Since Wine 9.0, you can run 32-bit windows apps on 64-bits directly, without the need for 32bits distro support. It's called WoW64. You can read about it in here: https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/releases/wine-9.0#wow64.

It's not yet enabled by default and existing 32-bit prefixes needs to be recreated Arch is migrating to it

Native Linux games on Steam run on top of steam-runtime, a collection of libs (32 and 64 bits) running in a container called pressure-vessel. In theory they don't need 32 bits distro support.

Steam Linux client itself is 32-bits. Unfortunately

It's because of how memory works, that would be additional technically emulation level translation, since you woukd need to emulate 32 bit ram.

Note: this is just me guessing.

Meaning the libraries should already be included in the Flatpak right?

Sorry, I'm a noob trying to understand what the possible solutions are.

Thanks for sharing! I honestly thought Bazzite was fedora with a few more packages on the top, but your issue sounds interesting

As a VR user, some of my games work as well as the flat games do (my god did proton do a damn good job on the flat games to the point I keep forgetting what distro I am using until I look at the "start/task bar") but some VR games refuse to load, others the visuals are extremely weird or darker than on windows (sharp light lines from ray tracing I assume or maybe dlss stuff), and some don't have the 1080p crispness I am used to on the monitor/in video playback from windows. I am confident these issues will be addressed as soon as they are able, hopefully before 10 is killed in the back alley, til then it's a duel boot for me.

Yes, I spelled it the way I did ;)

They have a responsibility to ensure that games they sell continue to work.

How do you figure that? Valve sells you a game, and they publish the system requirements for that game. If a game doesn't work on your system then they'll give you a refund as long as it's within the refund window. Beyond that, they owe you nothing. For 32-bit titles, one of the technical requirements is 32-bit OS libraries. Let's say Windows 12 removes support for 32-bit software. What do you think Valve will do? I say they'll mass-update the system requirements of 32-bit titles to indicate that they're not compatible with Windows 12 and higher. Historical precedent is on my side here, because this is effectively what Valve did when Apple dropped 32-bit support from OSX.

They ship libraries on Linux so there’s a common base, and they should also do so for 32-bit games. GOG does this for older games using things like dosbox or whatever, and Steam should follow suit.

The libraries that Valve ships for Linux support are essentially Proton. They've invested a lot of effort into Proton because there's a strong business case for doing so. 95% of Valve's customers game on a Windows OS (source: Steam hardware survey), which means that Microsoft could present an existential threat to Valve if Microsoft attempts to lock down their platform. Having a functional alternative OS could dissuade Microsoft from making any anti-competitive moves. Plus, of course, without Proton there's no Steam Deck. I think making money from Steam Deck is only Valve's short term goal though, which is why they're opening up Steam OS to other handheld makers. The long-term aim is to shift gaming away from closed-source to open-source platforms so that Valve's business isn't reliant on any one OS vendor.

There's no business case for doing the same with legacy 32-bit titles. There will be no new 32-bit titles going forward, and there's hardly any market for existing legacy 32-bit titles. Valve would need to compete with GOG, who's already doing much the same thing, and GOG is barely profitable as it stands. GOG's 2024 profits were a paltry 1.1M profit on 199M revenue (source). That's a profit margin of about 0.5%, which is not a healthy indicator in a for-profit business. 5% is generally considered low, 10% or better is a healthy margin. GOG is essentially being propped up by CD Projekt Red's Witcher/Cyberpunk money (CDPR has 468M profit on 801M revenue in 2024; a profit margin of 58%, which is wildly high-margin). Valve could prop up a money-losing 32-bit compatibility project with all their income from 64-bit software sales, but I doubt they would.

Not valve's resources though, so from their point of view its low effort

I don't know much myself, check the fedora thread where they go into more details.

I'm curious why 16-bit support is being dropped. Too much additional codebase complexity for such a small use case, or are there technical reasons it's difficult to support in a 64-bit environment that somehow don't exist in a 32-bit one? Or is it simply not implemented yet due to a lack of dev time/interest in the feature?

I know 16-bit programs are incredibly niche these days, but I'd be way more comfortable with enterprises running their ancient software in a secure, up-to-date WINE environment as opposed to an actual Windows 3.x one with its nonexistent security. Even in an isolated VM, that kind of setup is one misconfiguration away from disaster.

Thanks, TIL.

Cool, sounds promising!

Well articulated reply. Thank you!