Proton 5.13: A Massive Update

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We don’t typically cover every little details of Proton versions released out there, but Valve has just released 5.13 and it’s breaking ground in several ways to warrant some coverage.

You can find all details in the release post on Github, but to make it short, it enables the following games to run:

  • Red Dead Redemption 2
  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • DEATH STRANDING
  • Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes
  • Final Fantasy XV
  • Sea of Thieves
  • Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017)
  • Call of Duty: WWII
  • Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered
  • Asssassin’s Creed: Rogue
  • Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag
  • South Park: The Fractured But Whole
  • DiRT Rally 2
  • Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
  • Age of Empires III
  • Dragon Quest Builders 2

and more…

Here is one video of Infinite Warfare running on this new Proton version:

Having key AAA titles work directly via the vanilla Proton is a nice bonus for anyone not interested in tinkering with Proton-GE.

More importantly, this Proton version provides some early support for video in games. As you probably know, numerous games in Proton typically work fine, gameplay wise, but cannot play videos as expected on Windows. This is often due to different codecs used under the hood, not supported by WINE on Linux:

Beginnings of real support for all types of video playback. Games that use older video libraries should start working with this build. We are working on improving support for newer video libraries.

Proton 5.13 introduces more improvements in hardware support, audio support and network code:

Improved support for systems with multiple monitors.

Improvements to audio playback in Halo 3, Beyond: Two Souls and Tomb Raider 2.

Improvements to rFactor 2 multiplayer and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer.

This new Proton version also seems to be built against the latest containerization or the Steam Linux runtime. We are talking about containers at the application (=game) level, for better isolation and more portability across distributions. How this is currently used in Steam is not clear to me at this stage.

Finally, this is the first new Proton version in months, 5.0.9 being out in June 2020. I know some folks were wondering why it took so long for Valve to release a new build… well, I guess we now know why: it was a big update in the making.

If you try any of the games mentioned above, let us know how they run for you!