How to download Windows games from Steam onto a Linux computer?

Did you install Steam for Linux? If so you will only be able to play the games that are supported on Linux.

You can play the Windows games by installing Steam through Wine. See here for more information

The terminal command you are looking for is:

sudo apt-get install wine
winetricks steam

Note that it still may not be possible to play all games on Linux. The above should work for some games, even though there may be a performance hit.

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An alternative could be PlayOnLinux. You install Steam on it and then can play your games as per normal.

If you don't want to install the Windows version of Steam and just want to download the Windows binaries for a game you can use SteamCMD which does have a Linux version and an option for force downloading binaries for any given platform.

You'll need to know the SteamID of the game which you can find from steamdb.info.

./steamcmd.sh 

@sSteamCmdForcePlatformType windows 
login <USERNAME>
app_update <STEAM_ID> validate
quit

The game will appear as Installed in Steam for Linux but won't start from there so you'll have to start the game manually with wine. I'm not sure whether automatic updates will work.

There's also an option for forcing installation dir but I haven't tried it:

force_install_dir ../games/

Using SteamCMD won't work if the game uses Steam's digital restrictions management (DRM) scheme and you'll need to use the Windows version of Steam through wine instead.

In 2018 Steam introduced something called Proton, which is a fork of Wine that's integrated into Steam and continually updated.

It can be enabled under Steam > Settings > Steam Play by checking the tickboxes:

• Enable Steam Play for supported titles will let you download and play titles already tested under Proton
• Enable Steam Play for all other titles will let you download and play any game using Proton, although keep in mind that those are untested waters so there is no guarantee that everything will work

More information:

• Introducing a new version of Steam Play
• Requirements
• Compatibility database