Hello @Pyrowar, you can already do this by setting the per game compatibility tool settings before telling Steam to what you want before telling Steam to get the game. Regarding defaults, this comes down to who's providing support. If a game has a Linux native variant, that's first party support from the game dev instead of unofficial support via a compatibility tool and that should take priority.
@kisak-valve I'm talking from user friendliness standpoint. Linux native can be a footgun and can cause more issues than it solves. I just want to bridge the gap between forcing compatibility tools and choosing the downloaded version right from the get go. All I'm asking for is a prompt window. Just like the one you get when you are informed that the game works best with a controller.
If a game has a Linux native variant, that's first party support from the game dev instead of unofficial support via a compatibility tool and that should take priority.
Unfortunately that isn't the case majority of the time. Steam does not check if the native version is still compatible with modern linux distributions (even just the ones officially supported by Valve).
Nothing extracted yet.
Right now Steam defaults to always choosing native Linux versions over Windows ones. Unfortunately a lot of native versions work worse than desired - that's mainly the issue with their age and incompatibility with modern APIs. The obvious solution is to download the Windows version of the game and run in through wine proton.
I suggest adding a prompt for choosing the version that should be installed to preemptively avoid the obvious user error that comes from not checking protondb (maybe add protondb link to the prompt to inform user of existence of that site?) as Windows versions have better chances of working as desired.
In case of larger titles, the moment you realize you've just downloaded 40+ gigs of an old linux native version that surely won't work is very painful and even rage inducing sometimes as you will need to redownload the entire game.