Sad, but not unexpected news as the Technical Director on Frostbite at Electronic Arts has said seeing their games on Linux is unlikely.
When asked why he had a simple answer:
That's fine, and completely understandable. The only reason we are getting some bigger games right now is Aspyr, Feral and a few others are hoping on a good future with Steam Machines, so it's not unexpected for a huge company like EA to not do Linux right now.
It's a shame, as before a member of DICE said they strongly wanted to get into Linux, so I guess it never worked out for them.
It is yet another reason why I really hope Steam Machines get included in the Steam survey somehow, I mean Valve want to show the market share for it has grown after release right? I do wonder how they will do this. I haven't seen them talk about this anywhere, so we will have to wait and see. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
@HeavyHDx very unlikely
— Johan Andersson (@repi) September 12, 2015When asked why he had a simple answer:
@HeavyHDx less then 1% of the potential audience, even Mac (which we don't support) is more than 3x larger. http://t.co/o6DCeTCh4E
— Johan Andersson (@repi) September 12, 2015That's fine, and completely understandable. The only reason we are getting some bigger games right now is Aspyr, Feral and a few others are hoping on a good future with Steam Machines, so it's not unexpected for a huge company like EA to not do Linux right now.
It's a shame, as before a member of DICE said they strongly wanted to get into Linux, so I guess it never worked out for them.
It is yet another reason why I really hope Steam Machines get included in the Steam survey somehow, I mean Valve want to show the market share for it has grown after release right? I do wonder how they will do this. I haven't seen them talk about this anywhere, so we will have to wait and see. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I was stationed in South America for 5 years for my job. Always using a Linux notebook and regularly using Steam. Never got the HW Survey in those 5 years. I came back to my homeland in Europe two months ago and got the survey TWICE since then.
Also, my girlfriend also uses Steam on Windows and never got the survey in South America either but as soon as we arrived in Europe she got it as well.
Pure coincidence? I don't know. But this is also a factor in play. South America is poor (except for Chile, which is like France). Poor means people often use pirated copies of Windows and many, many friends and colleagues use Linux over there... Due to regional pricing, Steam Games are very cheap in Brazil (where we were) and most gamers have 100+ titles on Steam. Oh yeah, don't forget Brazil alone has over 200.000.000 people. So if 1% of those use Steam and 5~10% of those use Linux (which might be not too far from reality for Brazil, from my own experience). That's already quite a huge number of costumers unaccounted for, as I had the feeling HW Survey do not target that land.
So yeah, these 1% numbers are very questionable.
Last edited by khalismur on 13 September 2015 at 10:48 am UTC
Also, my girlfriend also uses Steam on Windows and never got the survey in South America either but as soon as we arrived in Europe she got it as well.
Pure coincidence? I don't know. But this is also a factor in play. South America is poor (except for Chile, which is like France). Poor means people often use pirated copies of Windows and many, many friends and colleagues use Linux over there... Due to regional pricing, Steam Games are very cheap in Brazil (where we were) and most gamers have 100+ titles on Steam. Oh yeah, don't forget Brazil alone has over 200.000.000 people. So if 1% of those use Steam and 5~10% of those use Linux (which might be not too far from reality for Brazil, from my own experience). That's already quite a huge number of costumers unaccounted for, as I had the feeling HW Survey do not target that land.
So yeah, these 1% numbers are very questionable.
Last edited by khalismur on 13 September 2015 at 10:48 am UTC
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People for god sake, why would Valve falsify and lower number of Linux users ? The HW survey is random, it is possible to roll 10 times 6 on a dice. It is unlikely but possible so it happens from time to time. There is no conspiracy theory here, accept the number that you have, live with it -- until something big happens (like SteamOS) nothing will change. Be grateful to people who actually port their games to Linux as there is very little profit in it.
On gamingonlinux there was already ton of articles about developers who actually sell their games on Linux and how big their sell numbers are, and its about 1% or 2%. There is no denying.
Sorry for the rant but this thread is turning ridiculous ...
Last edited by nocri on 13 September 2015 at 11:07 am UTC
On gamingonlinux there was already ton of articles about developers who actually sell their games on Linux and how big their sell numbers are, and its about 1% or 2%. There is no denying.
Sorry for the rant but this thread is turning ridiculous ...
Last edited by nocri on 13 September 2015 at 11:07 am UTC
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It only needs one game title to be exclusive for SteamOS in order to make the switch and I dont mean the game Don't Be Patchman.(is a good game though)
All the companies like Sony,Microsoft did it so far to get more customers why not for SteamOS ?
And with that I dont mean VALVE to create a game exclusively for SteamOS maybe another company ?
All the companies like Sony,Microsoft did it so far to get more customers why not for SteamOS ?
And with that I dont mean VALVE to create a game exclusively for SteamOS maybe another company ?
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Mountain Man Sep 13, 2015
Quoting: nocriPeople for god sake, why would Valve falsify and lower number of Linux users ? The HW survey is random, it is possible to roll 10 times 6 on a dice. It is unlikely but possible so it happens from time to time. There is no conspiracy theory here, accept the number that you have, live with it -- until something big happens (like SteamOS) nothing will change. Be grateful to people who actually port their games to Linux as there is very little profit in it.Nobody is saying there's a conspiracy, but there is an apparent flaw in the survey that somehow suppresses it in Linux. It could be software bug or a way the Steam client interacts with Linux. All I know is that in my experience, and in the experience of many others, the survey pops up far more frequently in Windows than it does in Linux which, I suspect, leads to Windows being over-represented in the results.
On gamingonlinux there was already ton of articles about developers who actually sell their games on Linux and how big their sell numbers are, and its about 1% or 2%. There is no denying.
Sorry for the rant but this thread is turning ridiculous ...
Also, different developers report different sales percentages in Linux, some 1% and others as high as 10% (look at the Humble Bundle results). I think there are s lot more Linux gamers out there than everyone realizes. There just may not be a lot of exclusive Linux gamers (most Linux gamers dual-boot) so things can get a bit skewed.
Plus, there are several ways that Linux can get screwed out of the sales results; for instance buying a boxed copy or a Steam key through a third-party seller like Amazon or buying through the Steam mobile app counts as a Windows sale even if you install and play the game exclusively in Linux, so even sales numbers are not necessarily accurate.
I suppose the critical question is just how many gamers would abandon Windows for Linux if more big-budget AAA were released for Linux?
Last edited by Mountain Man on 13 September 2015 at 1:40 pm UTC
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Every fucking time. Some dev say "a port is unlikely" and some Linux fanatics here are bitching and whining. Yeah let's tell them on twitter how wrong they are, that will give them a good impression. Kindergarten deluxe.
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Quoting: EndeavourAccuracyThe (secret) truth is not that Microsoft is steering EA in a certain direction. There is no conspiracy. You cannot look into the future. You don't know if we will "never see EA on Linux".
I wouldn't be so sure about that given all the exclusivity deals between Microsoft and EA. Not to mention, MS giving away a free copy FIFA 14 with every XBox sold.
Fact is, MS and EA have a "strategic partnership". EA wouldn't do anything to mess that up by being Linux friendly.
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LinuxGamesTV Sep 13, 2015
Quoting: Mountain ManQuoting: nocri......
Yes, you made my day.
That's my point
Last edited by LinuxGamesTV on 13 September 2015 at 2:20 pm UTC
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I find this, always repeated, "reason" very stupid, I've a lot of friend's and co workers willing to use Linux for their every day but often differents software that are missing for the platform keeps them hostage of windows.
With Vulkan will be easier to support multi platform, so any % of other platform different of windows its a gain.
I own BF3 and 4 but I cant play them anymore because the Origin stuff that stopped working under wine =(
Sorry for my english.
With Vulkan will be easier to support multi platform, so any % of other platform different of windows its a gain.
I own BF3 and 4 but I cant play them anymore because the Origin stuff that stopped working under wine =(
Sorry for my english.
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Kimyrielle Sep 13, 2015
Normally I feel at least a trace of sadness when a company states that they won't support Linux anytime soon or ever. In this particular case, all I did was shrug and thinking "Yeah, so what?". EA hasn't released a game in a while I was remotely interested in. Probably that's because they haven't released any halfway original game in like a decade. All they do is churning out yearly updates of the same old concepts and add a few new explosions (or updated player names for their sports series). Even Bioware (which I used to be huge fan of) has been completely assimilated into the EA way. I got Inquisition for Christmas, played it for a few hours and then put it away. The story just couldn't hook me at all and the gameplay was basically the same boring dumbed-down clickfest they got bashed for Dragon Age 2 already.
That being said, I still could giggle that a fat-cat company like EA isn't able to write a cross-platform engine when much smaller studios can and have done. EA's revenue is so large that 5% more revenue amounts to a fairly large sum. Should think it's profitable to do even then. But then, since EA's only field of actual innovation is developing intrusive and annoying DRM software, they probably think we don't want to have that on Linux anyway. Rightfully so.
That being said, I still could giggle that a fat-cat company like EA isn't able to write a cross-platform engine when much smaller studios can and have done. EA's revenue is so large that 5% more revenue amounts to a fairly large sum. Should think it's profitable to do even then. But then, since EA's only field of actual innovation is developing intrusive and annoying DRM software, they probably think we don't want to have that on Linux anyway. Rightfully so.
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Mblackwell Sep 13, 2015
One of the benefits of something like SteamOS/Steam Machines is they can say, "We've sold X number of machines with SteamOS installed." Then they can estimate a specific user base, and they can also target a specific hardware spec (likely the Alienware Steam Machine since others run similarly leveled hardware).
Right now it's all just guesses and it's an apparently low proportion of sales overall (seems to average about 3%), and it's a vague demographic. Bean counters love specifics.
Also, since SteamOS runs off of Debian and Valve considers Ubuntu a first class citizen it's likely that anything brought there will work on other Distros.
In the mean time support the developers and publishers that do care to bring out their content.
Last edited by Mblackwell on 13 September 2015 at 5:23 pm UTC
Right now it's all just guesses and it's an apparently low proportion of sales overall (seems to average about 3%), and it's a vague demographic. Bean counters love specifics.
Also, since SteamOS runs off of Debian and Valve considers Ubuntu a first class citizen it's likely that anything brought there will work on other Distros.
In the mean time support the developers and publishers that do care to bring out their content.
Last edited by Mblackwell on 13 September 2015 at 5:23 pm UTC
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