Brushfire Games On Their Linux Sales For Shipwreck & Their Thoughts On Linux

A recent article about Jon Blow has spurred other developers getting in touch, and one developer is Brushfire Games, the developer of Shipwreck. Their sales are looking good, and they have some thoughts.

I spoke with Nick from Brushfire Games, and he shared these sales statistics with us. We are very privileged to get this kind of info, so a big thank you.

Sales stats for Shipwreck
89.64% Windows
5.96% Mac
4.40% Linux

That’s some of the healthiest Linux sales I’ve seen to date on a game, and I’m pretty impressed.

Nick did have more to say about it, and he gave these reasons on why he supports Linux with his studio:

Quote1. We're a small studio and need to go after any customers willing to spend money on our products.
2. I believe in letting people game where they want. I'm a Mac user and it sucks when a game I like (*cough* Banished *cough*) doesn't support my platform. So I can empathize with the Linux base.

It’s nice to see a developer who isn’t solely focused on income, but it is important of course and I’m not blind to that. If you want to do a Linux version, you need to remember the sales will be lower than other platforms, and not expect to get rich from it.

Nick did however have some other thoughts on why Linux may be a little more difficult:

Quote1. As for the "why Mac over Linux" argument, developing on/for a Mac is much simpler. Yes, you have to buy proprietary hardware, but then you just download Xcode and you're off and running. You still have code to write, but you don't have to deal with any driver issues, you don't have to use a package manager to get various tools, and you have a decent IDE for free from the platform holder that does what you need. Mac is also nice since there's a very small set of hardware and operating system versions to support which is a far cry from how Linux operates with open hardware and a vast array of distros (and various versions of those distros).

I do understand what Nick is saying here, everything you get is pretty much direct from Apple. You don’t usually need to worry about getting a driver here and there for your machine, as it’s usually just done for you.

The Steam runtime is something that is helping with the many distributions argument too. I have yet to personally see the fragmentation actually cause any issues myself, so I’m still not entirely sure where people get that idea from. If someone could point out in the comments any games that are broken on certain distributions, I would appreciate seeing them (apart from Legend of Grimrock, as that's not a distribution issue).

Quote2. I too have had issues getting distros to work for me when trying to setup for development. And yes there are solutions and things to try, but remember that (most) developers don't plan to use Linux as their main machine so they're not really interested in investing a lot of time to setting up their dev environment. This is another reason why even if Linux is 4% of their sales they may forego Linux simply because of the time/effort of setting up (and supporting) Linux.

This is important, and it’s something that is improving over time. Linux has gotten easier to install in a short amount of time, and the tools we have available now over a year ago are far more stable.

What we need to do is accommodate developers needs, and keep pointing them in the direction of tools, people, and whatever else they may need. We also need to not point developers at niche distributions, but the most popular. I’m not going to be popular with some people for this, but point them at Ubuntu/Mint/SteamOS and be done with it. The vastly smaller distributions should be accommodating the others to make sure games work correctly, it shouldn’t be up to the developers if x distribution does something slightly differently that it breaks a game.

Quote3. I've also seen the forums or help threads where people dismiss the challenges others have with Linux. Usually the responses are along the lines of "try this other distro" or "use this other desktop manager" which aren't really helpful because those answers feel so arbitrary to someone not steeped in Linux. With so many options it's really hard as an "Outsider" to know the best way to setup a Linux box for development that will allow one to build for as many users as possible. For example, I still don't know if things I build on Ubuntu or Mint will work on Debian or other distros. As a Mac person I just have no idea how that all works. So if the community really wanted to help devs, make a super nice wiki on "How To Setup a Linux Distro to Build C++ Games for SteamOS and Linux using SDL2". I'd read and share that in a heartbeat.

Again some valid points. I actually get annoyed personally when a reply is to “try x distro instead”, and I see it a lot too. We need people to drop their distributions bias, and just focus on the problems people have.

One thing I would really like to see, is more developers blogging about tools and resources they found that helped them develop for Linux directly. If you know of them, share them, and then share them some more.

You can support Nick by grabbing Shipwreck on Steam or Humble, both are available at their official site.

If you are a developer and would like to share statistics and thoughts with us, feel free to contact us any time. We like to cover all sides of the Linux gaming argument, even when it isn’t pretty, and we aren’t afraid to do so. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.