Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
Valve is a corporation, what they really “love” is money. All their Linux strategy is simply future-proofing. They know that if gaming kept being restricted to Windows, they could have been destroyed overnight by Microsoft, especially since MS start betting hard on gaming and built their own Steam competitor.
Well, they certainly do. I, for one, am grateful, since I’ve been using Linux for over 20 years. But I know they’re in for the money, and that’s ok.