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.
Rebooting to play a game… nah. I don't even use dual boot systems. I'm using Debian (Jessie) though.
And about what? 700 for Windows? Please. That wasn't bad news about Linux games, that was a massive f*ckup by a dev who wanted to go all Ubisoft on the people who could get the word out, and thought it was a good idea to put a price on his game that was (and still is) about three times too high. Look at it this way: should I buy DeadCore or Super Win? Welp. Should I buy Ziggurat or Super Win? Oh. Should I buy the whole Electronic Super Joy mega-insane-bundle or Super Win? You don't release this kind of game on Steam for such a price and pull such pranks on your "reviewers" then complain you don't sell. It's called common sense.
Not saying I don't agree with most of your points, Eike, but this kind of things just don't sound right. I already buy most of my games on full price (although I'm on a tight budget, so some of them still have to wait for the famed Steam sales). I try to be nice with the devs - unless they're Double Fine or some other kind of as***le. I file bug reports. But...
Nope. The best customer is the one who delivers his money, writes a review, adds a big "thank you" if he feels like it (which usually means his review was positive. There ARE such things as bad games, even on Steam. Why should we thank anyone for giving us a turd or a Wine "port", pray tell? O_o), files bug reports where they're needed, does not complain unless he has REASON to (see: Derrick the Deathfin, its controllers woes and not-too-reactive devs or Spoiler Alert, aka The Phantom Game), and above all SPREADS the word - thus IS heard of again, be it in other places or in the review pages, chats etc. of Steam.
With that being said, I do not actually dispute the idea that game developers can set certain limits for themselves with regards to what platforms or setups they are willing to support. If a developer does choose to only offer support to certain distributions or drivers, then as long as that fact has been clearly communicated to the buyer beforehand, that is within their right. By taking the road less travelled one does admittedly also have to take on the burden of isolating themselves from many of the established and traditional forms of support as well.
I game from an Arch Linux setup and only use free software drivers. Whenever I have encountered a problem I have often found community solutions to solve those problems; there are plenty of resources available that are independent from the original game developer, provided by proud statistical outliers like myself. During the few times that I have had problems with my graphics driver I have also gone to the trouble of reporting them to the freedesktop.org bug tracker, and have found the developers there to be very quick and helpful in responding to my complaints. There are independent support structures available for those of use who do not want to fall in with the crowd.
The fact that the burden is on us to solve our own problems in these cases I do not dispute. What I do find offensive is the idea expressed by some that people such as myself are harming the platform or need to be expunged for the sake of their own narrow conveniences; such a sentiment betrays such an utter lack of solidarity that those expressing it should be immediately ashamed of themselves. The strength of Linux comes from its diversity; there is a reason that we are not all happily using Windows to play our games. If we are ever to forget that we might as well just write off the whole thing as one large sick joke; the success of Linux as a gaming platform would then cease to have any meaning to anybody.
Even then... What happens when a SteamOS gamer messes with their Pulseaudio settings, with evdev, with custom rules or whatever? It's even worse than that: it's basically saying "SteamOS means SteamOS where you haven't even added a DE or modified anything. Oh, you did? Welp, there goes your support".
I'd like to see THAT happen with Windows gamers. We'd be in for one hell of a laugh.
* With appropriate warnings that not all drivers are supported, of course.
Someone exactly like yourself is only making the platform stronger. However, I have seen some cranky posts here when developers fail to support someone's own favorite distro instead of turning to their own ingenuity and community support, and that's not so helpful. Especially if that crankyness is turned toward the developers, making them think Linux gamers have too much sense of entitlement to be fun to deal with.
Heh, there is actually so much diversity among Linux gamers that this conclusion is too broad. Some people would be perfectly satisfied with One Linux Distro to Rule them all if it were free-as-in-beer, stable, and ruled over by Linus instead of some control-freak company. Actually some don't even care about that last point...
Or wait for the 66% discount and buy 3 games ;)
Can't agree more with this. And its diversity comes from its freedom, remove the freedom and you'll have a single Linux distribution, but at that point you can just use the "single Windows distribution".
I liked the way, erm... Feral or Aspyr, can't remember, does it. They're always saying if a distro is not supported, but they are still gathering all problems and solutions for those and often can help people although they're not officially supporting their platform. But if someone would call for full support or refund or something, they can always say this setup not supported.
People don't think that way. They won't go the Nvidia or AMD complaining, but to the game makers where they paid their 5 bucks. In the end, people cannot even judge whose fault it really is. So the graphics drivers' problems will result in game makers problems.
I wouldn't have written this plea if I wouldn't have met these other Linuxers...
The main point of this example is not "financially", but "emotionally". I didn't have a second look at this game, it's not my cup of tea. I'm not to judge if it's worth selling more than a thousand copies. But if some of us make Linux support emotionally draining - and some obviously do - this should end. Which reminds me of the example I forgot and which would have been much better for the emotional/politeness part: The Stanley Parable.
There are, and we shouldn't buy and shouldn't praise them.