Steam for Linux

Steam for Linux

feakuru 24 Dec, 2023 @ 11:38am
Non-Steam game installed using Proton deletes itself randomly
I'm not sure why or when this happens, but it happened to me 5 times already. What I am doing:

1. Download Genshin Impact installer (it doesn't look like it matters which non-Steam game we are using, but yeah in my case it's Genshin)
2. Run it using Steam ("add non-Steam game" -> "run") and Proton Experimental
3. Download (~100 GB!), install and play the game
4. ??? (something happens, maybe a few days pass, but I'be had this happen exactly after install)
5. The name of the game is still in the "Library" section of Steam, but the folder under `compatdata` which used to contain the `c_drive` upon which Genshin was installed, is deleted.

Now, I understand that this is something of an unorthodox way to use Steam, but this is the only way I could run Genshin on Linux without bugs, and the behaviour exhibited by Proton seems to be in conflict with the UI of the library, so it doesn't feel like a "expected issue" to me. Am I missing something? Should I contact developers in a more bug-report-y way?
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lsdninja 31 Dec, 2023 @ 5:32am 
Have you tried setting it up through something like Bottles or even Heroic Games Launcher?
saray 3 Jan @ 2:05am 
Originally posted by feakuru:
I'm not sure why or when this happens, but it happened to me 5 times already. What I am doing:

1. Download Genshin Impact installer (it doesn't look like it matters which non-Steam game we are using, but yeah in my case it's Genshin)
2. Run it using Steam ("add non-Steam game" -> "run") and Proton Experimental
3. Download (~100 GB!), install and play the game
4. ??? (something happens, maybe a few days pass, but I'be had this happen exactly after install)
5. The name of the game is still in the "Library" section of Steam, but the folder under `compatdata` which used to contain the `c_drive` upon which Genshin was installed, is deleted.

Now, I understand that this is something of an unorthodox way to use Steam, but this is the only way I could run Genshin on Linux without bugs, and the behaviour exhibited by Proton seems to be in conflict with the UI of the library, so it doesn't feel like a "expected issue" to me. Am I missing something? Should I contact developers in a more bug-report-y way?
it is a well known fact that genshin impact developers actively fight against running their game on linux for some reason, so maybe deleting the game is one of those anti-linux measures.
there is a tool somewhere on github that modifies genshin impact to bypass linux checks.
feakuru 7 Jan @ 1:39pm 
Originally posted by p:
it is a well known fact that genshin impact developers actively fight against running their game on linux for some reason, so maybe deleting the game is one of those anti-linux measures.
there is a tool somewhere on github that modifies genshin impact to bypass linux checks.

Nah, that's quite old news. I actually figured out the issue in the end: Steam does this for any .exe non-Steam game on Linux, creating a separate temp c_drive for it and deleting it as soon as the link to the game is deleted. So any time I switched .exe's this happened (because there's two .exe's - the launcher and the game itself).

To anyone who comes across this thread looking for a solution with Steam: just use Lutris with the official installer, it works like a charm and actually lets you update the game properly.
Last edited by feakuru; 7 Jan @ 1:40pm
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