> DirectX is losing ground too thanks to Proton and Vulkan
[citation needed]
My understanding is that Proton is effectively a distribution of WINE + DXVK, which does for DirectX what WINE does for Win32. Valve is even on record saying "make one good copy of your game and trust our compatibility tools to port to other platforms" which is effectively saying "use DirectX if you want - Proton will run it just as well."
I think I could have bolstered this point by claiming "Windows and DirectX are losing ground", but I stand by my argument that Microsoft's gatekeeper status is eroding thanks to the growth [1] of Proton and Vulkan. Now native Vulkan implementations are not growing the way Proton is, but one could argue that Valve has done more to grow Vulkan support than Google's Stadia team ever did by removing the onus to write for it from game developers. Either way you slice it, Microsoft is now competing with Valve for OS installs. _____________
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-May-2026]