Running windows steam games on linux

Can I play Windows games using WINE and/or through Steam?

When I download Wine to play Windows games, will I also be able to play those Windows games through Steam?

7 Answers 7

From my own experience I can confirm that Steam for Windows works great with recent versions of Wine.

By this you can run many naitve Windows games available through Steam using Wine or Play On Linux. Issues and games which won’t run, or tweaks needed are best being queried from the Wine Application Database. It may also be worth to have a look at the Steam support forums for issues.

As a rule of thumb: if a game is listed as Platinum you will be able to play it without issues. A game rated as Gold will be playble just fine but may need some tweaks. All other ratings indiciate more or less severe issues.

Performance of games played through Wine varies considerably but many games will just perform fine with only a minor perfomance loss as compared to native Windows. This will also include 3D graphics which is supported through DriectX drivers in Wine.

Sadly however there is no guarantee that any single game you bought will actually run on your specific system. In case a Linux version is available through Steam you will probably better install this version.

It is also possible to connect your Steam account to both, native Steam for Ubuntu, and Steam for Windows run through Wine.

You won’t be able to play Windows games using native Steam for Linux, but you can install Steam for Windows on Wine (not sure if it’ll work, but you can try).

There is some complexity but generally it is impossible to answer this question. Some games, yes, others, no. There are, however, lots of alternative ways to run Steam games on Linux.

A lot of games are now built for Linux, and you can view these in the Steam store by hovering over «Games» and selecting SteamOS + Linux — these games are all available as native Linux binaries. This probably won’t be enough for most gamers, but it is at least something.

There is also a feature in Steam known as Home Streaming. This allows you to stream games from a Windows PC to your Linux PC without needing to have the game installed on the Linux PC. It’s a bit flaky and doesn’t always perform perfectly, but depending on the nature of the games you’re playing it may well handle it just fine. You’ll want to make sure both machines are on the same network and use the best connections available (that is to say if ethernet is available, use it).

From personal experience, I’m running Elite: Dangerous on an old laptop with an i5 and onboard 4000 series graphics, 4GB RAM and a fairly slow 5400RPM single platter hard drive, the game is of the same quality as it is on my xbox one.

What is the advantage to Steam Home Streaming? Is it to have a desktop computer do all the work and a more mobile one (like a laptop / android) do the interaction?

Kinda. The main feature I like is that games like GTAV, which consumes huge HDD space (over 100GB I believe), you only need to install on one computer and can then play «anywhere». The disadvantages often outweigh this though, when you consider that the quality comes down from top-tier PC level to console level. You can’t expect amazing performance, but it’s definitely worth trying for games where response times are not as critical, or where some screen tearing is acceptable.

Steam for Windows under Wine works wonderfully. It lets me play Unturned and Terraria (the two main games I cannot play on linux) without issues (so far). Moreover, if the game you are looking at is a source engine game, such as Team Fortress 2 (which is, by the way, also available on Steam for Linux natively,) then you may run into some text rendering issues caused by a lack of native windows fonts. However, games that don’t use said fonts (such as Times New Roman, Arial, Tahoma, Comic Sans MS, etc.) should work phenomenally.

However, as pointed out by a few people, if you are playing games which are on their own very resource taxing, it would be best to dual boot with Windows.

Let’s try to be objective on Stack Overflow. You may not like Windows, but it is a proper noun and thus should be capitalized.

You should really check the wine homepage. It will tell you how most games and other software work on various distributions using wine. Wine is able to make many pieces of Windows software work, sometimes with some workarounds. If you want an easier way to get Windows software working, check out Planonlinux. POL is a front for Wine, it does a lot of the configuration behind the scenes for you. If you want to pay for software you can also check out Crossover. It’s made by the developers of Wine but it’s more polished and has actual customer support.

Software that makes extensive use of accelerated 3D graphics, such as most mainstream Windows games, will not run well on Wine.

They may not run at all, or run with significantly degraded performance. Wine is good at running office or productivity applications but its limitations start becoming significant when pushing it with 3D gaming. You’re unlikely to get a good experience with it.

On top of this, I have no idea how well Steam for Windows would run in Wine on Linux. You wouldn’t be able to run Windows-only games with Steam for Linux, as has been pointed out.

If you are a heavy gamer and have a legal copy of Windows, dual-booting is the best solution for running heavy 3D games.

Depends on the software. We run some DirectX dependent 3D games with only very little perfomance loss through Steam with Wine.

I agree with the first answer — Steam does work great with Linux, but some fonts and other graphical issues may crop up occasionally. By that I mean that the fonts on the «Updating» window appear more blocky and without anti-aliasing than the counterpart on Windows. Some games may not work correctly due to unimplemented functions in Wine — if you have a problem, first open the log, and find the DLL, and then go into winecfg and make it try to load the native libraries first. (There are online tutorials for doing this.)

Sometimes, other programs might require Microsoft .NET or other programs like Microsoft SilverLight or some other things which there are only Microsoft implementations of. In that case, there is little you can do if you only have Wine, but PlayOnLinux attempts to solve some of those problems by installing some of the programs you need such as Mono or Microsoft Fonts. It still doesn’t work correctly sometimes.

There are some minor performance losses compared to Windows, and either way, I recommend that you install the proprietary nVidia or AMD/ATI graphics drivers. The FOSS versions don’t have as much functionality compared to the closed-source version.

On another note, however, and yes, I know somebody else already posted this, there is a proprietary version of Wine called CrossOver, and it costs about $40USD for the cheapest option, and up to $60USD for the option with 12 months of online support and 1 month of phone support.

As my final point, I would like to make it clear that yes, I use Linux Mint 17.1 as my primary OS, but I still have Windows 7 installed so that I can use it if I have to, for running programs like the latest version of Office or things like Visual Studio. Windows is so cheap nowadays that you could probably pick up a version of Windows 8.1 for less than $100, so you can probably do that if absolutely necessary.

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How to Play Windows-only Games on Linux with Steam Play

Game distribution platform Steam has implemented a fork of WINE; it’s called – “Steam Play”. With Steam Play, Linux users can play games available on Windows only. A compatibility tool «Proton» is used for Steam Play to make Windows games work on Linux.

Play Windows-only games in Linux with Steam Play

You need to install Steam first. Steam is available for all major Linux distributions. I have written in detail about installing Steam on Ubuntu, and you may refer to that article if you don’t have Steam installed yet. Once you have Steam installed and you have logged into your Steam account, it’s time to see how to enable Windows games in the Steam Linux client. Suggested Read 📖

Step 1: Go to Account Settings

Run Steam client. On the top left, click on Steam and then on Settings.

Step 2: Enable Steam Play

Now, you’ll see an option Steam Play in the left side panel. Click on it and check the boxes:

• Enable Steam Play for supported titles (This is usually checked by default to let you run supported Windows games seamlessly)
• Enable Steam Play for all titles (With this option, you can try/experiment other games that may not be known to work)

You can also opt to change the version of the compatibility layer (Proton) if you need it. Once you are done selecting the options, hit “OK” and proceed to restart steam in order for the changes to take effect.

To get the latest compatible support, you may want to use «Proton Experimental«. If you want to use a Proton version that is still in the testing phase, Proton Next should be the pick.

In either case, if the game supports a specific version as per your research, you can enable any of the available older versions as well.

For example, I have Age of Empires in my Steam library, which is not available on Linux typically. But after I enabled Steam Play for all Windows titles, it now gives me the option for installing Age of Empires on Linux.

Things to know about Steam Play feature

There are a few things you should know and keep in mind about using Windows-only games on Linux with Steam Play:

• A large number of Window-only games work on Linux using this feature. Some are AAA (triple A) titles, and some are indie games.
• You should not expect for all games to work seamlessly. Some might crash, and some might need a little troubleshooting to make things work with your hardware.
• You can always refer to ProtonDB or Steam Deck verified list to find games that you should try first.
• If you have games downloaded on Windows via Steam, you can save some download data by sharing Steam game files between Linux and Windows.

In addition, you should refer to our Linux gaming guide for more information.

How Do You Identify Games That Work On Steam Play?

I’m sure that you don’t have a lot of free time to download games one by one and test them with Steam Play.

As mentioned earlier, you can visit ProtonDB to check reports/stats contributed by gamers to see what games work and what do not.

Any game that has a rating of silver and above can be tried. However, it would make more sense to try Platinum/Gold-rated games first. The website also lists the games that are Steam Deck verified, which is also an excellent way to know what works on Linux.

You can use that as a reference to decide whether you should download/purchase a particular game.

I hope this tutorial helped you in running Windows-only games on Linux. Which game(s) are you looking forward to playing on Linux?

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Running Windows Steam on Linux (Using Wine)

I just installed Ubuntu for the first time and am trying to figure a way to play Windows games on Linux. I’ve read you need to use Wine, and I’m just wondering how exactly I go about doing this correctly. I’ve read a lot of conflicting information.

3 Answers 3

I would recommend PlayOnLinux as a front end for Wine.

To install PlayOnLinux run the following commands from a terminal window:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install playonlinux 

Note, PlayOnLinux installs Wine if it is not installed.

After it is installed and you run it for the first time, you will see an application that looks like this:

Click on the Install button. In the search box, type in Steam. Select Steam. Then click Install in the lower right. PlayOnLinux should download the needed files to install Steam. Note: Unfortunately, not every application is downloaded like this. Some applications will have to be downloaded manually, or you need the installation media.

PlayOnLinux should configure Wine for the application if it is found in the install menu like Steam is. Sometimes you might need to search https://www.winehq.com for tweaks to games to make them work correctly.

When it is completed, all you should have to do is to click on Steam in the box, then click Run above, or you can double-click on Steam to launch it.

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