Quick answer: GE-Proton 11-12 moves to Valve's Oct 31 bleeding-edge Wine, reworks DXVK submission throttling and memory eviction, overhauls D7VK for DirectDraw and D3D7 games, and adds an option that shows Xbox-style controller prompts on the Steam Deck.
GE-Proton 11-12 is out, and the changelog is a long one. The community Proton build now uses Valve's bleeding-edge Wine from October 31, plus newer commits. One of those changes makes XInput rescan controllers only when a device could actually have changed, which replaces the separate rescan hacks for Far Cry 4 and The Witcher 3. Controller rescanning was also behind the PlayStation controller slowdown that GE-Proton 11-10 fixed last month.
The graphics layers got plenty of work too. DXVK v3.1.1-174 reworks command submission throttling and memory eviction and fixes present timing. D7VK, which handles DirectDraw and Direct3D 7 era games, gets a large rework with gamma, display mode and present fixes plus new legacy aspect-ratio options. VKD3D-Proton moves to v3.1, with an Arc Raiders workaround and a fix for a ray tracing glitch in Unreal Engine 4 games on AMD.
For Steam Deck owners, a new PROTON_STEAM_INPUT_XBOX_PROMPTS option reports the Deck and the Steam Controller as an Xbox controller, so games show controller prompts instead of keyboard ones. It's on by default for Rune Factory 5. Armored Core VI controllers now work with Steam Input turned off, and DualSense haptics and adaptive triggers now work together over USB in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and both Horizon games.
Game fixes include a Helldivers 2 memory leak of about 360 MiB of RAM per hour, crashes after long sessions in Space Marine 2, and the FSR 4 option returning in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide on RDNA3 AMD systems.
GamingOnLinux notes that Valve's official Proton is usually the one to stick with in Steam. GE-Proton is most useful outside Steam, like with the Heroic Games Launcher, and the new Epic Games Launcher Preview uses it too.