Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
I hear this story quite a lot. “Proton is what allowed me to switch” and yet people are still moaning at me for focusing on Proton and Valve and not Wine directly for the article lol
I’d say the best contribution is they managed to build a mainstream commercial service on top of all of this!