Title: Playing video games on Linux | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 19 December 2021 | |
Tags: linux gaming | |
Description: This article explains to linux gamers where to find games | |
and what to expect from the various platforms, and how to manage a game | |
library on Linux | |
# Introduction | |
While I mostly make posts about playing on OpenBSD, I also do play | |
video games on Linux. There is a lot more choice, but it comes with | |
the price that the choice comes from various sources with pros and | |
cons. | |
# Commercial stores | |
There are a few websites where you can get games: | |
## itch.io | |
Itch.io is dedicated to indie games, you can find many games running on | |
Linux, most games there are free. Most games could be considered | |
"amateurish" but it's a nice pool from which some gems get out like | |
Celeste, Among Us or Noita. | |
itch.io website | |
## Steam | |
It is certainly the biggest commercial platform, it requires the steam | |
desktop Client and an account to be useful. You can find many | |
free-to-play video games, (including some open source games like | |
OpenTTD or Wesnoth who are now available on Steam for free) but also | |
paid games. Steam is working hard on their tool to make Windows games | |
running on Linux (based on Wine + many improvements on the graphic | |
stack). The library manager allows Linux games filtering if you want | |
to search native games. Steam is really a big DRM platform, but it | |
also works well. | |
Steam website | |
## GOG | |
GOG is a webstore selling video games (many old games from people's | |
childhood but not only), they only require you to have an account. | |
When you buy a game in their store, you have to download the installer, | |
so you can keep/save it, without any DRM beyond the account | |
registration on their website to buy games. | |
GOG website | |
## Your packager manager / flatpak | |
There are many open source video games around, they may be available in | |
your package manager, allowing a painless installation and maintenance. | |
Flatpak package manager also provides video games, some are recent and | |
complex games that are not found in many package managers because of | |
the huge work required. | |
flathub flatpak repository, games page | |
## Developer's website | |
Sometimes, when you want to buy a game, you can buy it directly on the | |
developer's website, it usually comes without any DRM and doesn't rely | |
on a third party vendor. I know I did it for Rimworld, but some other | |
developers offer this "service", it's quite rare though. | |
## Epic game store | |
They do not care about Linux. | |
# Streaming services | |
It's now possible to play remotely through "cloud computing", using a | |
company's computer with a good graphic card. There are solutions like | |
Nvidia with Geforce Now or Stadia from Google, both should work in a | |
web browser like Chromium. | |
They require a very decent Internet access with at least 15 MB/s of | |
download speed for a 1080p stream but will work almost anywhere. | |
# How to manage games | |
Let me describe a few programs that can be used to manage games | |
libraries. | |
## Steam | |
As said earlier, Steam has its own mandatory desktop client to | |
buy/install/manage games. | |
## Lutris | |
Lutris is an ambitious open source project, it aims to be a game | |
library manager allowing to mix any kind of game: emulation / Steam / | |
GOG / Itch.io / Epic game Store (through Wine) / Native linux games | |
etc... | |
Its website is a place where people can send recipes for installing | |
some games that could be complicated, allowing to automate and | |
distribute in the community ways to install some games. But it makes | |
very easy to install games from GOG. There is a recent feature to | |
handle the Epic game store, but it's currently not really enjoyable and | |
the launcher itself running through wine draw for CPU like madness. | |
It has nice features such as activating a HUD for displaying FPS, | |
automatically run "gamemode" (disabling screen effects, doing some | |
optimization), easy offloading rendering to graphic card, set locale or | |
switch to qwerty per game etc... | |
It's really a nice project that I follow closely, it's very useful as a | |
Linux gamer. | |
lutris project website | |
## Minigalaxy | |
Minigalaxy is a GUI to manage GOG games, installing them locally with | |
one click, keeping them updated or installing DLC with one click too. | |
It's really simplistic compared to Lutris, but it's made as a simple | |
client to manage GOG games which is perfectly fine. | |
Minigalaxy can update games while Lutris can't, both can be used on the | |
same installed video games. I find these two are complementary. | |
Minigalaxy project website | |
## play.it | |
This tool is a set of script to help you install native Linux video | |
games in your system, depending on their running method (open source | |
engine, installer, emulator etc...). | |
play.it official website | |
# Conclusion | |
It has never been so easy to play video games on Linux. Of course, you | |
have to decide if you want to run closed sources programs or not. Even | |
if some games are closed sources, some fans may have developed a | |
compatible open source engine from scratch to play it again natively | |
given you have access to the "assets" (sets of files required for the | |
game which are not part of the engine, like textures, sounds, | |
databases). | |
List of game engine recreation (Wikipedia EN) |