Rust dev shoots down hopes of playing the hit survival game on Valve's Steam Machine: "There are no plans to support Proton or Linux"

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Rust dev shoots down hopes of playing the hit survival game on Valve's Steam Machine: "There are no plans to support Proton or Linux" News By Anthony McGlynn published 21 November 2025

Compatibility would open the game to cheaters

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(Image credit: Facepunch Studios)

Valve's Steam Machine is an exciting prospect, not least because it allows for all sorts of popular games to now be played comfortably in your living room. Players of survival game Rust are keen for such an option; however, their hopes have been dashed due to that most irritating of hurdles: compatibility issues.

On Reddit, a player requested Rust turn on Proton in order to make the Steam Machine feasible. Sadly, Alistair McFarlane, the COO and director of Rust developer Facepunch Studios, shoots down the idea.

"There are no plans to support Proton or Linux," his response reads. "It's a vector for cheat developers, and one that would be poorly maintained by both us and EAC due to the low user base. When we stopped support for Linux, we saw more cheat users exploiting Linux than actual legitimate users."

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A quick bit of context: The Steam Deck and Steam Machine both run on SteamOS, Valve's own operating system, which is based on Linux, open-source software for creating such interfaces and platforms. To help devs make their Windows games compatible with SteamOS, Valve provides Proton.

The problem is, Linux is easier to use for cheat-makers than Windows, creating more issues for developers. "I know that every time I post something like this, some Proton and Linux users call us lazy or dismissive," he states. "The reality is that fighting cheaters on one front (Windows) is already a never-ending battle. Adding more fronts multiplies that challenge without adding meaningful benefit to the wider player base."

He adds that they could add Proton functionality to the Premium servers, but the added cost to customers is something that doesn’t sit right with Facepunch. "I think it's total bullshit asking Proton users to buy the game and then $15 worth of DLC. I'd be pissed if I were forced to do that," McFarlane writes.

Although I generally live by never say never, Rust on the Steam Machine seems extremely unlikely. For now, that's one game relegated to your PC.

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TOPICS Valve CATEGORIES PC Gaming Platforms Anthony McGlynnSocial Links NavigationContributing Writer

Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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