Wine Steam won't download the one game I've played before on Linux, gives out invalid platform error

Questions about Wine on Linux
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nucleartuna
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Wine Steam won't download the one game I've played before on Linux, gives out invalid platform error

Post by nucleartuna »

Steam refuses to download the one game I've used it to play before, claiming it's a Windows exclusive. All other games that are also Windows exclusives install just fine. System is Ubuntu 20.04.
SetantaLP
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Re: Wine Steam won't download the one game I've played before on Linux, gives out invalid platform error

Post by SetantaLP »

You mean the Windows Steam client running in Wine or the native Linux Steam client? In case of the latter I would check if Proton is enabled for the game, because Steam will not download Windows exclusive games unless one of the following applies:
  1. the game is officially supported to run via proton and your global steam settings are set to enable Proton for supported games
  2. your global steam settings are set force Proton for all games not natively available on linux, even unsupported ones
  3. you force Proton in the steam settings of the game
nucleartuna
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Re: Wine Steam won't download the one game I've played before on Linux, gives out invalid platform error

Post by nucleartuna »

SetantaLP wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:18 am You mean the Windows Steam client running in Wine or the native Linux Steam client? In case of the latter I would check if Proton is enabled for the game, because Steam will not download Windows exclusive games unless one of the following applies:
  1. the game is officially supported to run via proton and your global steam settings are set to enable Proton for supported games
  2. your global steam settings are set force Proton for all games not natively available on linux, even unsupported ones
  3. you force Proton in the steam settings of the game
It's Windows Steam client.
SetantaLP
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Re: Wine Steam won't download the one game I've played before on Linux, gives out invalid platform error

Post by SetantaLP »

Okay, that's weird because the windows client should clearly be able to install the windows version of a game unless wine returns the host OS (in this case Linux), when the steam client checks the OS. Or when the windows version in wine is set to something that is too old or too new for the game you want to run.
In general I would recommend using the native linux steam client and run windows games through proton, because
  1. Some games are officially supported by Valve to run through proton and by that the steam client will automatically handle everything needed to run the game (setting the correct windows version, installing additional dlls, tweaking wine settings, ...)
  2. the steam client makes sure that every game gets its own wine prefix to prevent trouble when one game doesn't like the settings an other game needs (which is why you should avoid running multiple programs in the same prefix anyway).
  3. proton is able to run more games out of the box than wine, because it includes some additional patches and if one proton version doesn't work, you can easily switch to a different one for this specific game, without affecting other programs that also use wine/proton.
And besides that the windows steam client is known to have some problems running on wine.
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