Best policy to install game with external launchers (i.e. Epic,Rockstar...)

Hello,
I did not find any information about this topic: what is the best policy about installing games let’s say from Epic Store?
I will try to explain better with an example: I want to install GTAV that is available on my Epic account, I already installed through Lutris the Epic client and now I see that there is a new GTAV installer for epic version that install again epic client and then let you install GTAV.
So should I install GTAV inside the Epic client profile/bottle together with every other game available for me in Epic client or should I replicate the installation of the Epic client for every game that I want to install through that client in different profiles/bottles?
What do you think is the best policy?
Thank you in advance for the answers.
Leonardo

One for each game.

The reason behind this is this: every game, or game engine, has its own specific needs in terms of installed libraries. Chances are that when one game runs fine but another doesn’t and you fix the other by installing a winetrick/protontrick, you break the first one.

This issue has become less of a problem with the current releases of Wine/Proton since those are now very rich on features.

A bit of history
In the times before Proton the standard operation procedure was to go to the winehq site, find the game, read the experiences of other users, install the recommended Wine version and winetricks manually and then pray for it to work.

TL;DR
So you could certainly try to run all Epic games from one Wine/Proton bottle but when you run into issues I recommend keeping this piece of history in mind. The original goal of a Wine bottle was to make one specific Windows program work.

1 Like

tfk is exactly right.

Even Wine Steam game installs automatically go into their own wine prefix, and each game in the native Steam app that uses proton also automatically ends up in it’s own prefix.

I learned the hard way that not following this practice can bring you a world of complications in Lutris.

I personally only install the launcher and install the games within the launcher (Epic and Uplay). It works like a charm.

And you are perfectly free to do so. Its true, Wine/Proton became much better. If, however, you run into trouble, remember what was the situation originally. It will help you solve these problems.

djib, I used to do the same thing, and some combinations of games will work perfectly fine this way, but then you will fine one that requires a winetrick, or other Linux, or Wine/Proton side configuration change, and you will find it breaks one, or more of the other games installed into the same prefix.

I own several games from the Epic Games Store. I used to just install Epic, and then install my desired games. Now, to get rid of the aforementioned headaches, I install an instance of Epic Games Store in a prefix by itself, for checking status of free games, or buying new ones. For games, I create a brand new prefix for each game, install the Epic Games Store inside that prefix, then install the related game.

The only real down sides to my approach is that A.) You can’t be running more than one Epic Games game at a time, and B.) a small amount of additional disk space is taken up by each install of the Epic Games Store.