There was a major update to the original Quake game. I've played it many times on this computer but it won't load at all now. According to the Proton DB, it's Platinum, but for me it's Borked. I've tried multiple versions of Proton, the oldest I have listed as well as 6.3.6, which everyone says works. One person on ProtonDB said you need to add "+r_rhirenderfamily opengl" to the launch options, doesn't work for me though. When I click the Play button, the menu option comes up to Play Quake, Play Quake (Original) and 2 other options that are (Original) for the expansions. When I select the first option, it loads Microsoft VC Redist, then closes and nothing. When I choose the second (Original), it installs MS VC Redist, then a black box shows up (normally shows Quake) then vanishes and nothing. I upgraded my Nvidia driver to 470. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know if this is the best forum for this (don't Steam forums deal with Proton issues?), but assuming this is the place to ask for help, and that you want help. In that case, you need to give more info. What is your hardware configuration? What operating system are you using (including the version and any non-standard upgrade type things you have done to it)? Are you using Xorg or wayland? Do all your other games still work? Did it break after a software update you made, or was upgrading the Nvidia driver a response to the game breaking, and there were no software updates by you in between the time the game last worked and the time it failed?
That being said, if you are not too invested in your particular installation of that game , you could try completely uninstalling the game including any configuration files it may have left behind outside of steam directories, and then reinstalling. That is a usual early recommended step, if a Steam game acts wonky and you can't figure out why.

I'm running KDE Neon. I believe it uses Xorg. I'm not sure when the last time I played Quake was, but I'm pretty sure it was earlier this year but several months ago at least. I upgraded the video driver in an attempt to remediate the issue with the game not running. I did uninstall it and reinstall the game, but no change. Yes other games work, some require different versions of Proton to work but the other games do load and play.

You answered almost none of my questions, but I will give you two suggestions. Check out what the Lutris website says ( if their install script is not vanilla it could include a solution, and if others there have your problem there might be useful info in their posts). There are other modded versions of proton you can try (google for "GloriousEggroll").

I got the remaster to run. Had to install it to a filesystem that supports symbolic links (which is less than ideal when most mods want a case-insensitive FS), force to Proton version to 6.3, and, yes, reboot.

If I install it to an ExFAT-formatted FS, this happens:

The "original" still crashes on launch for me. But then, you'd use a source port for that anyway.

I figured it out. But Dugan had it, you have to force Quake to use Proton 6.3. It's not enough to set the global option to 6.3, you have to go into the Quake settings and tell it to use 6.3. Thanks everyone.