Amazon recently announced that it is hiring developers with experience in games on Linux, that is, more precisely in initiatives such as Valve's DXVK and Proton, as well as with the open source graphics drivers present in the Mesa library, Vulkan graphics API and other areas involving Linux game development. As a result, the company is looking to hire engineers to work on its Luna game streaming service.
For those who are not very familiar with DXVK, roughly, it is a library that allows you to run games developed with DirectX on Vulkan, allowing a good performance even if the game does not have a native version for Linux. Currently, Valve uses DXVK in conjunction with the Proton compatibility layer.
The most exciting thing about this is that Amazon's job postings also provide interesting details of the work that will be performed by new hires. The company basically makes clear what its intentions are, which is to help further improve the Linux platform for games, of course, for its commercial purposes, but it's not exciting to see another large company interested in investing efforts to further improve the gaming experience on Linux.
"This role involves working with Proton - a compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux using Wine. Luna is committed to working with the open source community around Proton. This role will compromise code for open source projects like Proton and Wine, looking for games that are running smoothly and with high performance", says Amazon in its job offer.
It's also great to know that apparently Amazon will be focusing efforts on contributions directly to Wine/Proton rather than just a private repository of the company itself. In turn, these upstream improvements will reach mainstream Linux gamers who don't use Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service and benefit the entire Linux gaming ecosystem.
Although the Luna game streaming service originally uses Windows to run the games, some believe that this new Amazon effort could indicate a migration from servers to Linux, as it doesn't make much sense for the company to release a Luna app to Linux that makes use of Wine/Proton, since the games won't run in people's homes, but in the cloud. However, for now, there is no official confirmation from Amazon.
Amazon Luna is currently available in early access in the US only, costing $5.99 USD per month to access titles such as GRID and Metro Exodus. Amazon also offers a Luna "Family Channel", which costs $2.99 USD a month with several games for kids.
