Proton Experimental heats up with fixes coming, plus a disk space saving measure

Now that the huge release of Steam Play Proton 7.0-1 is out, work begins again on Proton Experimental as it pulls in all the latest changes for you to play with. What is Proton? It’s a compatibility layer designed to run Windows games from Steam on Linux. See more about it in our full guide.

As of Proton Experimental updated on February 18, here’s what’s changed:

• All changes from Proton 7.0-1.
• Fix STAR WARS: Squadrons displaying warning about outdated drivers.
• Fix Dead Cells hanging on launch.
• Fix Devil May Cry 5 and Capcom Arcade Stadium crashing when scrolling through videos too quickly.
• Fix Uplay / Ubisoft Connect reliably failing to update with fsync enabled.
• Fix GTA V randomly crashing on certain window managers.
• Fix Teardown randomly crashing.
• Fix Melty Blood: Type Lumina hanging on the intro video.
• Fix Arma 3 launcher.
• Update file distribution method to save disk space.
• Update dxvk to include the latest development work.
• Update vkd3d-proton to include the latest development work.

See the Proton Experimental changelog to see all the current differences to the normal Proton releases.

Need to know how to actually use Proton Experimental? Here’s a simple HOWTO (as it’s not complicated!). Make sure it’s installed by searching for it in your Steam Library, then select it from the Compatibility menu in the Properties section of a game. See our quick video below:

For an explainer in text form:

1. Search for Proton Experimental and install if not already.
2. Right click any game on Steam and go to Properties.
3. Select the Compatibility menu on the right side.
4. Ensure the “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool” is ticked.
5. From the dropdown box that appears select Proton Experimental.