There is the steam linux environment [1] which is pretty standard for native linux builds on steam. And that works independently of the distribution steam is actually installed on.
I think it should be possible to use it without steam too..
The libs in the steam-runtime are often times very old. The newest compiler for building inside the runtime seems to be gcc 5. I understand the need for stability, but why isn't this stuff updated from time to time?
because you would need multiple runtime versions and games would need to target a specific runtime version.
because if you don't keep your game up to date, it would not run. in windows you basically can run games for way longer because libraries are way more binary compatible. for running webservers/cloud whatever a breakage doesn't hurt and removes old crud, but sometimes the old crud is used in xyz in a way that nobody tought and without it the game would crash, that's why you would need to target a specific runtime.
the same thing more or less did windows up to 7 relativ well, via the version selection. unfortunatly windows 10 broke some games even with the version selection.
Games can have their dependencies shipped with them with or without static linking. They aren't transferring data to another game that has to line up exactly.
CG programs and renderers need to have subdivision surface data be the same and image filtering be the same. They may be able to architect their way around standard library versions, but games don't need this same treatment because they stand alone.
> because you would need multiple runtime versions and games would need to target a specific runtime version.
Yes. Steam already supports multiple Proton runtimes, why not multiple Steam runtimes as well? With the latter, native Linux games could say in their metadata which one they need and the user wouldn't even notice.
> And that works independently of the distribution steam is actually installed on
Not entirely, it still relies on some system libraries, and you will see there are times where games do not run on Arch despite using the steam runtime. It is known.
[1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime