Proton 11 is out — Linux players can now run Resident Evil, Gothic 1 Classic, and more

Valve has released Proton 11, the latest version of its Windows-game compatibility layer for Linux. Built on Wine 11, it's available now through the compatibility tab in Steam settings, either globally or on a per-game basis.

The update promotes a solid list of titles from Proton Experimental into the stable release, including the original 1996 Resident Evil — which only arrived on Steam in April — plus Resident Evil 2 (1998), Dino Crisis, Dino Crisis 2, Metal Gear Survive, Warhammer: Vermintide 2, DCS World Steam Edition, and SHOGUN: Total War. Newly playable titles that weren't working before include Gothic 1 Classic, X-Plane 12, Breath of Fire IV, and Deadly Premonition. On the bug-fix side, the patch addresses a crash in Helldivers 2 during high enemy-count missions, fixes many EA games that broke after a recent EA Desktop update, repairs the Steam Overlay for EA titles, fixes a black screen in Sea of Solitude, corrects mouse movement in Call of Duty 2, and resolves a rendering issue in the launcher for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. Killer Inn gets three separate fixes — launch failures on Steam Decks with small /tmp partitions, random hangs, and Square Enix account connectivity. The REDLauncher used by Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 no longer takes an age to close, and Hollow Knight stops misreading the Steam Deck's Steam button as a left trigger.

Proton has been the backbone of Valve's Linux gaming push since it launched in 2018, and it's what makes the Steam Deck viable as a gaming device without requiring native Linux ports from developers. The layer is built on Wine — the long-running open-source project that translates Windows API calls to Linux — combined with Valve's own DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for DirectX translation, plus a stack of game-specific patches. Proton 11 first appeared in beta last April, so this stable release has had months of real-world testing behind it.

For most Linux desktop users, Proton already handles the vast majority of the Steam catalog silently and automatically, so the "now playable" lists in each release tend to reflect edge cases and older or more obscure titles rather than blockbusters. Still, every stable release closes a few more gaps, and fixes like the KDE window maximization correction and the EA Desktop compatibility repairs have practical day-to-day impact for a lot of players. The full patch notes are available on the official Steam community page.