I think we‘re in a very different situation right now. Proton has become so good that it‘s just not necessary for most developers to do anything to get their game running on Linux. When Macs peaked in the hardware survey, the compatibility tools were far less powerful and developers had to actually invest time and resources, if they wanted their game running on Mac.
I also think that the Steam Deck is absolutely being recognized by many developers. Even big publishers proudly announce their games being playable on it. And having games optimized for Deck often improves them on Linux in general.
So I really wouldn’t worry about developers not specifically targeting Linux. Even without that, gaming on Linux is in the best spot it has ever been and is steadily improving.
When a new game is released I usually check if it’s steam deck compatible, if it isn’t for no specific reason (like, a 2d platformer, I’m not going to expect a high fidelity 3d game to work) I’m way less inclined to buy it. The market is there and really should be picked up.
Even with steam deck verified I was skeptical but I finally made the jump to linux on my gaming pc and installed starfield and it booted right up, didn’t notice any difference it’s amazing. I imagined I was going to have to go into steam settings and do stuff and keep retrying but nope just worked right away
