Every year Jingle Jam offers up a great selection of games as a reward for donating to the charity of your choice. I’m afraid it’s too late to jump on board for 2021 – I only heard about it at the last minute myself – but while redeeming my own 50-or-so Steam keys, I noticed something that I think it’s worth exploring even now the event is over:

I've just finished redeeming Steam keys from the #JingleJam2021 donation rewards, and I think it's a handy illustration of how viable #Linux gaming is now. Not a lot of native titles, but the overwhelming majority are rated Gold or Platinum on #ProtonDB. pic.twitter.com/5cDsooxLR6

— Damon L. Wakes (@DamonWakes) December 18, 2021

Chances are you know me for my bestselling flash fiction anthologies, my novella about astronaut murder, or the game I made that uses real bananas as controllers so you might not be aware of this, but I’m an avid(ish) Linux user. Like so much in my life I never really planned on this, but a few years ago I built my own computer, installed Ubuntu to check the hardware worked, and never got around to getting hold of a copy of Windows. This was also around when Microsoft was trying its hardest to roll out Windows 10 to everyone whether they wanted it or not. I was working in a shop that sold second-hand computers at the time, and seeing the number of devices that came back faulty because of the upgrade more or less convinced me to jump ship for good.

The switch from Windows to Linux has for the most part saved me a lot of time and money. Malware? Not a problem. Work grinding to a halt for updates? Not a thing. For the basics – email, web browsing, document editing, etc. – it’s far superior in every way. Even if I can’t run a specific bit of Windows software (say, Microsoft Excel) there’s always a free equivalent out there and typically it works better anyway. The only problem is games: if you want to play Stardew Valley then you’ll need to install Stardew Valley. There might be similar offerings out there, but if you can’t run the thing you actually want to play then you’re missing out – this is why consoles have exclusives. And that’s why I find it noteworthy that the overwhelming majority of games in the 2021 Jingle Jam collection are playable on Linux:

As far as I’m aware there was no particular effort to support this particular platform. This isn’t someone picking out great games and saying “Check it out! All these specific games are playable on Linux!” It’s a fairly representative selection of titles that just happen to be playable on Linux. Of the 56 games included in the collection, the ProtonDB ratings are as follows:

• 24 Native
• 15 Platinum
• 7 Gold
• 3 Silver
• 1 Bronze
• 6 Pending a rating

For anyone unfamiliar with it, Proton is a tool that’s bundled with the Steam client and allows you to run Windows games on Linux. It’s not 100% successful – not all games will run and those that do may not run flawlessly – so ProtonDB invites reports from users into what works well and what doesn’t. Let’s take a little trip anticlockwise around that donut chart!

Right off the bat, 24 of these Jingle Jam games – nearly half – were actually released for Linux. This on its own is pretty fantastic: you’re looking at £650+ worth of games for a £35 minimum charity donation, so even if only 42.86% of them were playable you’d be getting a generous selection at a great price. However, it doesn’t solve the Stardew Valley problem: what if the thing you actually want to play is in the other 57.14%? Fear not, and read on!

Of the remaining 32 games, 15 (again, nearly half) are rated Platinum on ProtonDB. Platinum means “works perfectly out of the box” – it behaves just as it would on a Windows machine. So actually 39 out of 56 games should be entirely playable. That’s 69.65%: just over two thirds of them should run flawlessly! But what of the rest?

This is where that inner ring of the donut chart comes in. The big bit in dark blue represents games that will run fine for sure (assuming your machine is beefy enough in the first place). The chunk in lighter blue represents games that will run perfectly with a little tinkering (rated Gold on ProtonDB) or that can be expected to run tolerably despite minor issues (Silver). If you’re prepared to try the advice on ProtonDB in order to get things running, that gives you a total of 46 entirely playable games (plus up to three Silver-rated ones – this is the point at which it becomes uncertain whether or not they’ll work, and whether or not you’re happy to put up with the occasional crash or missing cutscene).

I’m going to skip a chunk here to point out that purple chunk headed “Pending.” These are games that just don’t have enough reports on ProtonDB to offer an idea how compatible they are. Of the six in the Jingle Jam: one has a couple of early reports suggesting it works fine, two have early reports suggesting that they work with very minor issues, and three simply haven’t been checked at all yet. These aren’t games I can be certain will run on Linux, but statistically speaking you’re looking at six games that will probably work rather than six that probably won’t. This is why I feel confident in extending my “these should be fine” light blue inner donut section of the chart to include the entire Silver category: for each of those that aren’t up to scratch, there’s probably at least one unrated one that is. You’re looking at about 87.5% compatibility here, with the remaining 12.5% overwhelmingly being “stuff that’s not yet known good” rather than “stuff that just won’t work.” So just how many games really won’t work? Have a scroll through the full selection and see for yourself:

Game	Rating	My Notes
12 is Better Than 6	Native
20XX	Platinum
Anodyne 2: Return to Dust	Native
Barony	Native
Barotrauma	Native
Boreal Blade	Platinum
Clustertruck	Native
Crowntakers	Native
Disc Room	Native
Embr	Gold	Older reports state need for specific Proton version, newer ones suggest current version works fine.
Empyrion – Galactic Survival	Gold	Some performance problems, plus EAC anti-cheat issues.
Farm Manager 2018	Platinum
Figment	Native
Fling to the Finish	Silver	Hit-and-miss compatibility.
Four Sided Fantasy	Gold	Minor controller issues – keyboard works fine.
Golf It!	Platinum
Hearthlands	Native
Heaven’s Vault	Platinum
Helheim Hassle	Native
Hyper Light Drifter	Native
Jumpala	Native
Just Die Already	Platinum
Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2	Platinum
Kind Words	Native
Make Sail	Native
Murder by Numbers	Platinum
Murderous Pursuits	Silver	Some performance problems, hit-and-miss compatibility.
Northgard	Native
OCO	Pending	No reports.
Pankapu	Native
Pathway	Native
PC Building Simulator	Gold	Minor issues on some systems.
PictoQuest	Platinum
Project Winter	Gold	Recent reports suggests it runs flawlessly.
Radical Rabbit Stew	Pending	First two reports suggest it runs flawlessly.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad with Rising Storm	Gold	Some tweaks required.
Regions of Ruin	Native
Rising Storm 2: Vietnam	Bronze	Game-breaking EAC anti-cheat issues.
Samurai Gunn	Platinum
Scoot Kaboom and the Tomb of Doom	Pending	No reports.
Shift Happens	Platinum
Sizeable	Platinum
Surviving Mars	Native
Tales of the Neon Sea	Silver	Cutscenes need tweaks to fix, minor issues elsewhere.
The First Tree	Native
The Haunted Island, a Frog Detective Game	Platinum
The Void Rains Upon Her Heart	Platinum
The World Next Door	Pending	First two reports suggest it runs with very minor issues.
Ultimate Chicken Horse	Native
Unrailed	Native
Urban Trial Tricky	Pending	First report suggests it runs with very minor issues.
Valfaris	Platinum
Wheels of Aurelia	Native
Wildermyth	Native
Witch It	Gold	Minor issues.
XTHRUST	Pending	No reports.

There’s just one! Did you spot it? It’s Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. Even this is rated “Bronze” on ProtonDB – that’s “often crashes or has issues preventing from playing comfortably” rather than “Borked” (the rating given to titles that are completely unplayable). In this particular case, the issue appears to be that using Proton triggers EAC – an anti-cheat system – to kick the player from most servers. However, given that there appears to be no offline/single-player content at all, that’s genuinely a deal-breaker.

But still! In this reasonably representative assortment of games: 82.15% are basically guaranteed to work on Linux, with just a few tweaks necessary for the handful that are “only” Gold-rated; 16.07% might work, with either mixed or limited reports of success; and just a single game (1.79%) is known to be unplayable. Broken down that way, the chart would look like this:

This isn’t necessarily reflective of what your experience would be – a fan of competitive online games is going to run into more problems with anti-cheat systems, and you might find that the latest AAA titles are less viable than the indie games in this collection – but I think it helps illustrate that the games that won’t work on Linux are now massively outnumbered by the games that will. The number of working ones is growing too: things that didn’t previously work with Proton run fine in newer versions. Throw a stone at a bunch of games, and chances are whatever you hit will work on Linux!

Giveaway! (NOW OVER – ALL GAMES CLAIMED)

As a reward for reading (or at least scrolling) through all that, you’ve got a shot at a free game! I’m giving away my key for Rising Storm 2: Vietnam since it’s little good to me right now (and I’m not a huge fan of online shooters in the first place). Also on offer are a few games that I’ve already got. Crowntakers is good! I’ll be disappointed if that one isn’t snapped up. I can also vouch for Surviving Mars though I didn’t find it really grabbed me. Here’s the full range on offer:

• Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
• Crowntakers
• Hyper Light Drifter
• Surviving Mars

There are no particular hoops to jump through here – if you want one, just leave a comment on this post to let me know. You don’t have to have an account but will have to provide an email (otherwise I won’t have anywhere to send the key). Alternatively, you can stick a Twitter handle in your comment and I’ll DM you if I can. Keep in mind that comments are moderated so you likely won’t see yours appear right away (and may also not see other people requesting the same game – feel free to mention a backup option). Further small print: if you want Rising Storm 2 then you must be 18 or over. Also, the Jingle Jam people were very clear that these Steam keys were perks for donating rather than a product that I’d bought. I trust them completely, but if you get your key and it doesn’t work then that’s too bad. I make no promises as to how keys will be distributed: first-come-first-served is likely because I’m lazy, but I will absolutely favour friends and acquaintances over internet randos if that choice presents itself. Finally, the keys should be claimed before January 1st. It’s possible they’ll work beyond that, but there’s no guarantee – again, you get what you get.