Valve Apparently Working on Compatibility Tools Allowing Windows Games to be Played on Linux

[librin.so.1]

Educated guess: I suppose Valve is adding running-game-through-Wine integration into the Steam client, which was a highly-requested feature since day 1 of Steam-for-Linux release (mostly so Linux users would not need to run two steam clients simultaneously – the native one and the windows client under Wine, to launch windows games through Wine).
There were unofficial efforts to do something similar by users themselves, which mostly boiled down to letting the game in question to "talk" to the native steam client for authentication and whatnot.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

The idea is not that they're trying to get hold of the market of gamers already using linux.

The idea is that if Microsoft dicks them over by, for example, dragging game developers into the windows store, then Steam can simply continue to operate on Linux - which may well cause a shift in OS usage if people want to migrate. They can't do that if Linux remains a garbage gaming platform.

Gaming is one of the biggest reasons I never went over to Linux.

 

[Ravenas]

I am very supportive of this. I use Windows on my desktop due to the lack of support for other platforms in the gaming community. Steam has championed this movement for cross platform support, however, the idea of running Windows games on Linux isn't new. IE Wine... No different. Wine has been semi successful at doing exactly what Steam is attempting to do. The only difference is Valve has lots of finances to backup the development.

 

[jabbadap]

Now it's official. Valve has made co-operation with Codeweavers to make Protonf, which is modified wine. Proton makes possible to install and play supported windows games on native linux steam client.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1696055855739350561

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

awesome.