https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24505
--- Comment #23 from Guilherme S. oguilherme@protonmail.com --- Funny thing... So, it turns out that is not even necessary to download the patched executable from GameCopyWorld to achieve better performance.
The original "PlantsVsZombies.exe" (from Steam), already packs this "patched" binary inside itself. They're not exactly the same, however. The one from GameCopyWorld definitely removes some extra DRM stuff, such as Steam API integration.
Anyway, once you launch the game using the original executable, it unpacks and runs this new executable called "popcapgame1.exe", located on C:\ProgramData\PopCap Games\PlantsVsZombies.
However, the original "PlantsVsZombies.exe" doesn't stop running, since it's probably doing a lot of DRM-related checks in background and communicating back and forth with "popcapgame1.exe", thus hurting the game's performance (I'm guessing).
Anyway, if you copy this "popcapgame1.exe" executable and use it as a replacement for the original "PlantsVsZombies.exe", the performance hit is _much less_ severe. And this was observed by me while playing on both Windows 10 and Arch Linux.
So maybe this issue isn't exclusive to Wine...?
It would be great if more people were able to reproduce and confirm everything I said, in order for this bug to be finally closed.
Regards