The Skullgirls developers have finally written up an official blog post on the status of the Linux port.
A couple of notes from it:
QuoteSome have misinterpreted our inclusion of a free download of the Linux port for campaign backers at the $30 tier and above upon its completion as a promise that we, Lab Zero, would handle its development. However, it was included as a backer reward only – one that we hope we’ll still be able to deliver with the help and support of volunteers willing to work on it.
The above misconception regarding the Linux port has also led some people to believe that we are soliciting volunteers to do work on a port that we promised we would do ourselves, which is also untrue. We strongly believe in due pay for work done, and wish we could pay someone appropriate wages to port the game to Linux, but we simply don’t have the budget for that.
I take issue with things like this as if you're going to include something as a backer reward on your official crowdfunding page then that does suggest you are helping to fund the port.
Putting it on your official page with no intention of officially doing it seems more than a bit backwards.
Not only that, but their official tweet sounded pretty official:
#Skullgirls is coming to #Linux! Support us and get a download code and more characters! http://t.co/642MqVir91
Skullgirls (@Skullgirls) March 15, 2013
That tweet certainly seems like it's drawing in Linux users to help fund it no?
QuoteWhy is the Linux port a volunteer effort? Didn't you make over $800,000 in your crowdfunding campaign?
The Linux port started as a volunteer effort because someone approached us volunteering to do the port. The extra money raised beyond our initial $150,000 goal went to more content for the game and not to ports. That means none of the extra money raised went to the PC port either.
If you think that’s enough money to develop all of the extra content we promised, and produce all of the rewards for campaign backers, and still fund a proper port paying proper programmer salaries, then we don’t know what to tell you.
I still think that they had more than enough money to fund the port properly, but this is how it's going down now. Considering before the crowdfunding campaign began the game was already available for sale, and the campaign was only for DLC with massive over-funding I still struggle to see why they couldn't afford a Linux port. Do voice-overs and character models really take that much money to create?
This is coming from someone with no experience on the developer/business side of things, but still they didn't communicate it very well until now, and that was mainly the problem.
EDIT: They have noted in our comments that the extra funding went right back into their stretch-goals for more content.
It took ~18 months for them to come out with this. Why is it so hard for even indie developers to be open and honest with customers who help fund them? I just don't understand it at all, and we on Linux seem to be on the receiving end of this rather a lot. 7 Days To Die anyone?
It's another reason why I tell people not to buy a game until a developer confirms a Linux version exists, and why I don't personally fund anything using crowdfunding any more.
My pessimism aside: In the end I just hope the volunteers can come together and bring a Linux version out, as the game does look fantastic. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I wouldn't be surprised if all that extra money went to paying everyone more money (not saying that's bad), but if it only took 150k to get the dlc... then they could have done a lot more useful things for the game with the extra money.
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ElectricPrism Sep 16, 2014
To my knowledge Sound, Art & Video Assets are in no way locked into a platform.
Most game developers wrap methods & functions that access dependency libraries to a local API to make porting greatly simplified. It just sounds to me like their code is a trashy piece of evolved procedural code instead of pre-designed modular masterpiece.
If Linux developers ported Unreal Engine in 24 hours then seriously, how hard would it be in the hands of someone competent? Take a $75,000 Yearly Programmer Salary and divide it by 12, if a programmer had 1 month to complete the port it would only cost $6,250 wages.
They're telling us that out of the $828,000 they made they're unwilling to pay $6,250 to port to Linux? How sad.
Most game developers wrap methods & functions that access dependency libraries to a local API to make porting greatly simplified. It just sounds to me like their code is a trashy piece of evolved procedural code instead of pre-designed modular masterpiece.
If Linux developers ported Unreal Engine in 24 hours then seriously, how hard would it be in the hands of someone competent? Take a $75,000 Yearly Programmer Salary and divide it by 12, if a programmer had 1 month to complete the port it would only cost $6,250 wages.
They're telling us that out of the $828,000 they made they're unwilling to pay $6,250 to port to Linux? How sad.
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This is ridiculous. And it is very sad that a****** developers like these destroy crowdfunding :(
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WOW! That is one of the shadiest things I have ever read. I wouldn't even take a free steam key for this game now. Not that I was interested in one in the first place, but this just seals that deal. Greedy bastards.
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How is anyone supposed to volunteer into porting? Did they released source code or something?
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There is more information in the last pages of this thread: http://steamcommunity.com/app/245170/discussions/0/846962626943190654/#p1
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So, they advertised a Linux port but didn't actually mean that they would do the port, and yet they also say they don't want volunteers because they believe the port should be paid for? This makes no sense.
The backers at $30 and above should contact indiegogo and file a complaint. Between the tweets and the explicit promise of a Linux port on their own crowdfunding page, this is fraud.
The backers at $30 and above should contact indiegogo and file a complaint. Between the tweets and the explicit promise of a Linux port on their own crowdfunding page, this is fraud.
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I wouldn't be surprised if all that extra money went to paying everyone more money (not saying that's bad), but if it only took 150k to get the dlc... then they could have done a lot more useful things for the game with the extra money.
What we did with all of that extra money is put it toward making more content, which is readily apparent on [url=indiegogo.com/projects/keep-skullgirls-growing/]our Indiegogo page[/url].
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So, they advertised a Linux port but didn't actually mean that they would do the port, and yet they also say they don't want volunteers because they believe the port should be paid for? This makes no sense.
The backers at $30 and above should contact indiegogo and file a complaint. Between the tweets and the explicit promise of a Linux port on their own crowdfunding page, this is fraud.
We didn't say we don't want volunteers. We have some very skilled volunteers working on the port right now. What we said in that post was that we don't have the funds to pay for a port. We wish we did, because we know porting a game is difficult work, and we would want people to be paid for that work.
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How is anyone supposed to volunteer into porting? Did they released source code or something?
Anyone that wants to work on the port needs to be NDA'd because a portion of the codebase is proprietary, but we will consider just about anyone offering to work on it, and have NDA'd several people in the past few days to do exactly that.
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How is anyone supposed to volunteer into porting? Did they released source code or something?Anyone that wants to work on the port needs to be NDA'd because a portion of the codebase is proprietary, but we will consider just about anyone offering to work on it, and have NDA'd several people in the past few days to do exactly that.
Out of curiosity, how many people did you DNA 18 months ago, back on March 15 2013?
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I feel that there may have been some mismanagement and it annoys me they did not say sooner about the guy leaving, I could have dropped them a word when I had lots of time in July/August.
And this ex Linux porter seems a bit shady to me. I think the volunteers will do a fantastic job though :)
And this ex Linux porter seems a bit shady to me. I think the volunteers will do a fantastic job though :)
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This is surprisingly negative post. I'm disappointed. I expected more neutrality, but oh well.
The port is still being worked on, one way or another. Also no deadline was announced. I don't really get why many of you put it like it is never going to be ported.
The main problem here is obviously lack of transparency, which is being admitted and hopefully fixed.
I'm pretty amazed at how good people are at counting someone else's money. With no evidence people just assume these things and go bashing that specific someone else. Not mature. Not cool.
render,
I wonder, if there is a possibility of those volunteers being paid later down the line from the revenue the linux port generates. Am I right to assume that it is only fair that some kind of this thing happens?
The port is still being worked on, one way or another. Also no deadline was announced. I don't really get why many of you put it like it is never going to be ported.
The main problem here is obviously lack of transparency, which is being admitted and hopefully fixed.
I'm pretty amazed at how good people are at counting someone else's money. With no evidence people just assume these things and go bashing that specific someone else. Not mature. Not cool.
render,
I wonder, if there is a possibility of those volunteers being paid later down the line from the revenue the linux port generates. Am I right to assume that it is only fair that some kind of this thing happens?
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Hiya, Liam! I work for Lab Zero. I've been trying to keep people informed and be open about all of this. I'm happy to answer any questions or address concerns you might have.
To address some of the points in your post, you are right in that we didn't do enough to make it clear to people that it was a volunteer effort from the beginning. We wish we had, but there's nothing we can do about it now.
I don't mean to be nitpicky here, but since the Linux version was always a volunteer effort from the beginning, nothing has changed. This is how it's always been "going down." That doesn't excuse our own miscommunication about it, but I think it's important to note the distinction, since what you wrote implies that something has changed. What HAS changed is that there is a new group of people working on the port, when previously it was a solitary effort.
Until roughly July 2014, Lab Zero has never received any money for the sale of Skullgirls on any platform including Steam, and that is not retroactive, so we've never been making money off of the game until very recently.
Also, our game uses high-resolution 2D animation, not character models, which is very expensive to produce. Those extra funds raised have gone to further content development, which is still ongoing.
We did communicate over live streams and when asked on Twitter that the Linux version of Skullgirls was a volunteer effort, but we acknowledge that that was not enough, and it should have been readily apparent on our Indiegogo campaign page.
This makes it sound like we were intentionally keeping this information from people for a year and a half, which is not true. We've said multiple times publicly that the Linux version was a volunteer effort. It is only now that we're discovering that we didn't do enough to make this fact clear to the general Linux gaming community, and we are doing our best to have an open dialog with them about it.
The silver lining in this is that because of the discussions surrounding the Linux version, we've had several very skilled volunteers step forward to take a crack at the port, and the chances of it happening are looking better than before.
We know that's little consolation for the people who understood the port to be a fully-funded done deal, but we simply don't have the budget to pay proper programmer wages for a port.
To address some of the points in your post, you are right in that we didn't do enough to make it clear to people that it was a volunteer effort from the beginning. We wish we had, but there's nothing we can do about it now.
I still think that they had more than enough money to fund the port properly, but this is how it's going down now.
I don't mean to be nitpicky here, but since the Linux version was always a volunteer effort from the beginning, nothing has changed. This is how it's always been "going down." That doesn't excuse our own miscommunication about it, but I think it's important to note the distinction, since what you wrote implies that something has changed. What HAS changed is that there is a new group of people working on the port, when previously it was a solitary effort.
Considering before the crowdfunding campaign began the game was already available for sale, and the campaign was only for DLC with massive over-funding I still struggle to see why they couldn't afford a Linux port. Do voice-overs and character models really take that much money to create?
This is coming from someone with no experience on the developer/business side of things, but still they didn't communicate it very well until now, and that was mainly the problem.
Until roughly July 2014, Lab Zero has never received any money for the sale of Skullgirls on any platform including Steam, and that is not retroactive, so we've never been making money off of the game until very recently.
Also, our game uses high-resolution 2D animation, not character models, which is very expensive to produce. Those extra funds raised have gone to further content development, which is still ongoing.
We did communicate over live streams and when asked on Twitter that the Linux version of Skullgirls was a volunteer effort, but we acknowledge that that was not enough, and it should have been readily apparent on our Indiegogo campaign page.
It took ~18 months for them to come out with this.
This makes it sound like we were intentionally keeping this information from people for a year and a half, which is not true. We've said multiple times publicly that the Linux version was a volunteer effort. It is only now that we're discovering that we didn't do enough to make this fact clear to the general Linux gaming community, and we are doing our best to have an open dialog with them about it.
The silver lining in this is that because of the discussions surrounding the Linux version, we've had several very skilled volunteers step forward to take a crack at the port, and the chances of it happening are looking better than before.
We know that's little consolation for the people who understood the port to be a fully-funded done deal, but we simply don't have the budget to pay proper programmer wages for a port.
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render,
I wonder, if there is a possibility of those volunteers being paid later down the line from the revenue the linux port generates. Am I right to assume that it is only fair that some kind of this thing happens?
We're looking into it, since we feel that's only fair too, but we can't make any guarantees about it yet. It also complicates things when there's more than one person working on it, since the question of "who gets how much?" is hard to address.
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Out of curiosity, how many people did you DNA 18 months ago, back on March 15 2013?How is anyone supposed to volunteer into porting? Did they released source code or something?Anyone that wants to work on the port needs to be NDA'd because a portion of the codebase is proprietary, but we will consider just about anyone offering to work on it, and have NDA'd several people in the past few days to do exactly that.
I will confirm with the team and get back to you, since I don't personally know the answer to that.
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This is surprisingly negative post. I'm disappointed. I expected more neutrality, but oh well.
The port is still being worked on, one way or another. Also no deadline was announced. I don't really get why many of you put it like it is never going to be ported.
The main problem here is obviously lack of transparency, which is being admitted and hopefully fixed.
I'm pretty amazed at how good people are at counting someone else's money. With no evidence people just assume these things and go bashing that specific someone else. Not mature. Not cool.
render,
I wonder, if there is a possibility of those volunteers being paid later down the line from the revenue the linux port generates. Am I right to assume that it is only fair that some kind of this thing happens?
This so much. Thanks von for being the voice of reason :)
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We wish we had, but there's nothing we can do about it now.Actually, you can and you do it by participating in this conversation and posting official announcements: even though the damage is done, you actually can compensate that by being more transparent on the matter and providing at least some kind of progress updates later down the line. I don't know how much effort it takes, and how often is good enough, but being quiet unless directly asked won't help, sadly. At least in my opinion.
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We wish we had, but there's nothing we can do about it now.Actually, you can and you do it by participating in this conversation and posting official announcements: even though the damage is done, you actually can compensate that by being more transparent on the matter and providing at least some kind of progress updates later down the line. I don't know how much effort it takes, and how often is good enough, but being quiet unless directly asked won't help, sadly. At least in my opinion.
We agree, and that's exactly what we're trying to do. I'm going to see if we can set up some sort of way to give more frequent updates regarding the port, either directly from the people working on it, or from them through us. It will take me a few days, though.
What I meant by "there's nothing we can do about it now" is that we can't change what we said in the campaign or in our tweets. Sorry - I wasn't fully clear there. >__<
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