Valve recently released the long-awaited new major update to the Proton compatibility layer, the tool responsible for allowing Windows games to run on Linux through the Steam Platy. This is version 8.0, which comes with support for more games, as well as more fixes to improve compatibility with games already supported in previous versions.
Games now tested and considered playable with Proton 8.0-1 are: Forspoken, Samurai Maiden, Dead Space (2023), Creativerse, Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, Atelier Meruru, Atelier Lydie & Suelle The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings, Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book DX, Blue Reflection, Atelier Rorona The Alchemist of Arland DX, Disney Dreamlight Valley, ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS XIV, ToGather:Island, WARRIORS OROCHI 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition, Exceed - Gun Bullet Children, Gungrave G.O.R.E. and Chex Quest HD.
Bug fixes and improvements
In addition to the new games now supported, there is also a fix for the 2K Games launcher, benefiting, for example, titles from the Borderlands and Bioshock franchise, improves the suspend/resume of Tiny Tina's Wonderland on Steam Deck, improves support for multitouch and fixes some rendering issues with Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.
There's also a fix for the Alt+Tab keyboard shortcut in GNOME 43, a fix for a Football Manager 2023 crash, improvements to ray tracing support in Crysis Remastered, and dozens of other fixes for a wide variety of games. Support for NVIDIA NVAPI is now enabled for more games as well.
Better compatibility with Windows games
Based on the newest Wine 8.0, Proton 8.0 also brings versions latest versions of DXVK and VKD3D-Proton, solutions that allow running games developed with DirectX 9/10/11/12 over Vulkan on Linux, and also brings updated versions of Wine-Mono and DXVK-NVAPI. These are changes that have certainly helped with compatibility with Windows games, as well as helping with performance.
For more technical details on Proton 8.0, be sure to check out the release notes on GitHub.
How to use Proton 8.0
To start using Proton 8.0, in the Steam client, go to the top menu Steam and then Settings. In the new window that opens, access the Steam Play session and in the option "Play other titles with" select Proton 8.0. This will activate the new version of the tool for all available Windows games in your library.
However, to activate for specific games only, access your Steam library, right-click on the game title and select Properties. In the new window that opens, access the Compatibility section, check the option "Force use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool", if it is unchecked, and choose Proton 8.0 as the desired compatibility tool.
