You can buy them used if you can find them. I bought 2 directly from Valve before they were discontinued then a 3rd on Ebay.

I read Tim Sweeney’s name for the first time in this thread and don’t care enough to look him up, so I can’t comment on him. I don’t play a lot of multiplayer either, so Proton has been pretty great for me.

Pretty much the only remaining hurdle to Linux gaming is kernel-level anti-cheat which may be going away in the near future.