Between them you get a free competitive shooter, a hundred hour open world, four player co-op, and a roguelike you can finish a run of in half an hour. There is something here for most kinds of player.
We picked these on how good they are to play, not on how easy they are to install. Every game works on Ubuntu, either as a native Linux build, through Proton, or by streaming(Cloud Gaming), and each card tells you which. This is the action chapter of our list of the best games for Ubuntu.
Think we missed one? Let us know in the comments, or get in touch if you have questions.
Competitive Shooters
The games people actually open every night. All five are free, and the top two need no setup at all.
NATIVE LINUX
Valve’s tactical shooter, rebuilt on Source 2 and still the benchmark for competitive first person aiming.
Two teams, one bomb, no respawns, and thirty seconds to decide whether the round is already lost. Every match is a small economy game layered on top of gunfights: what you buy this round depends on what you lost in the last one. The skill ceiling is effectively infinite, which is why people are still learning smoke lineups a decade in. Sub-tick updates and the reworked smokes made a twenty year old formula feel current again.
RUNS VIA PROTON
A 6v6 hero shooter built on Marvel’s roster, with destructible environments and team-up abilities.
It borrows the hero shooter template and then does something genuinely its own with it: the walls come down. Buildings collapse, cover disappears mid-fight, and sightlines you relied on thirty seconds ago are gone. Team-up moves reward stacking specific characters together, so squad composition matters more than raw aim. It is chaotic in a way that keeps casual players competitive.
RUNS VIA PROTON
A game show themed shooter where the whole map is destructible and cash extraction is the objective.
Built by ex-Battlefield developers, and it shows. You are not holding a point so much as removing the floor underneath it. Teams crack open vaults, haul cash to a deposit station, and defend it while two other squads try to bring the building down. Rounds end in genuine chaos. It is the best argument going that destruction should be a mechanic, not a cutscene.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Blizzard’s team based hero shooter, now free to play and listed on Steam simply as Overwatch.
The character design is still the best in the genre. Every hero reads instantly, and the counter-picking loop means a losing fight is often a swap away from a winning one. It rewards coordination over reflexes more than most shooters, which makes it one of the friendlier competitive games to pick up in your thirties. Platinum on Proton means it runs without a single tweak.
NATIVE LINUX
The class based shooter that defined the genre, free since 2011 and still running a native Linux client.
Nine classes, no loadout grind that matters, and a sense of humour almost nothing has matched since. A good Engineer nest or a well-timed Spy backstab still produces the kind of story you tell someone afterwards. It is old, and it looks it, but it will run on essentially any machine in the house and there is no barrier to trying it.
Co-op and Squad Action
Bring three friends. These are the games that are better with voice chat on.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Four player co-op against bug and robot armies, with orbital strikes you call in yourself.
The friendly fire is the point. Every stratagem you call down, from a 500kg bomb to a resupply pod, lands wherever you threw the beacon, including on your own squad. That turns a straightforward third person shooter into a comedy of timing and shouted warnings. The ongoing galactic war ties every player’s missions into one shared front, so a night’s play actually moves something.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Third person melee and gunplay against swarms of Tyranids, at a scale the first game could not manage.
It solves the problem every Warhammer game has: making you feel enormous. Chainsword executions, a gun that never quite runs dry, and hordes of thousands rendered on screen rather than implied. The campaign plays in three player co-op and there is a separate PvE mode with class progression. If you have never touched the setting, it is the most accessible way in.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Four space dwarves mine a fully destructible procedural cave system while it tries to eat them.
Every cave is generated, and every wall can be drilled through, which means the route out is whatever your team carves. The four classes genuinely need each other: someone has to place the zip line, someone has to light the room. It has the warmest community in co-op gaming, largely because the game rewards helping rather than scoring. Rock and Stone.
RUNS VIA PROTON
A tense PvPvE bounty hunt in 1890s Louisiana, where sound travels and a single shot gives you away.
No other shooter makes silence this frightening. Ammunition is scarce, weapons are slow black powder rifles, and every crow you startle broadcasts your position to the other teams on the map. You can spend ten minutes crossing a swamp without firing once and it will be the most tense ten minutes of your week. Death is permanent for that hunter, which is exactly why it works.
Big Single Player Action
The blockbusters. Every one of these is a Windows game running through Proton, and every one is rated Gold or better.
RUNS VIA PROTON
A medieval prequel that trades DOOM Eternal’s air juggling for a shield saw and standing your ground.
id Software deliberately grounded this one. Where Eternal wanted you airborne and chaining dashes, The Dark Ages wants you planted, parrying with a shield and swinging back. It is slower on paper and somehow heavier to play, in a good way. There are also dragon and mech sections, which sound ridiculous and mostly are, but the core loop is the strongest melee shooting id has built.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Kratos and Atreus close out the Norse saga, with heavier combat and a much larger set of realms.
The axe throw is still one of the best feeling mechanics in any action game, and the sequel widens the loadout without diluting it. What lifts it above spectacle is the writing: a story about a father who knows how it ends and a son who does not. The realms are far more varied than the 2018 game, and the pacing rarely sags across a long campaign.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Both Peter Parker and Miles Morales, across a New York expanded to include Brooklyn and Queens.
Traversal is the whole argument. The web wings turn crossing the map from a chore into the reason you keep playing, and the swinging remains the most convincing physical movement in any open world. Two playable Spider-Men keeps the combat fresh, since Miles and Peter build in different directions. Platinum on Proton, so this one just launches.
RUNS VIA PROTON
An action RPG drawn from Journey to the West, with transformations and staff combat over long boss fights.
It looks extraordinary, but the reason to play it is the staff. Three stances, each with its own rhythm, plus transformations that hand you an entirely different moveset mid-fight. The bosses are the content, and there are far more of them than the runtime suggests. Anyone who bounced off Soulslikes for being obtuse will find this one much more willing to explain itself.
RUNS VIA PROTON
A samurai open world set during the Mongol invasion, with stance based duels and no map clutter.
It replaced the waypoint marker with wind, and that single decision fixes most of what is tiring about open world games. You follow a gust to your objective and end up somewhere else, which is the point. The duels are clean, readable and lethal, built on switching stances to match the enemy in front of you. The Iki Island expansion is included.
Open World Action
Big maps, long campaigns, and enough side content to lose a month in.
RUNS VIA PROTON
FromSoftware’s open world Soulslike, and the game most people mean when they say action RPG now.
It took the Souls formula and removed the wall. If a boss is beating you, ride away and come back stronger, which quietly makes the hardest series in the genre the most approachable entry in it. The world tells you almost nothing and rewards you for looking anyway. Two thousand Proton reports and a Gold rating say you can stop worrying about whether it runs.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Night City, rebuilt. A first person RPG that is now a very different game from the one that launched.
The 2.0 rework and Phantom Liberty rebuilt the skill trees, the police, the cyberware and the driving, and the result is the game it was pitched as. Night City is still the best realised city in games, dense enough that walking is a legitimate way to spend an evening. Build variety is real: a netrunner and a blades build play almost nothing alike.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Rockstar’s western, and still the most detailed open world anyone has shipped.
It is deliberately slow, and that is the whole design. Horses need care, guns need cleaning, and travelling somewhere takes the time it should. Fight that and it is frustrating. Accept it and you get the best paced story Rockstar has written, carried by a character study that earns its ending. The world reacts to small things in ways you keep noticing hundreds of hours in.
RUNS VIA PROTON
The 2025 Enhanced edition, with ray tracing and the current version of GTA Online.
The three protagonist structure still holds up: swapping between Michael, Franklin and Trevor mid-heist was a genuinely new idea and nobody has copied it well since. The Enhanced release brings the visuals up to date and keeps the modding scene alive. Note that GTA Online uses BattlEye, so stick to the story mode if you would rather not think about anti-cheat.
Fast Indie Action and Roguelikes
Shorter sessions, sharper design, and two of them are native Linux builds.
RUNS VIA PROTON
Supergiant’s roguelike sequel, this time playing as Melinoë against Chronos.
The first Hades made dying part of the story, and the sequel widens it: two routes out of the Crossroads, a magic system layered over the weapons, and a cast that reacts to your progress properly. Runs are twenty to forty minutes, which makes it the best game on this list for an hour after work. Platinum rated, and it plays perfectly with a controller.
NATIVE LINUX
The long awaited sequel, faster and more aggressive than Hollow Knight, with a native Linux build.
Hornet moves quickly, and the game is built around that: less exploring in silence, more darting through a room while it tries to kill you. The world is larger than Hallownest and the difficulty is genuinely higher, which is the main thing to know before buying. At twenty dollars for a game this size it is the best value on the list, and it runs natively.
NATIVE LINUX
A roguevania with tight two dimensional combat, still receiving content years after release.
It has the cleanest combat feel of any two dimensional action game, largely because the rolls and hits land exactly when you expect. The weapon pool is enormous and each run pushes you into a build you did not plan. Long term progression is permanent, so a failed run still moves you forward. Native Linux, and light enough for a laptop.
RUNS VIA PROTON
You move, it shoots. A five dollar game that created an entire subgenre.
There is one input, movement, and somehow thirty minutes of escalating decisions on top of it. Weapons fire automatically, evolve when paired with the right passive, and by the end of a run the screen is unreadable in the best way. It costs less than a coffee, runs on anything, and has swallowed more evenings than games costing sixty dollars.
Cloud Only Action Games
These three will not install on Ubuntu, because their anti-cheat blocks it. Streaming is not a workaround here, it is simply how you play them, and on a decent connection it is a perfectly good way to do it.
We checked every one of these in the Boosteroid catalogue by hand before linking it, rather than trusting a third party list. Boosteroid runs in a browser, so there is nothing to install on Ubuntu at all.
CLOUD GAME
Bungie’s sci-fi shooter, with the best gunplay in the genre and a decade of content behind it.
No shooter has ever made weapons feel this good, and after ten years the difference between a decent hand cannon and a great one is still worth chasing. Raids are six player puzzle boxes that expect you to talk to each other. It will not run locally on Linux, so streaming is the route, and Boosteroid carries both the Steam and Epic versions.
CLOUD GAME
The biggest annual shooter there is, covering multiplayer, Warzone and the campaign.
Whatever you think of the yearly cycle, the moment to moment gunplay is still the most polished in the business, and Warzone remains the battle royale most of your friends already have installed. Ricochet anti-cheat blocks Linux at the kernel level, so a local install is not happening. Boosteroid carries a long list of entries, including recent Black Ops releases on both Steam and Battle.net.
CLOUD GAME
Epic’s battle royale, plus the creative modes, Festival and LEGO Fortnite.
It stopped being just a battle royale years ago. Between Zero Build, Festival, LEGO Fortnite and the enormous creative scene it is closer to a platform than a game, and it is where a lot of younger players spend their time. Epic has never enabled Easy Anti-Cheat for Linux, so cloud is the only route. It is on both Boosteroid and Amazon Luna.
Every Game at a Glance
Open the full comparison table
| Game | Type | How it runs | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counter-Strike 2 | Tactical FPS | Native Linux | Free |
| Marvel Rivals | Hero shooter | Runs Via Proton | Free |
| THE FINALS | Objective FPS | Runs Via Proton | Free |
| Overwatch 2 | Hero shooter | Runs Via Proton | Free |
| Team Fortress 2 | Class based FPS | Native Linux | Free |
| Helldivers 2 | Co-op shooter | Runs Via Proton | $39.99 |
| Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 | Action shooter | Runs Via Proton | $59.99 |
| Deep Rock Galactic | Co-op shooter | Runs Via Proton | $29.99 |
| Hunt: Showdown 1896 | PvPvE shooter | Runs Via Proton | $29.99 |
| DOOM: The Dark Ages | First person shooter | Runs Via Proton | $69.99 |
| God of War Ragnarök | Action adventure | Runs Via Proton | $59.99 |
| Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 | Open world action | Runs Via Proton | $59.99 |
| Black Myth: Wukong | Action RPG | Runs Via Proton | $59.99 |
| Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR’S CUT | Open world action | Runs Via Proton | $59.99 |
| Elden Ring | Action RPG | Runs Via Proton | $59.99 |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | Action RPG | Runs Via Proton | $59.99 |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | Open world action | Runs Via Proton | $59.99 |
| Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced | Open world action | Runs Via Proton | $29.99 |
| Hades II | Action roguelike | Runs Via Proton | $29.99 |
| Hollow Knight: Silksong | Metroidvania | Native Linux | $19.99 |
| Dead Cells | Action roguelike | Native Linux | $24.99 |
| Vampire Survivors | Bullet heaven | Runs Via Proton | $4.99 |
| Destiny 2 | Looter shooter | Cloud Game | Free |
| Call of Duty | First person shooter | Cloud Game | Varies by title |
| Fortnite | Battle royale | Cloud Game | Free |
Getting These Running on Ubuntu
Every card on this page carries one of three labels. Here is what they mean, and what you need to do about each one.
Almost everything above is one setting away from working. Here is the short version.
sudo apt install steam-installer
In Steam, open Settings, then Compatibility, and switch on “Enable Steam Play for all other titles”. This is what makes every blue label on this page work. You do it once.
Swap 730 for the app ID of any game. Every card above lists its own command.
For a longer walkthrough, see our guide on how to install Steam on Ubuntu. If a game is not on Steam at all, Lutris handles Epic, GOG and standalone launchers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best action game for Ubuntu?
Counter-Strike 2 is the best overall action game for Ubuntu. It has a native Linux build made by Valve, its anti-cheat works normally on Linux, and it costs nothing. For single player, Elden Ring is the strongest pick, and it runs through Proton with no setup beyond switching Proton on.
Do action games run well on Ubuntu?
Yes. Most of them run at the same frame rate they would on Windows, and a few run faster. Proton has closed the gap almost entirely for single player games. The exceptions are competitive shooters whose publishers have blocked Linux in their anti-cheat, and those are streamed instead.
Which action games have native Linux versions?
On this list, Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, Hollow Knight: Silksong and Dead Cells ship native Linux builds. Native is convenient but it is not automatically better. Some native ports are older than the Windows version and perform worse, so do not choose a game on that label alone.
Can I play Call of Duty or Fortnite on Ubuntu?
Not by installing them. Both use anti-cheat that has never been enabled for Linux, so a local install will not launch. You can play both through a cloud gaming service, where the game runs on Windows in a data centre and streams to your browser. Fortnite is on Boosteroid and Amazon Luna, and Call of Duty is on Boosteroid.
Will I get banned for playing on Linux?
Not for games that support Linux, which is nearly everything here. You can be banned for forcing a game that has explicitly blocked Linux, because the anti-cheat treats the compatibility layer as tampering. If a game is labelled cloud on this page, that is why.
What hardware do I need for these games?
An AMD graphics card gives the smoothest experience on Ubuntu because the drivers are open source and already in the kernel. NVIDIA works too, using the proprietary driver. For the indie games near the bottom of this list, integrated graphics are genuinely fine. For the blockbusters, or if your machine is older, streaming is the practical answer.
Are the prices on this page current?
They are the Steam list prices in US dollars at the time of writing, before any sale. Steam runs large seasonal sales several times a year, so most paid games here will be cheaper than listed at some point. Check the store page for the live price in your region.
More Ubuntu gaming guides: The Best Games for Ubuntu · Best Linux Distros for Gaming · Top Strategy Games for Ubuntu · Best Adventure Games for Ubuntu