Heroic Games Launcher

Epic Games has never shipped a Linux client, and neither has GOG. Yet one gives away free games weekly and the other sells DRM-free classics — leaving Linux players with a library full of games they own but cannot open.

Heroic solves that. 12,000 stars, GPL-3.0. It is a graphical front end over Legendary (the open-source Epic CLI) and gogdl, plus automatic Wine and Proton configuration.

What it does:

• Sign in and sync libraries from Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Gaming into one interface with cover art, sizes and installation status.
• Download and install with a choice of location, resumable transfers and file verification.
• Configure the compatibility layer automatically — the most valuable part. On Linux it downloads and selects an appropriate Proton or Wine build, sets up DXVK and VKD3D to translate DirectX into Vulkan, and installs the runtimes a game needs. Configuring Wine by hand is genuinely tedious, and this wraps that layer away.
• Cloud save sync where the platform supports it.
• Per-game settings: a specific Proton version, environment variables, launch arguments, and whether to enable Gamescope or MangoHud.
• Windows and macOS builds exist too; on Windows the appeal is playing Epic games without installing the Epic client.

To be clear about:

• It does not guarantee a game runs. Wine and Proton compatibility varies by title, and multiplayer games with kernel-level anti-cheat generally cannot run on Linux at all — a restriction imposed by the anti-cheat vendors, not the launcher. Check ProtonDB or WineHQ for your specific game before committing.
• It does not handle Steam. Steam has an official Linux client with Proton built in and needs nothing extra; Heroic covers everything outside Steam.
• There is a performance cost. Games running through translation layers typically achieve lower frame rates than on native Windows, varying by title and graphics driver.
• Platform accounts require signing in through its embedded login window, as those platforms demand. Heroic itself needs no registration.
• macOS is more constrained: Apple provides no Vulkan, so additional translation is involved and fewer games work than on Linux.

Among the alternatives, Lutris is more Linux-focused and broader, covering emulators and many storefronts, at the cost of more complex configuration; Heroic is narrower and easier to start with. They coexist happily, and many people use Heroic for Epic and GOG with Lutris for everything else.