'Quality of Life' update will make Bioshock games unplayable on Steam Deck, Linux

Software updates are typically supposed to make software program, you know, much better. That is particularly true when you label an update “quality of existence,” as is the case with the hottest patches for 2K’s typical Bioshock FPS sequence. But the latest patches to Bioshock Remastered, Bioshock 2 Remastered, and Bioshock Infinite are generating the video game straight-up unplayable for lots of Linux players, like people on the tremendous-popular Steam Deck handheld.

In accordance to a litany of support forum posts and Reddit threads, the perpetrator appears to be the new recreation launcher, which publisher 2K made a decision to staple onto the executable data files for games that are about a ten years aged or more mature. (Gamers tend to dislike unneeded increase-on launchers, considerably preferring video games to only open up from Windows, Steam, or any of the other launchers from which the video games by now start.) As Personal computer Gamer details out, it is an particularly regrettable prevalence for an update particularly referred to as “quality of life,” which apparently exists only to incorporate immediate hyperlinks to decades-outdated DLC packages.

When the Steam Deck is not explicitly supported by any of the Bioshock online games, and Valve lists all a few titles as “unsupported” in its at any time-escalating list of Steam Deck titles, they have been officially produced and are supported on Linux (and by extension, SteamOS). That signifies the video games ought to participate in on the handheld without any want for go-involving programs like Proton. Quickly owning correctly practical games undermined by a mandatory update from the publisher is a thing that would boil Andrew Ryan’s libertarian blood.

2K has yet to remark on the problem. Some Linux gamers have resorted to monitoring down (ahem) “unofficial” versions of the match pre-patch, or managing the recreation via Proton with the commensurate general performance strike. Ideally somebody will consider recognize — just rolling back again the update and getting rid of the unnecessary launcher would do the trick. Hint, hint.