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.
(HTM) 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.
(HTM) 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.
(HTM) 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.
(HTM) 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.
(HTM) 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.
(HTM) 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...).
(HTM) 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).
(HTM) List of game engine recreation (Wikipedia EN)