It seems Puppy Games the developers behind fun games like Revenge of the Titans have expressed their concern about Linux sales.
They took to twitter to say this:
LINUX GAMERS! To date we've made just **$12,000** from Linux games in total for all time for all four of our games! This will not do!
— Puppygames (@puppygames) September 8, 2014
Linux is a small, but growing market we know that, but some developers aren't in it for fun and only see the numbers. They said in another tweet that a factor of 10 would make it more attractive.
Personally I doubt any single developer has made a figure of $120,000 (factor of 10 on their lifetime Linux sales) from a Linux game alone yet, and hell the vast majority of indie games coming out probably won't make that in their entire lifetime.
They have four games and three employees to maintain, so I can understand where they are coming from, but with a market that's still small developers shouldn't expect too much from it yet.
UPDATE
@gamingonlinux just Steam over the last 2 years. We only otherwise sell through Humble these days but that's so little money it's irrelevant
— Puppygames (@puppygames) September 8, 2014
It seems they are only counting Steam, so their original tweet seems a little baiting to get a reaction and more sales. Not a bad thing to try to get more sales, but maybe they should actively engage with the Linux community like some other developers do?
Take it with a grain of salt too, as tweets are hard to get the message across and it's probably more friendly than it seems at first glance.
They aren't counting their own Humble Weekly Bundle which actually gave them revenue from Linux gamers at a mark around $14,000 (not counting charity) which is more than Steam, so they actually made a fair bit more from Linux than they have mentioned it seems.
They confirmed in a comment later it's around the $8,000 mark. That nearly doubled the figure in their original tweet.
They were in a Humble Bundle as well which they aren't counting, and to quote someone from reddit on the matter:
QuoteI'm curious what the breakdown by platforms was from them in the Humble Bundles. Based on this site HiB2 made $361214.76 from Linux users.
Assuming that all of them gave half to charity (leaving $180607.38) and split the non-charitable potion evenly 12 way between the 5 HiB2 games, the 6 HiB games that got pulled in and the tip for Wolfire, they should have gotten $15050.
I would also be interested to know how much they say they got from that Humble Bundle. I am pretty sure they used to do direct sales at one point too, so again a fair bit they don't seem to be counting.
Puppy Games have noted they aren't about to stop supporting Linux, but they see it as unprofitable:
@shadowrabbit64 @fdgonthier we've supported Linux for 11 years, not about to stop now. Just remarking that it is incredibly unprofitable
Puppygames (@puppygames) September 9, 2014
What do you make of all this? It's interesting to see.
If you want to support them consider buying their games on Steam. Looks like they could do with some more love from Linux gamers don't you think?
Cheeseness Sep 13, 2014
If I had to guess, I'd imagine that Minecraft's Linux player ratio would be lower than say, Trine, Amnesia, etc..
Quoting: CheesenessHas the Minecraft situation been different? I haven't spotted any indication of what percentage of their players are Linux users (although I don't really pay much attention to Minecraft stuff).
If I had to guess, I'd imagine that Minecraft's Linux player ratio would be lower than say, Trine, Amnesia, etc..
Is the author complaining about porting costs, poor sales on any supported platform and being sorry for supporting it?
Cheeseness Sep 13, 2014
Quoting: berarmaIs the author complaining about porting costs, poor sales on any supported platform and being sorry for supporting it?
Read back through and see who raised the topic of porting costs. Show me where Cas has said he's sorry for supporting Linux.
Cheeseness Sep 13, 2014
Quoting: berarmaI'm basing my comment on the tweets, that's the message that will get to the masses, not the comments on this post. He said "it's incredibly unprofitable".
He did, but that's doesn't quite match what you said.
I agree that the presentation of what he had to say was poor and likely to rub people up the wrong way, and I still find it hard to believe that it has been a literally unprofitable experience (low profit, sure), but there is real value in talking about actual experiences - talking about and trying to understand market dynamics is healthy and critical to safely navigating them.
IMO, there's more to be gained by offering suggestions about how to better approach the subject than there is to be gained by the sort of comment you made (if you *really* want to talk about Mojang, perhaps the lack of Linux support for Scrolls suggests something that the lack of available per-platform statistics doesn't).
Scrolls is done in Unity, not the same, although Unity now supports GNU/Linux. I don't know why there's no port. There might be technical or economical reasons behind, I don't know, but at least they won't go saying how bad or how much damage have we done to their cash.
Although it may not be the best market to try to build a profitable game business on, I think there's profit to make. And earning somewhere around $15,000-$30,000 just by doing and supporting one Java port should be worthwhile, specially when you're already supporting several platforms on the same game. This is good extra cash.
And another thing that seems out of the question is that the value of the game plays an important part in marketing dynamics. Like someone else said, maybe there's already too much DT games by now. Also, I think any GNU/Linux user that wanted to buy the game got it already in the HIB since most of us were well aware of them, I know I did. Do they want us to buy the game again to stop their public rants? Me not.
And what happens with the users that might be migrating to GNU/Linux but already bought their games for Windows? Should they buy again to show them you their new love? How do you account for so many variables and inter-independent factors? Looking at it with simple numbers doesn't get the whole picture.
Cheeseness Sep 14, 2014
Quoting: berarmaCheeseness, you're talking about interesting and complex marketing issues. It's impossible to know how supporting many platforms will affect general sales, so it's never accounted for.Ah, I don't believe this is the case at all. These are considerations that every developer takes into account when looking at moving across to additional platforms, with the exception of Linux - we're super unknown at the moment.
Quoting: berarmaAnyway, the tweets' focus is more on emotional ground than the technical one you want to talk about.Like I said, the wording wasn't that good, but the intention was to talk about markets, not to criticise Linux users. Anybody who sees it as the latter is taking something personally that they shouldn't, IMO.
Quoting: berarmaScrolls is done in Unity, not the same, although Unity now supports GNU/Linux. I don't know why there's no port. There might be technical or economical reasons behind, I don't know, but at least they won't go saying how bad or how much damage have we done to their cash.Nobody said that Puppy Games revenue had been hurt by Linux. When somebody's poorly worded a statement, putting further words into their mouth doesn't help at all.
As for Scrolls, so far as I can see, there aren't notable technical hurdles in the way. I wasn't claiming that it was a similar situation, just that the lack Linux builds speaks volumes about what priority they're giving Linux at the moment.
Quoting: berarmaAnd another thing that seems out of the question is that the value of the game plays an important part in marketing dynamics. Like someone else said, maybe there's already too much DT games by now. Also, I think any GNU/Linux user that wanted to buy the game got it already in the HIB since most of us were well aware of them, I know I did. Do they want us to buy the game again to stop their public rants? Me not.
I don't know that RoTT can really be classified as a "tower defence" game. At any rate, it's only one of four titles that we're talking about, and as Cas pointed out earlier, there really aren't many competitors in their spaces, so the market saturation argument doesn't really play a part. We brought up Humble revenue and possible sales erosion earlier in this thread.
So far as value goes, that's not necessarily all that relevant to what was being said, unless there's reason to believe that a game would appeal less to Linux users than users on other platforms. I'm not certain that there's that kind of demographic split, but I could speculate that some Linux users would be willing to pay for games that have high quality Linux support even if they aren't interested in playing them. From what I've seen of the purchasing behaviours of Windows users I know, they're usually willing to spend small amounts of money on games they don't care about, so if that's a dominant behaviour, I guess, that could be skewing things (personally though, I see the games in question as being well made and enjoyable).
After reading back through @puppygames' tweets (again), I can't see any Linux specific ranting - a little bit about the perceived value of entertainment and some grumbling about C#/MonoDevelop, sure, but definitely nothing aimed at Linux users or about Linux as a platform that constitutes a rant. I guess it's possible that something's been deleted? If so, I didn't spot it.
Quoting: berarmaLooking at it with simple numbers doesn't get the whole picture.This is why I was curious about active player stats a page or two back.
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