That's not how Valve caches shaders on Steam. They accommodate those DIY builds by compiling them on-machine with Fossilize, converting them to system-optimized files. For DirectX titles like Elden Ring, this effectively eliminates all shader compilation stutter in-game. It also doesn't rely on fancy "first playthrough" setups, since it's translating and optimizing the original shaders wholesale.
> It has nothing to do with Linux either.
It's an out-of-box feature with Steam on Linux. You can run all of this stuff on Windows too, but you'd have to build it from source and configure DXVK environments for each game by-hand. On Linux it all happens automatically.
It’s a factor of Steam not Linux. They could in theory do it for other platforms too.
Fossilize does require at least one playthrough because shader permutations can be generated at runtime. There’s no static shader setup that’s common to all games. It just means that the first playthrough doesn’t have to be the same person playing it right now
> It has nothing to do with Linux either.
It's an out-of-box feature with Steam on Linux. You can run all of this stuff on Windows too, but you'd have to build it from source and configure DXVK environments for each game by-hand. On Linux it all happens automatically.