Among their broad range of projects is Proton, a compatibility software designed to make games run on Linux operating systems, when in normal circumstances they couldn’t. One of the latest games to get hacked onto Linux thanks to Proton is Cyberpunk 2077, with some caveats - here’s how to make the game run on your system.
Using Proton
Props to Valve for making this a painless exercise - the Steam client is already completely Linux compatible, and all you need to do after installing it and the game, in this case Cyberpunk 2077, is set up Steam Play. Simply navigate to Settings, click on Steam Play - it should be the bottom option - and check “Enable Steam Play for all titles” and “Use this tool instead of game-specific selections from Steam”, then select the latest version of Proton from the tool dropdown menu. Once you have done all this, simply restart Steam and playing Cyberpunk 2077 is easy as pressing play. The latest Proton version is 5.13-4, and currently only works with AMD and Nvidia GPUs. Initially only AMD was invited to the party, but since then compatibility was expanded, however integrated graphics still won’t be enough - not that there are many integrated options even capable of running Cyberpunk 2077 at all.
Keep in mind that this is still a pretty hacky way of playing, and it shows. Even if Cyberpunk 2077 itself wasn’t a buggy mess, running it on Linux using Proton may cause some unfortunate side effects like characters not having faces, or not having heads, period. Nonetheless, it’s still pretty groundbreaking that not only does the game run on Linux, it doesn’t require much by the way of tech savviness from the player.
title: “How To Play Cyberpunk 2077 On Linux” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-15” author: “Troy Laino”
Although if we’re being honest, most of the love should go to Steam. As arguably the most hyped video game of the decade launched, Cyberpunk 2077, Steam launched an update to Steam Play, which is a stand-alone patch centered on making the game playable on certain PCs.
Can You Play Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux?
While the update to Steam Play, which is a service aimed towards gamers who want to play Windows games on their Linux PCs, does indeed allow gamers to play Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux, it comes with a couple of caveats. In particular, you’ll need to have the Mesa 21.0-devel Git installed and it’s only compatible with AMD graphics cards for now. There is a silver lining to this though: some users using Nvidia graphics cards have been able to make the game work on their Linux PCs. Unfortunately, just because Cyberpunk 2077 works on Linux, on launch day at that, doesn’t mean that you can actually enjoy it. The truth is, even on Windows PCs, Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t working well, with many users demanding refunds because of how unplayable the game is. With that said, the fact that you can play Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux is good news in and of itself. Considering that playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Windows doesn’t exactly yield the most bug-free experience yet, it is possible that the game could get better support and run better on Linux in the future. Hopefully, that is indeed the case and more gamers will get a chance to enjoy Cyberpunk 2077 as CD Projekt RED intended.
