Proton Update Revives C&C Workshop Levels on Steam Deck
Every Proton Experimental changelog is a preview of the library Steam Deck owners will take for granted next month — fixes stress-tested in the bleeding-edge branch before they roll into stable. Yesterday’s build is one of the most consequential in recent memory: six Command & Conquer classics get Workshop custom levels back, Lords of the Fallen is playable again after a Proton 11 regression, and Far Cry 5’s HDR output is finally behaving.
For handheld players, the through-line is simple. Valve isn’t patching these games — it’s patching the layer beneath them. When these fixes land, they’re permanent additions to the portable library, no game update required. That’s the Steam Deck’s quiet superpower, and this batch is a strong demonstration of it.
Workshop Wars: Six C&C Classics Get Their Mods Back
The headline fix covers Command & Conquer: Generals, Zero Hour, Renegade, Red Alert 3, C&C 3: Tiberium Wars, and Kane’s Wrath. Workshop integration is the difference between a classic RTS and one frozen in time — custom maps and mods are where these communities still live. On Deck, that matters double: the trackpads make cursor-driven interface work surprisingly well on a couch, but without Workshop detection, the handheld experience is trapped in vanilla territory.
The fact that Workshop detection broke at all is a reminder that compatibility work never ends, even for games pushing two decades old. This is the opposite of console preservation: instead of a remaster selling you the same maps again, Valve quietly fixes the plumbing, and suddenly a genre of strategy classics is viable in your bag again.
OLED HDR and a Lords of the Fallen Resurrection
Far Cry 5 getting its HDR path fixed is the sleeper win for Deck OLED owners. HDR is the OLED model’s marquee feature — the same HDR that just reached Deck OLED via remote play in beta — and every game that properly engages it strengthens the case for that display upgrade — while the squashed AMD driver warning removes one of those nagging pop-ups that break pick-up-and-play flow.
Lords of the Fallen returning to playable status proves the value of the Experimental safety net: stable-branch regressions happen, and this is the channel that catches them before most players ever notice. The Forza Horizon 4 memory leak fix targets KDE Wayland specifically — the exact desktop-mode environment Steam Deck runs. None of these fixes make headlines alone, but together they’re another layer of polish on the largest portable game library that exists — the same Proton layer that now auto-optimizes games for Deck.