I don't have your other games, but I do have a few Worms games and they worked out of the box for me with GE Proton on NixOS.
I'm not saying "you're doing it wrong", because obviously if you're having trouble then that is, if nothing else, bad UX design, but I actually am kind of curious as to what you're doing different than me. I have an extremely vanilla NixOS setup that boots into GameScope + Tenfoot and I drive everything with a gamepad and it works about as easily as a console does for me.
If anything this is the challenge with PC as a platform being so varied, any random software/hardware/config variation could bring a whole load of quirks.
That probably includes anything that isn't a PC in a time-capsule from when the game originally released, so any OS/driver changes since then, and I don't think we've reached the point where we can emulate specific hardware models to plug into a VM. One of the reasons the geforce/radeon drivers (eg, the geforce "game ready" branding) are so big is that they carry a whole catalogue of quirk workarounds for when the game renderer is coded badly or to make it a better fit to hardware and lets them advertise +15% performance in a new version. Part of the work for wine/proton/dxvk is going to be replicating that instead of a blunt translation strictly to the standards.
Yeah, I think Linus himself pointed out that the desktop is the hardest platform to support because it's unbelievably diverse and varied.
With regards to Linux I generally just focus on hardware from brands that have historically had good Linux support, but that's just a rule of thumb, certainly not perfect.
If you need to use GE Proton then Proton doesn't "Just Work" by any definition. It "Just Works" if you jump through these other hoops and include community fixes. And then if the GE version doesn't work maybe you have to try Experimental or sometimes even Hotfix. All very much not "Just Works". Windows users don't have to download community versions of the Steam runtime in order to play certain games and then play whack-a-mole with versions whenever a new game comes out. There must be a vast difference between what "Just Works" means to folks who have used Linux for years and years and folks who come from Windows. This comment from the Far Cry 5 ProtonDB page highlights this perfectly I think: "Play great with some script. Disable hyperthreading in bios to speed up loading game"
Edit: Just tested another game for "Just Works" status.
Platinum support. 14 minutes before my first crash. Latest NixOS w/latest NVidia drivers. I have had luck on most games I play. But they also always seem to require some sort of effort to tweak settings to get it into a playable state. I'm sure I could spend 15-30 minutes researching KCD2 Steam Proton issues and get it resolved. That's effort I wouldn't have to make on Windows.
> That's effort I wouldn't have to make on Windows.
It's weird the amount of amnesia people seem to have with all the bullshit associated with Windows and Windows gaming. I think you're being absolutely ridiculous if you're claiming that things consistently work better with Windows, even for Windows games. There's been plenty of times when I had to do shit like disable "Data Execution Prevention" [1], or install weird wrappers for older games [2], or if I'm very lucky I have to go find the executable, right click on it and run with compatibility mode.
I don't think you're lying or anything, but I do think you're wrong; I have spent many hours debugging bullshit with Windows to make games run, especially older games but not always. For example, I couldn't get Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena to work on Windows (when it was new) initially because of a weird bugginess associated with Securom and Windows. That was a headache of fighting with registry files and reinstalling to eventually get it work. I had many issues with stability when playing Borderlands on Windows, to a point that it became a running joke with my friends (despite having an up to date video card and plenty of memory). These aren't the most up to date examples because I got fed up enough that I ran away to Linux.
I admittedly don't play through a lot of newer games, but I do occasionally play through them, and I played through the entirety of Marvel's Spider-man and Myles Morales, including DLC, without any crashes and as far as I can tell literally no issues at all. I was also able to install and play Resident Evil Village, though I haven't beaten that one yet (but I have played for more than fifteen minutes). Obviously sample size of one though.
GE Proton was something I installed when I was installing the rest of my SteamOS stuff with a custom built machine, so I agree it's not "Just Works" but it was a one time thing I did and never thought about it again. I'm not sure what it buys me over regular Proton honestly; I installed it because someone told me to install it and it's not been an issue.
Nvidia drivers are definitely pretty hit-or-miss on Linux though (mostly miss), no argument on that. I usually just buy AMD and it's a non-issue.
I don't really care if you run Windows, if you like it then you're of course free to make your own bad decisions, but I just think you're wrong if you claim Windows doesn't have its share of bullshit involving basically anything graphical.
I'm not saying "you're doing it wrong", because obviously if you're having trouble then that is, if nothing else, bad UX design, but I actually am kind of curious as to what you're doing different than me. I have an extremely vanilla NixOS setup that boots into GameScope + Tenfoot and I drive everything with a gamepad and it works about as easily as a console does for me.