Afaik their launchers were the main issue as they only worked in very specific Ubuntu environments. Everywhere else they would straight up not work and you would have to use Proton.

Luckily, they won't do launchers again. Unfortunately, they now use Denuvo.

I'll wait for some QoL updates and a sale on Ara instead. Can't stand the idiotic Humankind-like mid game civ swapping anyway.

I've had this experience with other games too. Some "native" Linux versions won't even launch so you have to use Wine or Proton.

Same thing happened with borderlands 2. I wouldn't be surprised if we see fewer native linux games because of proton, but playing basically every windows game through steam is worth it.

They also forgot to add the paid DLC to the Linux version, so I had to use the Windows version anyway. However, it's still always nice to have options!

This is true for sooo many games, especially CPU heavy simulation games.

As long as devs officially support and test the Proton version, I don't have a problem with it. Sure it seems convoluted... but it's also a hundred times simpler for the dev, and I don't think the linux community should shame them for it.