path help with Proton and EA Origin on Ubuntu

Question

I have Ubuntu 22.04 and Steam with Proton. I added the EA Origin installer to Steam using Proton Experimental and I am able to play Origin games through it with no issues. However, each time I start it it re-installs Origin. This isn't a huge problem, but I was trying to add the Origin.exe file to Steam so I could skip this step of re-installing.

I added the Origin.exe file and I can start Origin, but it doesn't see the games I have installed. It has a "Locate Game" option if I click the gear icon on a game, but no matter what I put in it either says the path is too long, or it thinks it's a system folder if it starts with a ".", or some other kind of error.

The Ubuntu path to the file I'm trying to load (Mass Effect 3) is:

./.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/4132860189/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Origin Games/Mass Effect Legendary Edition/Game/ME3/Binaries/Win64/MassEffect3.exe

I've tried all kinds of combinations in Origin, like:

• \Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Mass Effect Legendary Edition\Game\ME3\Binaries\Win64\MassEffect3.exe
• \Origin Games\Mass Effect Legendary Edition\Game\ME3\Binaries\Win64\MassEffect3.exe
• \Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Mass Effect Legendary Edition\Game\ME3\

but I always get one of those errors. I'm not sure what Origin is looking for. What can I put in to get Origin to find it? Thanks!

Answer 1

According to this Reddit comment Proton is bad for non-Steam games. The gist of it is that Proton is creating a container with everything it needs and circumventing that effectively negates using Proton. Lutris is considered a best alternative; it's been around for many years and supports a lot of games and launchers, and it's also Wine-based like Proton.

As for the issue there seems to be a variety of problems:

• . at the start of a path points to "the directory this program was started from". If you're using the long path listed above to point the Steam/Origin client to the game it's likely interpreting it something like "./.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/4132860189/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Origin Games/Mass Effect Legendary Edition/&./.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/4132860189/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Origin Games/Mass Effect Legendary Edition/Game/ME3/Binaries/Win64/MassEffect3.exe", which is clearly just broken (& for separating the combined paths, not an actual part of it).

• \ does not work for paths on Unix-like systems as it "escapes" the next character. So, \P may be getting converted to a single character, which destroys the path. On the other hand / does work for paths on Windows.

Using an absolute path rather than relative should help, though we already know getting this particular thing working would be a bad idea anyways. Relative paths begin with ./ or ../, so they can start from wherever. Absolute paths start at the root of a storage device, like / on Unix-like systems or C:\ on Windows. It's like using "follow the landmarks" directions vs following someone who definitely knows the way.