For those of you playing on Steam Deck, Baldur’s Gate 3 now also features a native Steam Deck build!
Running natively on the platform, you should now see a better framerate, lower loading times, and smoother gameplay 🙌
The store page hasn’t updated yet, but you can see the Linux Steam depots on steamdb.
You have to dig a few layers deep, but it appears that they uploaded a Linux build that only downloads for Steam Decks, and they don’t seem to fully support non-Steam Deck. I haven’t verified a way to get around this, but often, where there’s a will, there’s a way. You might be able to force the game to download the Linux version from the Compatibility settings in Steam. At least at this point in time, Larian only seems interested in the Linux build for Steam Deck in particular, which I’ve never seen before.
Wait, I played bg3 on my steam deck over a year ago and it ran just fine. So what’s the difference here? Is this new thing specifically made to run on the steam deck whereas before I was just lucky that bg3 ran on the steam deck?
What you played on your Steam Deck before was a Windows build run through Proton. It’s not really luck that it ran before, but with a native build, you can start tweaking the way things work in Linux to optimize for what the Linux version is using. They must have seen the performance gains to be worth the time investment.
Oooh I see. I might download it on my steam deck then again if it means performance improvements because I’ve been wanting to play on the go. Thanks for explaining!
I actually gave it a try by just disabling the forced compatability and then using __GL_13ebad=0x1 %command% in the launch options. it works with dlss. only issue for me are the frame drops that pretty much make it unplayable. i saw a post somewhere, someone was saying more power was going to their gpu on the native build. i think that’s what’s happening to me and its causing some throttling. on proton with vulkan, the game runs fine for the most part.
You have to dig a few layers deep, but it appears that they uploaded a Linux build that only downloads for Steam Decks, and they don’t seem to fully support non-Steam Deck. I haven’t verified a way to get around this, but often, where there’s a will, there’s a way. You might be able to force the game to download the Linux version from the Compatibility settings in Steam. At least at this point in time, Larian only seems interested in the Linux build for Steam Deck in particular, which I’ve never seen before.
Wait, I played bg3 on my steam deck over a year ago and it ran just fine. So what’s the difference here? Is this new thing specifically made to run on the steam deck whereas before I was just lucky that bg3 ran on the steam deck?
What you played on your Steam Deck before was a Windows build run through Proton. It’s not really luck that it ran before, but with a native build, you can start tweaking the way things work in Linux to optimize for what the Linux version is using. They must have seen the performance gains to be worth the time investment.
Oooh I see. I might download it on my steam deck then again if it means performance improvements because I’ve been wanting to play on the go. Thanks for explaining!
I actually gave it a try by just disabling the forced compatability and then using __GL_13ebad=0x1 %command% in the launch options. it works with dlss. only issue for me are the frame drops that pretty much make it unplayable. i saw a post somewhere, someone was saying more power was going to their gpu on the native build. i think that’s what’s happening to me and its causing some throttling. on proton with vulkan, the game runs fine for the most part.