Using Custom Proton Builds

Sometimes the standard Proton build won’t do the job. But luckily Valve has given the community the ability to use custom proton builds with Steam. With the communities help, almost every game has Linux compatibility now.

It’s very easy to use a custom build and I’m going to show you how to do that now! But if you’re new to Proton you may want to check out my post on How to play all Steam games on Linux.

Installing a custom Proton build

Step 1 – Setup the folder

The first thing you need to do is create a folder if you do not already have it.

Go to: /home/<YourUserName>/.steam/steam/

and inside that folder make a new folder called compatibilitytools.d.

So the whole path should look like: /home/<YourUserName>/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/

Step 2 – Check with the community

Now you need to see what custom proton you need for your game. You can do this at https://www.protondb.com/

Step 3 – Download

Next, we download and unzip the files into the “compatibilitytools.d” folder we just made. In my case, I am downloading a GloriousEggroll build from https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases.

You just need to download the gzip file. You don’t need the source code to run the game.

Make sure you unzip the file. Steam will not read a zipped file.

Step 4 – Tell Steam to use the custom Proton build

If Steam was already running when you copied the folder you’ll need to restart it before Steam will see the new build.

After that right click the game in question and go to properties.

Then under the General tab click the checkbox that says “Force the use of a specific Steam Play Compatibility tool”.

Then pick the build you need for the game with the drop down list at the bottom.

Enjoy your game

That’s all there is to it. Now enjoy your game!

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Video Demonstration