Future of Linux in Gaming
Inspired by readings of Steam Deck and Linux Games: The Perfect Gaming Combo?
Aubrey Osetsky

For decades Windows has been the primary source of distribution of PC gaming. According to the steam hardware survey of December 2025, 94.23% of all steam users are on windows with only 3.58% on Linux. Many think it could be due to the perceived complexity that comes with introducing yourself to linux, but in a general every day driver case Linux can be used with a plethora of desktop environments allowing it to behave just like windows. 

Previously there have been many compatibility issues with gaming and Linux but in 2018 valve released a compatibility layer for steam called Proton that allowed mostly all singleplayer games to be played on Linux. There were previous compatibility layers, such as Wine (1993), that are still going to this day but have their own setup process whereas Proton is pretty much just click and play through steam creating a very easy way of playing singleplayer games. 

The main issue with gaming on linux comes with kernel level anticheats. Many very popular competitive PvP games such as League of Legends, Valorant, and Escape From Tarkov utilize this form of anticheat due to massive cheating problems. Kernel level anticheat is given the same permission to the machine as the kernel itself, so it has communication with everything within the PC as well as connected to. Linux is able to give this permission but many major game companies see that it is much easier to bypass the “checks” done by the anticheat so they do not enable the ability to use them on Linux leading to multiplayer functions not working. 

My hopes are that with the release of the steam deck and the re-release of the steam machines, both utilizing SteamOS which is a fork of Debian, that game companies may start seeing Linux as less of a threat and more of an opportunity. Hopefully with the release of these two pieces of hardware we see a large jump in steam users on Linux within the next few years, and hopefully with that we see some restrictions lifted from the use of linux in kernel level anticheats.