You would hopefully have seen my previous articles talking to multiple developers about their Linux sales, so to begin a new year we are talking to a few more about their sales.
You can see part 1, part 2, and part 3 at those links, so if you haven’t read them or didn’t know about them take a look at them first.
We’ve had many different responses and feelings over the last year from developers, so we decided to take another look and see what developers can currently expect to achieve with Linux.
Maia
Simon Roth, MaiaCurrently Linux is just under 2% of our sales data in the last 3-4 months. With Mac at 4%. (Although we have been releasing special Mac builds to fix Yosemite and Mavericks so the game has had more sales-generating coverage in that area).
Linux sales are coming from all over the world. With the US at 2% Linux, and most of Europe sitting at 0.5-4%.
I asked Simon how he felt about the sales, and how he felt about supporting Linux now, and with future games:
Simon Roth, MaiaLinux support is pretty great. We have the flexibility to get things fixed when it doesn't work for users. Which is something we just don't have with Mac. Linux users, on the whole, are far better at seeking help and more useful when there are issues. The community have been quick to report system specific issues, which has allowed us to fix things promptly and reduced our testing workload.
The driver situation could certainly be better, but the game runs well on our test machines. Often 5-10% better than Mac and Windows due to lower CPU and GPU overheads.
Linux Mint has been going from strength to strength. It's been a solid development platform for me. I would like to see some more active development on Codeblocks, as it's starting to fall behind other IDE's feature-wise.
We'd certainly release on Linux in future. Even at our current 2% of sales, it would make solid financial sense and reach lots of players.
I've spoken to Simon a few times, and he's always great to speak to. Maia has come a long way in a short time, and it's only getting better with each release. It's a game I'm personally excited to see finished.
Rust
Rust has come a long way, and even in my smaller amounts of testing it seems to run pretty well, and that’s without getting into how beautiful it looks. It’s not my type of game, but I’ve heard a fair few people tell me how they’ve lost many hours to it.
It’s still sad to see such low numbers over an entire year for it. I thought we would be much closer to the Mac sales than we are for it.
For reference, the last time we spoke to the Rust developers in part 3, they had nearly 8K sales units from Linux, and in part 2 they had over 5K. We don’t know how long their reporting periods are though, so we don’t know if the most recent image they shared is over a shorter time (which would explain why it’s much lower, when it was previously growing).
When asking the Rust developers how they felt about supporting Linux, they simply said this:
@gamingonlinux Makes no money, but costs no money either.
— Rust (@playrust) March 5, 2015
This is of course thanks to Unity!
Soul Axiom
1% Linux
8% Mac
91% Windows
Ben Tester, Wales InteractiveOne thing we found with supporting Linux is that the Linux gamers tend to be more supportive towards the development of the game, especially when getting involved with games on Early Access. Soul Axiom is our first game on Early Access and the support we’ve had from the Linux community has been pretty good. Technically speaking, developing for Linux is getting easier over time and if it continues on that path then I would think more devs would support it.
Our Samsai actually did a GOL Cast on Soul Axiom, so take a look to see what he thought.
Crea
Windows: 5797 (88.3%)
OS X: 575 (8.76%)
Linux: 191 (2.91%)
Total: 6563
The developer Jasson had this to share:
QuoteSupporting Linux is both rewarding and demanding. It truly makes me happy to know that more people can enjoy Crea and many of Crea's most supportive fans are linux users which is fantastic. The one major downside to supporting multiple platforms during Early Access is that it slows down the process of iterating on the game which is what should be the focus while in Early Access. Sometimes instead of working on a new feature or adding more content I must fix platform specific bugs. Moving forward, I'll absolutely support Linux with my future games but likely hold off until official release.
I actually have access to Crea, and plan to take a proper look at it sometime, keep an eye out!
NEO Scavenger
Since NEO Scavenger's early access began (December 6, 2013), total revenue contributions are:
Linux 1.6%
Mac 7.6%
Since launch (December 15, 2014):
Linux 1.7%
Mac 8.5%
I asked Daniel how he felt about Linux, and he had these words to share:
QuoteI think my feelings about Linux support are similar to last time: if it isn't too much of a headache to support, I will gladly support it.
NEO Scavenger's platform of choice (Flash) made Linux harder to support than I hoped, due to Adobe dropping Linux support years ago. However, I was able to maintain parity by freezing all platforms at the last-supported Linux distro (Flash 11.2). This cost me some modern performance and feature support, but has soured me on Adobe more than Linux.
Moving forward, I intend to make games using Haxe, with OpenFL and HaxeFlixel libraries. Since OpenFL is based on Flash, and HaxeFlixel on Flixel, the code should be relatively easy to port. And Haxe is built to support all platform targets as seamlessly as possible, including Linux.
As such, my hope is that I can support all platforms equally and without any extra work. Like I've said in the past, I prefer to spend my time writing game code, not platform code. As long as I can focus on the former, I'm happy to support users of any platform I can!
Note: Adobe dropping support of Air on Linux happened back in 2012, and it has been an issue for multiple games. It’s another reason to not use something so closed up.
Minecraft
The developers of Minecraft also shared this chart with us, this isn't a sales chart, but the percentage of people per platform that login and play since the start of the year:
With how popular Minecraft is, I actually expected us to remain very low on their login charts. It's probably more popular than a lot of AAA games on PC for Windows gamers.
LISA
Windows: 91.52%
OSX: 7.05%
Linux: 1.43%
The developer had these encouraging words to say about it:
QuoteSo altogether OSX and Linux have been treating us rather well, amounting to 1/12 of the total sales when combined. Considering official OSX and Linux support didn't start until three weeks after the game's initial release that's a very encouraging result.
4089
It’s worth noting that the 4089 developer actually uses Linux for development, so that’s pretty awesome.
@gamingonlinux linux accounted for 3.5% of sales, Mac 5.8%, the rest is Windows!
— Real Phr00t (@phr00t_) March 9, 2015
Goscurry
Windows: 85%
Mac: 12%
Linux: 3%
Daniele GiardiniI have to admit that I hoped Linux would go better, also considering that Goscurry runs well even on pretty old machines :P
Looks like they could use some love!
Also an honourable mention to Aspyr Media, who responded to my requests for comments. I spoke to Michael Blair from Aspyr about how they feel right now:
Michael BlairThanks to the tremendous support of the amazing Linux community, our Linux sales have been tracking around 15% of Mac for The Pre-Sequel. This is actually quite good!
In short, our outlook on the future of Linux gaming is very optimistic (especially with Valve’s support on SteamOS and Steam Machines) and we are continuing to pitch Linux versions of every game we are to potentially publish.
Wrapping this up
So, it looks like for most developers they can realistically expect between 1-3% of their sales to come from Linux. Considering the Steam Hardware Survey puts Linux at around 1-2% of Steam’s user base, that sounds about right. Anything above 1% should be considered a win, since that’s above the general percentage of the user base.
I would like to thank everyone who replied, and hope Linux manages to grow significantly with Steam Machines, as let’s be honest, developers aren't going to make a living with Linux right now. I don’t mean to put a downer on it, but I’m being a realist here, we need to grow, and we need to keep buying those games. However, 3% extra actually shown as Linux sales are better than zero right? Especially as more recent engines like Unity and Unreal Engine 4 have made Linux support vastly easier. Not only that, but multiple developers have stated while sales have been low on Linux, the sales have exceeded what it costs to support us.
I am hopeful for the future of Linux gaming, more so than I ever have been before thanks to the great indie games we have, and porting houses like Aspyr Media and Feral Interactive bringing us some higher profile releases too. A deserved shout out to porters as well like Ethan Lee and Ryan Gordon.
I am still missing my favourite genre with games like Battlefield and Call of Duty, as their online modes are an absolute blast to play, but I hope we will get something closer to them in future. I mean, we are getting titles I never thought we would like Borderlands 2 and XCOM, so nothing is impossible.
I am sure I will have plenty more to be happy about when Feral Interactive unleash the collection of AAA games they've announced. I'm sure a lot of GOL readers are as excited as I am about our future.
Keep gaming on Linux (see what I did there?), and keep buying Linux games.
Quoting: seveni don't wanna spell doom or anything but i don't think steammachines gonna be a success, i hope i'm wrong but i don't see them kick a dent in the xbox/PS universe
The comforting thing about this though is that Valve doesn't expect it to compete with consoles. That's just not what it was made for, and I'm pretty sure they are well aware it's catering to only a small portion of their overall users. So even if sales aren't spectacular it doesn't mean the project was a failure at all.
It's good to keep that in mind, because I think the biggest threat to steam machines is not the low quantity of people who will buy them, it's all the people who are no doubt going to be comparing steam machines to console sales and spreading FUD all over the place the moment they realize steam machines sales don't measure up (which they almost certainly won't).
It's a threat to their success because it could cause even less people to buy steam machines when people see "not successful" all over the place, even though that standard of success is an artificial one that valve was never shooting for in the first place
I try to avoid Early Access games (there are a few exceptions, such as FRONTIERS), and I'm more choosy nowadays about games without gamepad support, since I built my own Steam Machine (running Debian, though).
Looking forward to buying/playing Soul Axiom and 4089 (when they're ready), but probably won't touch any of the others sadly.
Crea looks very Starbound-y, Goscurry is an exercise in frustration and Rust is made by Facepunch, who act like spoiled children.
I might take another look at Maia, but wasn't it the one that launched in Early Access that was so early that there was basically nothing to it? Which is another reason I'm not a fan of EA titles.
silverphil Apr 19, 2015
Next time please do your best to communicate with Techland, Deep Silver or Paradox Interactive.
It will be really interesting to see how high-profile games such as:
-Dead Island
-Metro Last Light Redux
-Cities Skylines
-Pillars of Eternity
-The Talos Principle
are selling on linux compared to windows in addition to indie ones
Why it happens? maybe because we have a reduced catalog and we concentrate our purchase in that short list of games?
Or, we waste more cash than window's users?
But i can take a conclusion about that, if a developer want an extra sales, it's easy, just build your game on linux.
Quoting: seveni don't wanna spell doom or anything but i don't think steammachines gonna be a success, i hope i'm wrong but i don't see them kick a dent in the xbox/PS universeIf it does boost Linux gamers figures a little it will be enough, and if it's not a terrible fail that is what is to be expected. And for PC manufacturers, Steam Machines are a very important opportunity so I expect a huge wave of marketing from them.
QuoteMakes no money, but costs no money either.
I guess that's the more important thing for now. Numbers can come in time.
There's no miracle, even with if Microsoft screwing Windows 10 I don't believe in a drastic change in short term. PPL will use the OS that is pre-installed on their machine and that's all.
But if valve and other companies start doing awesome engines (unity5, unreal4, source2) which support "all" OSes, I guess we could at least count that they won't have much cost.
Forcing the cost to something next to Zero is our big victory for now. All the adoption will come in time and, maybe with Steam Machines.
Kimyrielle Apr 19, 2015
Quoting: GuestWould be interesting to see if there is any systematic difference between Steam-only titles and those also available DRM-free outside Steam.
My guess would be no. The issue with DRM is that it's really hard to avoid even in the Windows world, but we're still not exactly graced with an oversupply of AAA titles (all of which seem to be Steam-only on Linux), so I'd guess most people chose supporting Linux conversions at all over making a DRM statement and maybe convince the publishers that supporting Linux isn't worthwhile (that would be shooting ourselves in the foot, no). Boycotting high-profile games on Linux over DRM doesn't seem to be the smartest choice right now. That being said, I would still not buy titles from companies that put an intrusive DRM on top of the one Steam already provides. Anything made by Ubisoft and Rockstar is thus out of the question, but neither publisher seems to be keen on releasing on Linux anyway, so it's all good.
In general - I think the greatest thing that happened to us in the past few years isn't even Steam coming to Linux (although that was of course a great thing), but the fact that now every major engine can deploy on Linux with relative ease (not sure what part Valve played in that, perhaps they pushed that part a bit, too?). Which makes it a no-brainer for devs to support the platform. Getting 3% more sales for almost 0% additional costs - why would anyone pass on free money? In the end, the multi-platform support of engines has considerably eased the stranglehold Microsoft had on games development, which is THE most important factor we had to overcome, in my opinion.
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