ProtonDB now has separate tabs for easier browsing of Steam Deck or PC reports. You can also view a combined tab that includes reports from both.
Both categories can be pretty useful, but some game fixes can only be found in the PC section. A lot of the PC report creators are more experienced Linux users and know of fixes that may not show up in the Steam Deck section.
Finally, I have been so tired of having to scroll to the bottom of every game’s page to find entries relevant to my hardware.
oh thats actually really useful. Glad they made a change
This is the best summary I could come up with:
ProtonDB is the go-to for a lot of people to see how games run on Linux desktop and Steam Deck, and while its rating system is far from perfect it’s nice to have.
A recent upgrade also makes it a lot nicer to browse.
When the Steam Deck released ProtonDB added dedicated Steam Deck reports to game pages, which ended up making it quite a mess - especially for PC players where every page would have you scroll and scroll until you go to the desktop Linux reports — but no more!
There is now a tabbed submenu above reports on game pages.
In this menu, you can now filter by PC, Steam Deck, or a combined list.
When you select an item in the device submenu, the URL is updated and can be shared to send someone directly to reports corresponding to your selection.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
deleted by creator
The overall design isn’t terrible imo, but the previous system of having Deck reports stacked on top of PC reports was really poor.
Even the owner of the site has admitted he wouldn’t use that rating system if he did it all over again. It’s terrible. “Gold” is wildly variable. Check out Grand Theft Auto V. Hundreds of people having often game breaking issues, yet it’s rated “Gold.” Even “Platinum” games frequently require tweaks and experience issues. Whoever is in charge of rating, or whatever the algorithm, is misleadingly optimistic.
The rating is calculated by the report of the users, there is no manual rating done. GTAV works for most people, but some, so it ends up being Gold.
However, these Medal ratings are carried over from the WineHQ rating, when ProtonDB was nothing more than a spreadsheet on Google Docs and was also used when Ratings were considered by the reporters itself. But this turned out to be a bad idea, as people tend to give platinum ratings, despite naming issues in their reports.
So the attempt was to remove the manual rating and instead ask the users about their experience with several talking points and consider by that a rating. This would still use the old medal system, which of course does not work well for such system. That’s why a new tier system, which is more a representation between very good and very bad, was created, and you can see it on the dashboard (Change the Rating System to ProtonDB Click Play). However, this was considered as an internal test, but then the main developer was pulled away from ProtonDB for other work and all went basically to a hold.
Now the developer is back at work on ProtonDB and this will hopefully lead to a new and better rating system.
I hope this will shed some light on why it is what it is, and that no one is really happy about it.
Source: I’m one of the administrators on the ProtonDB discord.
Thanks for the info! Click Play looks FAR better as a rating system.
deleted by creator
Posting the required version to run the game is not trivial, as this is nothing we can just know, and it can also change with game updates. There is the Steam Deck verification information, which includes a Proton version, but this information is not reliable at all. Valve set Proton Experimental on all games that have not being tested, even on Linux native(!), so we can not take that.
However, we are thinking of changes and collecting ideas at the moment and any constructive idea and critique is welcome. My personal idea about the working Proton versions to show is to simply have a graph, showing the available proton versions with a color code, depending on the reports and their rating. For example:
And yes, people are reporting incorrect fixes, but this is the nature of user content. And it’s impossible to curate them all, it’s way too many. But you can always report a false/dangerous report on the discord or IRC (I wish we’ve had a report button on the page).
wooo! this is gonna make it so much easier to see if games will work on my hardware! I didn’t realize it could be a big deal until I tried to start Forza horizon 5 on my PC. that had always worked decently on steam deck so I assumed it’d be fine on my PC too, but apparently Nvidia cards and Forza Really don’t play nice together right now
