Proton is basic infrastructure for Steam Deck (which runs Linux). Valve has sold millions of units that I doubt would have been sold without Proton. There’s just a ton of games that will never be ported to native Linux.
Proton isn’t only Valve’s doing though. It’s heavily built on top of Wine which is a very mature open source project that has seen extensive leadership and contributions by CodeWeavers.
Epic makes tons of money off licensing Unreal to developers and have since before their store was a thing.
Proton makes direct zero profit, though it does make Steam the best store for anyone on Linux.
Not sure why “direct profit” is important.
Proton is basic infrastructure for Steam Deck (which runs Linux). Valve has sold millions of units that I doubt would have been sold without Proton. There’s just a ton of games that will never be ported to native Linux.
Proton isn’t only Valve’s doing though. It’s heavily built on top of Wine which is a very mature open source project that has seen extensive leadership and contributions by CodeWeavers.