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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Developers that decides to jump into the Linux adventure just can't google it to find a "how to port a game on Linux" like we do for so many of our problems. They have to find the solutions themselves and are often creating the precedent and the future reference. They are learning to walk and we should stop complaining because they can't run.
In the gaming market, Linux love is 15 years behind Windows in it's development and we should keep that in mind before attacking a developer. Remember the first games available on Win95? The best we can do is to give our feedbacks to help them learn faster.
This said, my point of view is a general concept, there are always exceptions to comfirm the rule. :)
Now we're talking. Which also relates to my "wholly other" view on the Linux community hereabove. Again, I wasn't saying you aren't right. Just pointing the fact you had taken a very bad example to begin with. ;)
Which isn't stated in the article. That one was more of a pointer for your next submission, which you're free to take into account or not. :D
I think it's more like with oil and water.
One drop of troll spoils a hundred litres of well-behaving people...
In fact I'm poundering a bad example. Let's see. :o)
I guess it's different for me because I know that long term I eventually want to go from dual booting with Linux to having Linux as my main OS. That makes me more committed than some who are just dipping their toes in.
I think you are missing the point of what a "default" distro is supposed to accomplish though - it has nothing to do with the kind of users that it attracts, but rather whether or not it provides a stable, common baseline to target for. Either Gentoo or Arch would be an absolutely deplorable choice in this regard, and I am saying this as an Arch user who for the most part dislikes Canonical.
In this respect, even though I am not really on board with Valve's whole project either, I do see some value in SteamOS, as it could provide a dedicated gaming baseline on Linux for developers to target which is independent from most of the standard desktop Linux vendors.
You should pick a new name, this is false advertising ;)
Though mine is too, come to think of it hehe
Oh I can be a nuisance if someone gets me going but for the most part these days I'm much more laid back. I first took the name when I used to go to the System Wars forums at Gamespot in college back when it was the wild west there and I would troll with the best of them.
It's not my fault I bought and played a game on windows when it took you 2 years to port the game to Linux. Two plus years of sales on windows is never going to compare to 3 months of sales on a different platform. "Bad sales."
There are a copuple problems with that. One is that each individual Gentoo user can set different USE flags so software may be at the same version but be compiled with completely different options. Another is that you want to officially support the consumer version of the OS. Game companies support Windows Professional and Home not server. Same concept.
Anyway, the choice is not ours. It's already been taken out of our hands. If you want a ready to go gaming experience, better stick with Ubuntu, as supported by Valve, and change the desktop UI if you mind. KDE, Unity, Xfce, Lxde, Gnome, to name a few, are all available and you still have the full Steam support.
There is Mint too that is quite near to Ubuntu, from what I understand, and Debian that is the base for SteamOS, Ubuntu and Mint... Btw, why isn't it officialy supported by Valve?
Personnaly, I stick with Ubuntu-Unity because it's the best "out of the box" experience for my 42" HDTV.
Unless gaming is not your priority...
That's the way I see it, at least.
If a developer wants to make sure their game is going to bring in the money from Linux, they need to make their games cross platform right from the start instead of focusing on Windows only programming then a year later convert the game so it can run on Linux.
In my opinion, it is plain stupidity to create your software using code that can only work on one platform. Granted I am no programmer but to me at least, it makes more sense to create your game with cross platform code from the start to maximize your potential sales without the extra time/cost of having to recode for each platform.
The potential porters of Frozen synapse Prime said they thought the same, tried it and it didn't work out for them...