this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
631 points (99.4% liked)
Linux Gaming
27971 readers
719 users here now
Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
This page can be subscribed to via RSS.
Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.
That includes posts generated by LLMs. It doesn’t matter if you “don’t have the time” or “would’ve written the same anyway”, or if “everyone’s doing it geez get with the times”.
For now it’ll also include “AI”-assisted projects that haven't had at least two months of (public, verifiable) dev time behind them.
Resources
Help:
- ProtonDB
- Are We Anticheat Yet?
- r/linux_gaming FAQ
- Fork of an earlier version of the above
- PCGamingWiki
- LibreGameWiki
Launchers/Game Library Managers:
General:
Discord:
IRC:
Matrix:
Telegram:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
One of the reasons Steam held out for so long was that a lot of the games they host are 32-bit only. Games are built by a company, many of which have gone belly-up, so rebuilding the game from scratch is impossible. Making Steam 32 bit even though it could be 64 bit is a really effective way to guarantee a large chunk of their legacy products will still run. In a lot of ways, because of the nature of the gaming industry, Steam has it worse than most package managers/app stores.
I don't think it works like that. 64 bit Steam can manage 32 bit games just like a 64 bit OS can run 32 bit games.
I'm not sure as that's about Steam the client though not on Proton thus Wine, which I bet will keep on supporting 32bit apps.
Remember that the portion of Steam users that use Proton regularly is less than 10%, if you include Deck users. That number is rising and is probably a major factor in the decision to switch, but it's still a minority.
It still doesn't matter for the Steam client. All it does is point to games and tell them to boot. The client itself doesn't act as a compatibility layer so the 32-bit vs 64-bit game argument isn't relevant