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There's been some bad news about Linux games lately like Super Win the Game which sold only fifty copies for Linux and hasn't been worth the cost, "financially and emotionally", to support the platform.
Then we had news that Legend Of Grimrock 2 won't get a port, so we can guess the first one was not worth the cost.
Frozen Synapse Prime doesn't seem to be getting a port either. The company says that they had only 1% of Linux sales for a previous title and that a port, including "GPU driver performance issues, all the nuances full screen and controllers and all of the standard system stuff, [...] a full test" and QA would cost £30,000.
So, what could we do about it? Of course, sit and complain, talk about the games not being good, or wait for SteamOS. I guess it won't help much, but what else could you you do?
Of course buying games for Linux directly will help. Buy them using Linux and play them on Linux. Do not buy games that don't have a nice smiling penguin icon. In my humble opinion, this prohibits pre-ordering as well. We should be sure that a purchase is counted for Linux!
Consider not waiting for a sale. We are used to extremely cheap games. You can easily buy 100 hours of fun with a game made last year for 5 bucks, but if you think a game is worth its full price, consider paying that instead of waiting for the 66% account. But if you can't afford, of course buying cheap is better than not buying at all.
This is all known, I guess, so now to the main reason for this article: Keep the price for Linux ports low. Of course, you cannot change the price of porting itself, but if it is emotionally draining to port to Linux and if supporting all those Linux set-ups is that expensive, you should try to lower that cost; Be a low profile customer.
The best customer is the one who delivers his money, writes a review, adds to a big "Thank you!" thread and is never to be heard of again. I'm not saying that you do not deserve customer support, but try the very best to a) avoid needing it and b) try to give support to fellow Linux gamers, so they do not need it from the company. We keep seeing developers state support and Q&A as being expensive for Linux.
If you're using anything but a very standard installation, consider a second partition with, say, Ubuntu (What Steam officially supports!). Most of us are used to dual booting. If it needs to be done, dual boot between your Linux distributions. Try a closed source driver, even if you don't like closed source to make sure it's not a driver issue. Some adventure games don't work with high polling-rate shooter mice, so go and use an old mouse or adjust the rate yourself. Try to solve problems on your own or by doing a little searching.
And if you find a solution, share it. Others will be able to solve their problems with your hints, and hopefully developers will see less Linux support topics on the same issues, and it will cost them less time.
Always remain polite. When helping others, when saying thank you, and, if need be, when asking about bugs or support. Remember you are talking to actual living people. Humans like being treated nice. We have already seen developers slow ports down due to Linux users' attitudes.
Again, I'm not asking you to give up your customer rights. I'm asking you to do what Linux gamers are expected to do well; be tech-savy, friendly people who help each other. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Then we had news that Legend Of Grimrock 2 won't get a port, so we can guess the first one was not worth the cost.
Frozen Synapse Prime doesn't seem to be getting a port either. The company says that they had only 1% of Linux sales for a previous title and that a port, including "GPU driver performance issues, all the nuances full screen and controllers and all of the standard system stuff, [...] a full test" and QA would cost £30,000.
So, what could we do about it? Of course, sit and complain, talk about the games not being good, or wait for SteamOS. I guess it won't help much, but what else could you you do?
Of course buying games for Linux directly will help. Buy them using Linux and play them on Linux. Do not buy games that don't have a nice smiling penguin icon. In my humble opinion, this prohibits pre-ordering as well. We should be sure that a purchase is counted for Linux!
Consider not waiting for a sale. We are used to extremely cheap games. You can easily buy 100 hours of fun with a game made last year for 5 bucks, but if you think a game is worth its full price, consider paying that instead of waiting for the 66% account. But if you can't afford, of course buying cheap is better than not buying at all.
This is all known, I guess, so now to the main reason for this article: Keep the price for Linux ports low. Of course, you cannot change the price of porting itself, but if it is emotionally draining to port to Linux and if supporting all those Linux set-ups is that expensive, you should try to lower that cost; Be a low profile customer.
The best customer is the one who delivers his money, writes a review, adds to a big "Thank you!" thread and is never to be heard of again. I'm not saying that you do not deserve customer support, but try the very best to a) avoid needing it and b) try to give support to fellow Linux gamers, so they do not need it from the company. We keep seeing developers state support and Q&A as being expensive for Linux.
If you're using anything but a very standard installation, consider a second partition with, say, Ubuntu (What Steam officially supports!). Most of us are used to dual booting. If it needs to be done, dual boot between your Linux distributions. Try a closed source driver, even if you don't like closed source to make sure it's not a driver issue. Some adventure games don't work with high polling-rate shooter mice, so go and use an old mouse or adjust the rate yourself. Try to solve problems on your own or by doing a little searching.
And if you find a solution, share it. Others will be able to solve their problems with your hints, and hopefully developers will see less Linux support topics on the same issues, and it will cost them less time.
Always remain polite. When helping others, when saying thank you, and, if need be, when asking about bugs or support. Remember you are talking to actual living people. Humans like being treated nice. We have already seen developers slow ports down due to Linux users' attitudes.
Again, I'm not asking you to give up your customer rights. I'm asking you to do what Linux gamers are expected to do well; be tech-savy, friendly people who help each other. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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There's also a lot of developers who don't port to Linux for the money, they do it because it's "the right things to do" or just because they're Linux users. These are the developers who would be most put off by hostility. If there's problems with a port, then we should try and be helpful, for a lot of companies its their first time on Linux too so there's teething pains and we should be understanding.
You mean game developers should be superior to about every other software team in the world, and put out such wonderful stuff that it works on every combination of hardware and drivers someone might throw at it? Software so wonderful it doesn't need user support is a nice goal, but not likely to happen outside very restricted circumstances. Teams that take the goal too seriously are more likely to scrap desktop development, including Linux, and pick whatever console they think is best quality for development...
I think the biggest problem for companies are customers that are running unsupported distros and/or on unsupported hardware. In theory developers could say "we only support nvidia and ubuntu" but everyone knows that solution only works on paper. I'm running a rather big commercial website and when people make a wire transfer to pay for services, they are told several times, and in bold, to type order number in the title - it's the only way for the payment to be processed automatically. Still, a various percentage of people don't do that. They use different titles or put no title at all. And even if we explicitly say it's conditio sine qua non, in reality it's not like we can go and tell them to sod off. We have to support them all the same and it costs money. So all in all, we have a majority of customers who do as advised and thus don't generate any cost, and a few customers who go against the grain, and they generate 100% of support cost in their category. I could bet it's exactly the same with supporting Linux users...
I feel like all we ever hear about any more is ports. What happened to wanting native code?
If we continue to just talk about nothing but ports then everyone including developers is going to get it stuck in their heads that the proper path of supporting linux is start with windows > port to linux
and that's not good. It's even not good for your average gamer to think that because it just solidifies the misconception that "windows is for gaming and Linux is isn't", which we've all probably heard many more times than we should
Yes, there are companies that have risked releasing a Linux version, and have seen sales from middling to nearly zero. Win some, lose some, if that doesn't sound too cold. I do know that Aspyr has been ecstatic with their sales, and Feral as well. I doubt that Paradox is sorry that they released versions of their games for Linux, either.
1.5% (or whatever) of Steam users is still a boatload of people. I certainly understand a tiny dev company working to create a Linux version, and then sell 539 copies, and say "f*ck this." That doesn't mean that developers shouldn't continue, it's just that when any game developer releases a game for any platform, it can be a crap shoot. Look at (for example) Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which was an epic fail despite selling 1.2M copies. I do also know that many of the games on Desura are frequently updated, as they are on Steam, so, if sales are good enough, games will continue to be maintained. We've certainly seen FOSS projects lose maintenance, as well.
I do my part; I buy games for Linux, although I do get games appearing in my library (X-COM and Borderlands 2) that I had bought in my dual-booting days. My library is full of games I bought for Linux, and I'm not going to stop buying them; what better way to show appreciation than buying a game you appreciate?
1. I think £30,000 are quite high, that should be 1/2 year payment (probably longer) for 1 programmer. If the code is written multiplatform from scrap it should be much better and faster compared to code revision or another company doing the port. For testing they would find 3-5 competent people of the Linux-community.
That should be a problem of Nvidia/AMD if there are any issues. Valve showed that the linux performance doesnt have to be worse than Window's.