Proton 11.0-3 enters testing with 16 newly playable games and HDR fixed in Far Cry 5 on OLED Decks

Valve opened a release candidate for its next stable Proton on 9 October, alongside a small 11.0-2e update that fixes EA App login under Gamescope.

AI-drafted from 4 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

Valve has opened public testing for Proton 11.0-3, the next stable version of the compatibility layer that runs Windows games on Steam Deck and Linux. Proton developer ivyl posted the release candidate thread on GitHub on 9 October, the same day Valve shipped a much smaller Proton 11.0-2e to everyone on the current stable branch.

Proton 11.0-2e makes two changes, both for EA games: the EA App login window now takes focus properly under Gamescope, and EA App titles show the right splash image. It arrives as a normal Steam update.

What the release candidate changes

The 11.0-3 changelog lists 16 newly playable games, among them Aniimo, Blair Witch VR, City Car Driving, The Eden of Grisaia, Impulse Response and Korea. IL-2 Series. It also fixes HDR in Far Cry 5 on OLED Steam Decks, the Final Fantasy XIV launcher on the Steam Frame, controllers not working in Dragon Age: Inquisition and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a crash in RaceRoom Racing when joining a ranked race, Japanese text in Killer7, and Helldivers 2 failing to launch after a recent game update.

A dozen Proton 11 regressions are listed as fixed. Lords of the Fallen, Lunacid and Ligo are playable again, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided works again on AMD graphics cards, the intro videos in Grand Theft Auto III play again, and Natural Selection 2 can reach its servers once more.

Under the hood, dxvk and vkd3d-proton move to the latest state of their Proton 11 branches, Wine Mono goes to 11.3.0, Xalia to 0.5.0 and the FEX translation layer to 2610. There is also early support for 32-bit OpenXR, which on x86 machines needs the PROTON_USE_WOW64=1 launch option.

Most of it has already reached Decks

Valve's thread says most if not all of these fixes were shipped earlier through Proton Experimental or Proton Hotfix, and that Steam Decks already picked the right version per game automatically. The release candidate is about stabilising those changes in the main branch, which matters most to people who run a fixed Proton version or play outside Valve's per-game picks.

To try it, right click Proton 11.0 in the Steam library, open Properties, then Betas, and choose the release-candidate branch. Valve notes that the version name in Steam's settings will not change. The changelog is tentative and has not yet been checked by Valve's QA staff, and Valve only wants reports of problems that do not happen on 11.0-2. GamingOnLinux also covered both releases on 10 October.

Sources

• Proton 11.0-3 Release Candidate testing (GitHub)
• Proton 11.0-2e (GitHub)
• Proton 11.0-2e brings EA App fixes, and there's a much bigger Proton 11.0-3 Release Candidate (GamingOnLinux)
• Discussion: Proton 11.0-2e brings EA App fixes, and there's a much bigger Proton 11.0-3 Release Candidate (Reddit)

Image: GamingOnLinux