Hacker News Reader

Comment by dfgdghdf | Hacker News Reader

My problem with Proton is that they are not strict enough with their ratings. I see a game has "platinum" or "gold" support and think "great, this will work well!" but then I discover it crashes after alt-tab and multiplayer doesn't work at all, which I consider critical bugs.

To me, the levels should be:

* Paltinum - the game works as well as it does on officially supported platforms

* Gold - the game works almost as well as on supported platforms but with minor niggles that don't significantly affect the experience

* Bronze - the game works in some form, but major things might be broken. It would not ship in this state on official platforms.

However, the project is a great start and I look forward to what they do next!

View on HN

To be fair those grades come from ProtonDB[1] which is not affiliated with Valve or Proton. Though I agree that having a clear rating system as to what to expect in Steam would be great.

[1] https://www.protondb.com

I think it's worth differentiating between 'Proton' the compatibility layer technology and 'Proton DB' [0] the review platform and ratings agency.

All the problems listed above are purely ProtonDB issues. It would be worth reaching out to the ProtonDB admin - he's very receptive to feedback.

[0] https://protondb.com

Good point; I did not know this.

However, as a regular user, I assumed ProtonDB was also Valve, and that will be the main contact point for many.

>This site has no affiliation with Valve Software. All game images and logos are property of their respective owners.

Nothing about the site to me suggests that it is official.

90%+ of people are not going to read that

What about seeing the steam third party login integration? What about seeing that they have a Discord? What about seeing they have a Patreon?

I agree, but the ratings are self-selected by the reviewers so it's hard to enforce. The more the reviewer is comfortable in the linux/steam/proton ecosystem, the more inflated the ratings get. I'm guilty of this myself, rating a game platinum because it runs great perfect except for multiplayer (which I don't want) and only if you give it this esoteric launch command (which I had to do once and promptly forgot about). If I'm lucky I remember to add those caveats and what the esoteric launch command was. I'm usually just so happy that I can run the game now after decades of a terrible linux gaming experience that I can't help but over-inflate the ratings.

There is also a huge range of hardware/software. Different kernels, drivers, AMD vs Nvidia, Wayland vs XOrg. A lot more Linux users are moving to AMD GPU, so when I see platinum, I assume at least great support on AMD.

That's pretty much exactly the definitions of ProtonDB (a community site btw). The problem is that users don't seem to get that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com