system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
Valve did the boost to the finish line but a lot came from Linux enthusiasts for free.
gpt
Yes. I remember gaming on my unibody MacBook, where the first half of it's life I ran MAC OSX, and second half was an Ubuntu distro. 

Getting things to work *well* in WINE was an adventure and a half. I remember spending hours with a friend trying to get Black Mesa running, and the game still bugged out. 

Compare that to my steam deck, where I click install and launch the game, and it works flawlessly 95% of the time. 

It took a lot of people and companies to get here. It took AMD owning the console hardware for 2 generations in a row, forcing everyone to x86 optimizations in development. 

It took years for the AMD Linux drivers to get as good as they are today. 

It took years for WINE to knock out the bugs, and to encourage tools like playOnLinux or ProtonDB to be developed. 

It cost Valve alone *3 commercial hardware failures* before they came out with a device that actually encouraged Linux adoption. 

It took years of Indie developers being the only ones who released games on Linux to provide the community basics of development and hope for the future. (SHOUT-OUT: FTL: Faster than Light). 

The growth of gaming on Linux has been a team effort across hundreds of organizations and millions of people. We are past the age of scientific/technical development where one guy in a room can finish the project from start to finish. 

I haven't even recognized Linus yet.... No one innovates alone.