Installing Starcraft 2 PlayOnLinux

PlayOnLinux does a terrible job with Starcraft II at the time of this writing. If your end goal is playing Starcraft II on Linux, here's what worked for me, on Ubuntu 17.04

  1. Remove PlayOnLinux entirely.

    sudo apt-get remove playonlinux

  2. Tear out the wine that ships with the OS.

    sudo apt-get remove wine
sudo apt autoremove

  3. Enable 32 bit architecture

    sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

  4. Add the repo for wine staging.

    wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
sudo apt-key add winehq.key
sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ ubuntu_version main'

Where 'ubuntu_version' is version like bionic or eoan etc.

  1. Update and install

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install winehq-staging

  2. Grab battle.net installer

    wget -O Battle.net-Setup.exe https://www.battle.net/download/getInstallerForGame?os=win&locale=enUS&version=LIVE&gameProgram=BATTLENET_APP

  3. Configure wine by running winecfg and then adjust settings according to the screenshot below. Change out the resolution with your native resolution.

    winecfg

    Wine Configuration Screenshot

  4. Run it with wine

    wine Battle.net-Setup.exe

  5. From there you can pretty much kick off any Blizzard game such as Starcraft II, Diablo 3, or Heros of the Storm on Ubuntu but I've only tested this with Starcraft II.

Furthermore, I had to jump through some extra hoops to get my gaming laptop here to actually use the better of the two graphics card it has inside it. If you're in this boat too, you'll need to keep reading to get Starcraft II just right.

  • Launch "System Settings"
  • Open "Software and Drivers"
  • Access the tab, "Additional Drivers"

  • Switch to the latest binary drivers from the vendor. (Sorry Open Source community - I like Starcraft)

    Binary Drivers selected

  • Then tell Linux to always use your beefy card

    nvidia-settings

  • And set the Prime Profile to NVIDIA

--- This gets you running, but not stable. If I was playing in game more than a couple minutes I got an unhelpful blizzard error. So did some additional changes that have stabilized me.

    sudo apt-get install winetricks winbind

    winetricks corefonts vcrun2005 vcrun2008 vcrun2015

    cd "/home/rakaim/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Blizzard App/Battle.net.8394"

    mv "Battle.net Helper.exe" "Battle.net Helper.exe.old"

Installed winetricks and some supporting software. Then I had to rename the Battle.net Helper.exe to old.

Edit: I noticed that this directory "Battle.net.8394" changes its numbers on each Battle.net update. Take care to make the changes you need in the latest installed version.

Edit: New errors suggested that I needed to install winbind. It appears to have helped.

Edit: Upgraded to Ubuntu 17.04

Tags:

Wine

16.04

Playonlinux

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