Proton isn’t an emulator, but Linux gamers end up relying on it the same way people rely on emulators: as a workaround for an ecosystem that doesn’t support them natively.

From a gamer’s perspective, you buy a Windows game at full price, run it through a translation layer, accept quirks, regressions, timing bugs, broken launchers, weird input behavior, rely on community patches, Proton versions, GE builds, DXVK updates and hope the next update doesn’t break everything.

You’re paying full price for a product that isn’t running in its native environment, and you’re absorbing the cost of that mismatch. -Sometimes with performance penalties: 👾Linux Gaming: The Roast It Has Earned

Unlike console emulation, you don’t get preservation, enhancements, or modding freedom as compensation. -And without Proton: Linux gaming would now collapse. Publishers would never consider Linux with Apple no longer a bridge.

-It’s not an emulator but it is a life-support machine.

When you buy a Windows game to run on Linux, you’re paying full price for a product whose platform you don’t use, whose APIs you don’t have, whose OS you don’t want, and whose vendor doesn’t care about you; and you rely on Valve to duct-tape it for you.

Pirates won’t care so much, but pirates aren’t what compensates Valve for the work they do on Proton.