Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition May Actually Hit The Linux Release Next Month

Quoting: compholio

Quoting: Mountain Man...
"I know the service was slow, the food was unappetizing, and the waiter spit in your coffee, but please be as grateful as possible that you were served anything at all."

Yeah, how about no.

Then don't go into a restaurant that has a sign outside that says your not welcome, wait until the sign changes.

And how does this analogy apply to Larian who put up a sign on their Kickstarter page explicitly saying, "Linux users are welcome"?

Sorry, but they have treated us very poorly , so, no, I'm not going to be grateful when they finally get around to delivering on a two-year old promise, especially not with the way they've jerked us around.

Quoting: Nel

Quoting: edqeDo you think they postponed the release for fun?

Fun? No.
But, laziness? incompetence? not-give-a-shit? all three?

I think they did not postpone release for fun. I guess they postponed the release because they did not invest even 1 percent of work they had to in order to deliver solid software.
I wrote it once on this page but I will write it once again. Larian Studios have decided to use crowdfunding to make their game. So they did not have the money to make a game, they received it. In order to receive more money they made a promise that they never wanted to keep.
In my opinion it was very clean for them, that if they promise Linux version, more money will come. They just decided to get free loan, and they just wanted to give money back to people who only wanted Linux version as a refund. When they realized, that Linux version was very important for many people, they started to work on it, but with 1 or 2 students (like Techland on Dying Light Linux port). Because those students were not able to make the software in few days, they decided that they will provide more time to them while making promise of "Enhanced Edition" delivery. But still, they did not enhance porting team. At the end they decided to provide the port and maybe even enhance the proting team (by 1 person ;) ) when they finished ps4 and xone versions.
As a result of their great work we can expect linux version, that crashes a lot, works on one linux distribution and we shouldn't expect any updates and bug fixes of the released version. It will be just "take it and let us leave without Linux" version of their game.

Quoting: BillNyeTheBlackGuyBut but but they promise. They promised nothing. Period.

If it can reassure your almighty businessman ego to think they didn't promise anything, fine.

So they just raised money using the argument of a Linux port.

Doesn't sound any better, to me...


Last edited by omer666 on 5 November 2015 at 7:52 am UTC

"Divinity: Original Sin Coming to Linux!" isn't news.
"Divinity: Original Sin Now on Linux!" is news.

Quoting: Picoboom"Divinity: Original Sin Coming to Linux!" isn't news.
"Divinity: Original Sin Now on Linux!" is news.

Everyone has different interests, people have asked me to keep them updated with this, so i am :)

I'm not mad over any of this. My opinion has always been that until a game comes to Linux then it doesn't matter what anyone says or promises, trust no one. I can't get angry if I never got emotionally attached to their words. If they do finally port Divinity: Original Sin to Linux then i'll be happy and i'll buy it, if it's a good port of course. Until then I have plenty of games on my backlog to enjoy. Plenty of developers actually making their product available on Linux who would love my hard earned money.

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: edqeDark

Quoting: Mountain ManStill not going to buy it until there's a steep discount... and maybe not even then. I've got too many games to catch-up on from developers who actually respect the Linux market.

Do you think they postponed the release for fun?

No, I don't think they did it for fun, but whatever their reasons, they have treated us very poorly and dishonestly.

I agree with you that the communication has been poor. Small amount of information once in two months isn't quite enough for crowdfunded projects. It would be also interesting to know more about the problems they had. We have heard so many developers having middleware problems that it seems proprietary middleware support in Linux is not still quite ready in general.

As long as they are going to publish the game for Linux I don't think they have treated us dishonestly. Unfortunately bugs and problems happens in software business and then things get late or the project will be cancelled.

Why Do Projects Fail?

What comes to communication I think other developers should take tips from CIG. They are active in various of forums and publishing videos and posts weekly about what is going on.


Last edited by edqe on 6 November 2015 at 5:33 am UTC

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: BillNyeTheBlackGuyOnce again you idiots on this site refuse to understand how businesses work.

But but but they promise. They promised nothing. Period.

I understand perfectly well that what Larian has done is not good business. You don't tell your customers, "We're going to do X!", take your customer's money for X, and then fail to deliver X. Not sure what you call that, but I call it bad business.

It's normally called fraud.

A delay could be a good sign, I know it has been ages.
But if we get a stable port for the cost of simple waiting longer, I think I can wait a bit more.


Last edited by Zelox on 6 November 2015 at 1:16 pm UTC

Quoting: edqeIt would be also interesting to know more about the problems they had. We have heard so many developers having middleware problems that it seems proprietary middleware support in Linux is not still quite ready in general.

As long as they are going to publish the game for Linux I don't think they have treated us dishonestly. Unfortunately bugs and problems happens in software business and then things get late or the project will be cancelled.

They had two main problems:
1. They did not check their middleware for Linux support before promising the port, underestimating the work the port would need.
2. From what I got from their Steam forum posts, they have no clue how proper multi-platform development works. Instead of making sure that their engine (and later the complete game) compiles and runs on all targeted platforms during the whole development process they developed Windows-only and wanted to port the engine later. To do the port they forked of a new branch for the Linux developer(s?) to work on, while simultaneously working on changing the Windows branch for the Extended Edition. They soon realized that the EE branch developed much faster and the Linux guy(s?) couldn't keep up with that, so they went the same route again, waiting for the Windows branch to be ready and then port from that branch again, only this time working on the console ports first and then on the Linux port (with the excuse that the console ports had to be ready much earlier for the verification process needed when releasing on consoles). At least that is how I understand it went for them, reading Raze's comments.