reports, all from Linux, almost two bug reports for every user he had on Linux. Geez, that's terrible -- unless... only three of those bugs were actually Linux-specific. Everything else was a cross-platform issue that Linux users simply reported better data about that allowed the dev to fix the problem. Somehow, the argument of 'since Windows users don't report issues, Windows players have very few bugs, if any' sounds very familiar. Wrong, but familiar.

Valve and hardware, I guess it's a work in progress. The Steam Deck had a confirmed 110k units preordered in just the first 90 minutes it was on sale, so I guess that's an indicator of the kind of bomb it's going to be, too.

In case any of you folks are interested, the Proton thread on this issue is pretty lively.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Pro...ent-1040725071

If any of you know of some MSHTML magic that can get this stuff working feel free to contribute.
I know enough about wine profiles to get most things working but this seems to be a bit above my paygrade.

We might get lucky and Gloriouseggroll gets a bug up his butt about it, but from what I saw he still had troubles getting the new launcher working so just defaulted the ini to run the old in his scripts.

Launcher requires mshtml. In a way it's kind of hilarious SE just won't get off of it, it's even used on the Mac version. It almost feels like they were working on going to Chromium at one point, but maybe when Microsoft decided to keep going with minimal mshtml support for security patches and like it got pushed aside.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Good. Stop trying to play games on Linux.

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In a way it's hilarious to say that. macOS is based on Unix, even though it comes from the BSD-tree side of things and not Linux. The official launcher on Mac is a Wine-wrapper.

Fixing this problem by replacing those obsolete and end-of-life 1997 MSHTML DLLs with 2020 era CEF DLLs to render the web page information will help Windows users too. Even the ones with a 'my-car-brand-is-better-than-your-car-brand' level of dislike to other operating systems.

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Originally Posted by FaeAlicia

Anyway, the point of all this is that SE could make one simple change and this wouldn't just be a non-issue for Linux users,

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The current launcher in Windows works fine. There are no 'performance' issues for the launcher ... it launches the game. Or are you implying that the launcher sticks around after the game is started?

"Simple fix" for something that is not really broken on the platform for which it is designed, but can't be run by users of a particular non-Windows PC/game console? I see the problem. You're basically asking a game company to officially support their game on Steam Deck/Linux.

Say that. Show how many Linux-platform gamers would purchase a license to run the game on Steam Deck, show SE that it makes financial sense for them to offer support for Yet Another Platform. Make that case.

Better yet: ask Steam to fix the issue on their platform that causes the problem.

Never had a single issue with the launcher myself.

My opinion on this is pretty simple. Linux is a very niche market, you see the users get upset with a lot of companies because they don’t support it, or cease supporting it. But when your target audience is everything other than Linux, why would you pour time and money into it? Why would you use it in the first place knowing full well most companies back away from it?

Yes, I’m sure it’s a great system, but at the end of the day best systems are the ones you can actually use without the constant threat of becoming unsupported.

As a gamer, I’d rather square spends its money on the game, not catering to a tiny, but vocal, group who have always known the risks.

Jeez, why do people care so much? The FFXIV launcher is objectively outdated. Dropping support for something while sticking to those gunky roots is a bad decision. It's not like those pesky Linux users are "begging" for a version that suits their exact configs. The launcher needs to change. It needs to neaten out. It won't mean others lose out on dungeons, Alliance Raids or the next casual glamour set over it. This person puts it best.

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

The Steam Deck is ahead of it’s time and Square Enix is 20 years behind, so of course it’s not going to work.

Valve’s platform for the Deck relies on games running modern code and can thus be run through a compatibility layer (Proton) with as few unique obstacles as possible. So it’s not about Linux and Deck as it is about having a game that isn’t duct-taped together with ActiveX and a horrid account management system. Any game that runs a secure, modern, and non-intrusive (no DRM) code base will work on Proton and thus Linux, the Deck, macOS via CrossOver, and so forth. Square Enix needs to stop lagging so far behind other game companies when it comes to basic bread-and-butter issues like how they code their games.

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Originally Posted by PenguinPropaganda

From the latest lodestone notes:



This will lock out anyone using Linux or who were planning on using the Steamdeck to play the game.

The new launcher does not work with proton.
The old launcher works fine and allows Linux users to log in and then they can get the game running fine.

Can this be changed or do we need to downgrade this game on the Proton ranking page?

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What's with those weird measures. Forget Linux. I'm now worried because I do have a steam account but I also have _every_ license of the game. Does that mean I'll be unable to log in from my PS4 because I also happen to have a Windows Steam PC account? Will they refund me if that's the case? Why is the game so good while licensing and account management systems are so convoluted to the point it is borderline hostile?

About the launcher being good or not: having a launcher is a problem in the first place. Please implement the login process in game or just use single sign on from PSN or Steam.