Don't Count On Any EA Frostbite Powered Games On Linux

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 Sep 2015 at 10:48 am UTC

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 Sep 2015 at 11:07 am UTC

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 ?

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 ...

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.

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 Sep 2015 at 1:40 pm UTC

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.

The (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.

...

...

Yes, you made my day.

That's my point


Last edited by LinuxGamesTV on 13 Sep 2015 at 2:20 pm UTC

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.

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.

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 Sep 2015 at 5:23 pm UTC

Are the games even worth this discussion? I don't think so. Most of the games from Electronic Arts are just repeated content perhabs with polished graphics, most of the time even that missing. So why discussing about it? The older games are all working very well using Wine. The other ones are not worth to be mentioned because every year again there are the same games from this company, nothing more or nothing less. :)

I miss BF1942 multiplayer very badly. No other FPS was more fun than that (TF2 came close).

Other than that, I haven't used anything from EA in about 6 years... Of course having their titles on Linux would be a huge plus, but personally I wouldn't support or play them.


Last edited by khalismur on 13 Sep 2015 at 11:00 pm UTC

As you still get to the 1%?
I and others have written often enough, that's are the 1% a fairy tale number is.

Even if you repeat the 1% here, a scattered lie is not true.

Where's the data to back up your silly claim? I don't think your hearsay is statistically significant.
According to [web client usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Web_clients) Linux has a market share of 27.2%, of which only 1.1% are GNU/Linux. So the 0.9% Linux users for Steam seem quite plausible.

I got the steam survey recently BTW, maybe I'm the +0.07% *snicker*

I wouldn't buy EA-Games anyway, even if they were available on Linux.
Too often I was disappointed after I spent my money on their games.

As you still get to the 1%?
I and others have written often enough, that's are the 1% a fairy tale number is.

Even if you repeat the 1% here, a scattered lie is not true.

Where's the data to back up your silly claim? I don't think your hearsay is statistically significant.
According to [web client usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Web_clients) Linux has a market share of 27.2%, of which only 1.1% are GNU/Linux. So the 0.9% Linux users for Steam seem quite plausible.

I got the steam survey recently BTW, maybe I'm the +0.07% *snicker*

And you are wrong. Loool.

Did you read the "Statistics" right? No you did not.

Market share by category
Desktop, laptop, netbook Dec 2014 1.34% (Ubuntu, etc.)

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Market_share_by_category )

Net Applications say it's 1.34%.

And again: the Steam HWsurvey is wrrong and many have it also confirmed here.
So maybe only 50% or more of the all desktopusers (Linux, Mac, Windows) are gamer.

Thus, your statement is false as false.


Last edited by LinuxGamesTV on 14 Sep 2015 at 11:14 am UTC

[quote=BdMdesigN][quote=poisond]

Market share by category
Desktop, laptop, netbook Dec 2014 1.34% (Ubuntu, etc.)

Net Applications say it's 1.34%.

And again: the Steam HWsurvey is wrrong and many have it also confirmed here.
So maybe only 50% or more of the all desktopusers (Linux, Mac, Windows) are gamer.

Thus, your statement is false as false.

And you are doing the same mistake.
Maybe a higher percentage of desktop users *on Windows* are gamers and a lower one on Linux?
Hm, this would maybe even lead to lower than 1%.

Yes, we cannot "proof" it's 1%. Maybe it's more - a bit. But irrelevantly more.

[quote=LeonardK][quote=BdMdesigN]

Market share by category
Desktop, laptop, netbook Dec 2014 1.34% (Ubuntu, etc.)

Net Applications say it's 1.34%.

And again: the Steam HWsurvey is wrrong and many have it also confirmed here.
So maybe only 50% or more of the all desktopusers (Linux, Mac, Windows) are gamer.

Thus, your statement is false as false.

And you are doing the same mistake.
Maybe a higher percentage of desktop users *on Windows* are gamers and a lower one on Linux?
Hm, this would maybe even lead to lower than 1%.

Yes, we cannot "proof" it's 1%. Maybe it's more - a bit. But irrelevantly more.

Did you understand how a survey works?

No.

Ok only for you:

Steam have actual ca. 6.200.000 users.

So steam aks now the 6.200.00 users in the HWsurvey.
Now all Windows clients get this poll but not all Linuxuser.

In such a survey, 100% are those who also participate in it and not the total 6,200,000 users.
And that is precisely the reason why this survey says nothing.

And we talk here from all Linux gamer, not Steam only gamer.


Last edited by LinuxGamesTV on 14 Sep 2015 at 11:29 am UTC

Did you understand how a survey works?

No.

Yes. But I didn't argue that the survey was precise.

Ok only for you:

Steam have actual ca. 6.200.000 users.

So steam aks now the 6.200.00 users in the HWsurvey.
Now all Windows clients get this poll but not all Linuxuser.

I got it more often on Linux.

In such a survey, 100% are those who also participate in it and not the total 6,200,000 users.
And that is precisely the reason why this survey says nothing.

This is why pretty much ANY survey 'doesn't say anything'. Because the rest could per chance be actually completely the opposite.
Actually our little survey here is even worse:
We've got ~80 comments. Not every commenter stated that they would only, or more often, get the poll on Windows - but we just assume we all did.
Now assume that *at least* 1% of 6.200.000 Steam Users are Linuxers (maybe even more, but this would just show that our poll here is even worse), which makes:
>62.000 Users.
In our case 100% are 80 - and not 62.000 which makes just ~0.13%. And THIS should be represantative? xD

If we even took more realistic values, oh, your 'statistics' would be so SHREKT.

Again: Twice, Thrice, no, multiply Steam's Linux Users by 5 ! - And EA still wouldn't care.

Guys, stop trying to convince yourselves that we're significantly bigger than 1-2%. We are not, there's not a single statistics anywhere in the world (browser stats, client stats, workplace stats, whatever stats) that indicates that the Linux desktop in general surpasses 2%. Not one. The only communities we are bigger, are in certain professional science, educational and computing communities.

Now why on earth should Linux be anything different as a gaming platform. It's an absurd claim. In fact we should be amazed we even reached the first 1%.

Let there be no doubt: We need (as in: absolutely fully depend on) the Steam machines to succeed in order to change this in the short term. Without a success of the Steam Machines we may look at a decade ahead where we struggle with reaching even 5%, let alone beating the Mac share.

So just stop. Put that discussion to rest and bury it. The Steam stats are pretty much 1:1 to any other stat out there.


Last edited by Beamboom on 14 Sep 2015 at 12:50 pm UTC

Why do you want EA to support Linux? A company which treats their customers like ****. I give a damn **** if they support Linux or not. Even if they do I will not buy a game from them. Never ever again. The times where they have made great games and really produced some awesome stuff are long over. EA sucks! They ruin every Studio they get their dirty hands on. I don't want this damn company anywhere near Linux. They only care about money and nothing else! Same goes for Ubisoft and Blizzard!