Guide

Proton versions explained

Proton 10, Proton 11 beta, Experimental, Hotfix, GE-Proton… if the version picker in Steam looks like alphabet soup, this is the map.

Last fact-checked 2026-07-03

The short answer

Stay on the stable numbered Proton Steam picks for you. Reach for Experimental when a game is broken on stable, and GE-Proton when cutscenes are silent or black. That covers ~95% of situations.

Right now · 2026-07-03

StableProton 10.0 series (stable since November 2025; latest point release 10.0-4). Proton 9.0 (May 2024) remains available.
NextProton 11, in beta since April 16, 2026 — rebased on Wine 11, adds NTSYNC support and ARM64 builds (via FEX).
GEGE-Proton11 series (June 2026), rebased on Proton 11 bleeding-edge; NTSYNC on by default since GE-Proton10-10 on kernel 6.14+.

Versions move fast — for any specific game, the freshest community reports on its game page beat any static list, including this one.

Background

Why are there so many versions?

Proton is Valve’s compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux and Steam Deck, built with CodeWeavers on top of Wine plus components like DXVK and vkd3d-proton. Wine ships a major release roughly once a year, and each new major brings sweeping changes — which fix thousands of games and occasionally break a few.

So Valve cuts a new numbered Proton from each Wine major and keeps the old ones around forever: if a game happened to work best on Proton 9, you can still pin it there. Steam itself does the same — many Verified titles are pinned by Valve to a specific numbered Proton so a future update can’t silently break them.

Valve official

The four official flavors

Numbered releases

Stable

Proton 10.0-x, 9.0-x and so on — the stable series. Each tracks a Wine major; point releases fix regressions.

Use it when Always, by default. Most games, least surprises.

Proton Experimental

Rolling

Valve’s rolling staging area: fixes and features land here first, before graduating to the next stable release. Can require newer GPU drivers.

Use it when A game is broken on stable and changelogs (or reports here) say Experimental fixes it.

Experimental — bleeding-edge branch

Unstable

An opt-in beta of Experimental carrying every change as it happens (right-click Proton Experimental → Properties → Betas). Unstable by design.

Use it when You're chasing a fix that literally landed today, or helping test.

Proton Hotfix

Targeted

A channel Valve uses to ship urgent fixes for specific games — often after a game update breaks something. Steam sometimes selects it for affected titles automatically.

Use it when Steam picked it for you, or a specific game's fix shipped there.

All of these install straight from your Steam library on any Linux system — search for “Proton” under Tools, or let Steam pull them in when a game needs one.

Community

GE-Proton and the other forks

Community builds exist because Valve can’t ship everything — some of it for legal reasons (licensed media codecs), some because it’s too experimental for an official release.

GE-Proton

Proton-CachyOS

From the CachyOS distro team; similar spirit to GE-Proton (codecs, staging patches, early hotfixes, OptiScaler), built on Proton’s bleeding-edge branch, NTSYNC on by default (PROTON_NO_NTSYNC=1 turns it off). Prefer the -slr flavor — it also resolves some EAC/BattlEye login failures. Works fine outside CachyOS.

Proton-EM

Etaash Mathamsetty’s fork focused on HDR, FSR 4, and Wine Wayland work, much of which is being upstreamed.

DW-Proton

Based on Proton-CachyOS with extra per-game fixes, particularly for anime/gacha titles.

Proton Sarek

The older-GPU fork itself is discontinued; its DXVK-Sarek component (Direct3D on GPUs without Vulkan 1.3) lives on inside Proton-CachyOS.

Also worth knowing: umu-launcher — not a Proton build, but the tool that runs Proton (with protonfixes) for games outside Steam: GOG/Epic installs via Heroic, Lutris, and friends.

Decision

So which one should you use?

Starting a game for the first time?Use whatever Steam picks — the current stable numbered Proton, or a version Valve pinned for that game. If it works, you're done.
Broken on stable, or missing a fresh fix?Try Proton Experimental — it gets game fixes weeks or months before they reach stable.
Cutscenes black or silent? Launcher videos hang?That's the classic codec gap — GE-Proton exists for exactly this.
A game broke after a Proton update?Pin it to the older numbered version it liked (that's why Valve keeps them) — and say so in a report so others skip the guesswork.

Whichever you land on, the version you used is half the value of a compatibility report — Protondex asks for the Proton variant and version in the report form precisely because “works on GE-Proton, broken on stable” is the answer the next person needs.

Hands on

How to switch versions

Right-click the game in your library → Properties.
Compatibility tab.
Tick “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool” and pick a version. Installed community builds (GE-Proton etc.) appear in the same list.
Same steps on Steam Deck (Game Mode has the shortcut under the game’s Settings → Compatibility). Switching versions uses the same install prefix, so saves stay put — but the first launch may recompile shaders.

Keep the global default on Valve’s Proton. Force community builds per game only (Settings → Compatibility controls the global default). A global GE-Proton default means every game silently rides an unofficial build — great until one regresses and you can’t tell why.

Related: Steam launch options explained — the other half of “how do I make this game work.”

Sources: Valve Proton releases · GE-Proton releases · Phoronix · CachyOS wiki