Disabling the Steam runtime is no longer supported
You currently have Valve's Steam client installed with its runtime
disabled. Disabling the runtime traditionally told Steam to use
libraries from the host instead. This has never been supported by Valve,
and it is no longer very effective. It has already long been the case
that the client will use host libraries anyway, only falling back to the
runtime when a host library a missing. Almost all games, even very old
native ones, are now run in a container by default, where it is not
possible to disable the runtime.
As such, steam-overlay is now shifting to a supported setup by forcibly enabling the `steamruntime` USE flag. The intention is to keep the USE flag and the associated esteam package around for 2 months until 2026-12-04. With these gone, most of the steam-overlay packages will be largely redundant, so the steam-launcher and extest packages will migrate to the main Gentoo repository, and the overlay will be retired.
If you used esteam to remove bundled libraries from some games, then you may need to restore those libraries for each game by navigating to Properties -> Installed Files -> Verify integrity of game files.
If you want to run some games directly on the host with host libraries preferred, you can still do so by selecting Legacy Steam Runtime under Properties -> Compatibility, but it is your responsibility to install those libraries.
Do not assume that the older Steam runtimes used by older games only have ancient versions of libraries. Obviously, compatibility needs to be maintained, as that is the point of the runtime, but while writing this, I found that the "Scout" runtime had the same version of libSDL2 as Gentoo and a newer version of libSDL1.2 than Gentoo.
It is worth bearing in mind that, despite the success of the Steam Deck, relatively few games are Linux native. New native games tend to be built on large engines like Unity or Unreal, and if these do use traditional free software libraries at all, they are statically linked.
Many older native games have been left to rot while their Windows counterparts have continued to receive updates, making Proton the more sensible choice in these cases. With Wine and Proton now being able to run 32-bit binaries on a purely 64-bit Linux system, you may decide to drop 32-bit support from your system entirely once the 64-bit Steam client goes out of testing, which will hopefully be soon.
If Steam no longer meets your needs, you may want to consider Lutris instead, but it has broadly the same options, such as using host libraries, its own runtime, or Steam's "Sniper" runtime in a container. It does nothing to ensure you have the right host libraries installed.
Please give any feedback at: https://github.com/anyc/steam-overlay/issues/386
As such, steam-overlay is now shifting to a supported setup by forcibly enabling the `steamruntime` USE flag. The intention is to keep the USE flag and the associated esteam package around for 2 months until 2026-12-04. With these gone, most of the steam-overlay packages will be largely redundant, so the steam-launcher and extest packages will migrate to the main Gentoo repository, and the overlay will be retired.
If you used esteam to remove bundled libraries from some games, then you may need to restore those libraries for each game by navigating to Properties -> Installed Files -> Verify integrity of game files.
If you want to run some games directly on the host with host libraries preferred, you can still do so by selecting Legacy Steam Runtime under Properties -> Compatibility, but it is your responsibility to install those libraries.
Do not assume that the older Steam runtimes used by older games only have ancient versions of libraries. Obviously, compatibility needs to be maintained, as that is the point of the runtime, but while writing this, I found that the "Scout" runtime had the same version of libSDL2 as Gentoo and a newer version of libSDL1.2 than Gentoo.
It is worth bearing in mind that, despite the success of the Steam Deck, relatively few games are Linux native. New native games tend to be built on large engines like Unity or Unreal, and if these do use traditional free software libraries at all, they are statically linked.
Many older native games have been left to rot while their Windows counterparts have continued to receive updates, making Proton the more sensible choice in these cases. With Wine and Proton now being able to run 32-bit binaries on a purely 64-bit Linux system, you may decide to drop 32-bit support from your system entirely once the 64-bit Steam client goes out of testing, which will hopefully be soon.
If Steam no longer meets your needs, you may want to consider Lutris instead, but it has broadly the same options, such as using host libraries, its own runtime, or Steam's "Sniper" runtime in a container. It does nothing to ensure you have the right host libraries installed.
Please give any feedback at: https://github.com/anyc/steam-overlay/issues/386