The latest game from horror afficionados Bloober Team received a surprise update today that allows those playing on Steam Decks to enjoy the game natively.
For those unfamiliar, Valve’s handheld is powered by SteamOS, a customized Linux distro developed in-house by the Seattle gaming company. The vast of majority of games developed for PC are made for Windows, and typically Windows applications can’t be run on Linux operating systems, but it’s possible on the Steam Deck with the help of Proton, a compatibility layer that essentially translates Windows code into something that SteamOS can run. While many games run through Proton perform very well (and in some cases even outperform the same games run in Windows), in many cases, it’s not quite as performant as a native Linux build.
Cronos: The New Dawn already ran pretty well considering the Steam Deck is powered by older hardware. According to the release, this native build was developed specifically for Steam’s handheld console and provides ‘even better performance on this platform’. Hopefully, it won’t be long before content creators start pumping out side-by-side comparisons to YouTube.
Chalk this up as another W for Bloober, who are on a hot streak following the success of their Silent Hill 2 Remake and Cronos: The New Dawn, the latter of which has sold more than 200,000 units in less than a month.
