I was surprised to see Dead Island Definitive Edition (and Riptide) released on Linux since Deep Silver claimed before hand it wouldn't be. After a small delay they did release it, but don't plan to support it.
The games do have issues on Linux where the mouse is super slow in the menus, graphical glitches and so on. Not all major issues, but still annoying.
I emailed them about it on their official support email they instructed me to do, and I got this sad reply:
Deep SilverDear Customer,
thank you for your inquiry.
Unfortunately there will be no further development for the Linux Version. If there are problems with the linux version, there is nothing we can do to improve he situation.
Not sure how I feel about this.
Update, they replied to me asking about why:
Deep SilverDear Customer,
thank you for your inquiry.
We don't know why - that is the information we get from the developer.
Update 2: Techland replied to me, they said speak to Deep Silver. I just did a support full circle, oh my.
TechlandDear Liam Dawe,
In accordance with our developer's agreement with the game's publisher, Deep Silver, who hold all of the assets and rights to all and any products related to the Dead Island series, we do not provide any support in regards to the aforementioned titles.
If you have any queries in relation to a Dead Island title, contact Deep Silver and they will surely provide you with the answers you seek.
Having said that, we apologize for any inconvenience caused.
So it does seem it is totally out of Techland's hands now. Confusing, as Deep Silver say it is down to the developer and Techland claim they have nothing to do with it now.
It's fantastic to get such games and I am thankful we do, but why release a game and sell it without any intention of supporting it at all? As a customer who personally purchased the new and the old editions, it frustrates me.
As a writer, it annoys me to write about this sort of thing. I would rather have 100% positive articles about how amazing this next game is, but I don't want to hide from issues games, developers and publishers have.
How do you feel about this?
I am starting to feel like the relationship between Deep Silver and Techland is becoming a bit strained. Techland recently announced they are becoming a publisher, so maybe it has ruffled the feathers of the people at Deep Silver.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
I'm kind of torn on situations like this. Maybe it's just different Linux users with different perspectives, but it seems like I see some Linux users complain about not getting certain titles at all, and will happily argue in a thread in a way that gives the impression they don't even care what state a Linux build would be, as long as they get one. Then they turn right around and say that if a developer is gonna bother making a Linux port then they dang well better support it even if official support is something prohibitively costly. I am not speaking of anyone in particular here, and maybe such folks aren't acting like that on purpose, but that's the somewhat contradictory vibe I get from a lot of Linux gamers.
Part of me just wants to celebrate that this or any unsupported game works on Linux at all, whether that be ports or a WINE game. One of the difficult aspects of using Linux is frequently leaving the land of "official support" behind, especially if you use a more niche distro like Arch or Gentoo, and making things work anyway.
To be fair I feel the pain quite personally for both scenarios, whether it be getting a bad port, or no port. But honestly I think if I had to choose between the two, I think I would take the former, because the Linux gaming library is still so far from parity with Windows.
Part of me just wants to celebrate that this or any unsupported game works on Linux at all, whether that be ports or a WINE game. One of the difficult aspects of using Linux is frequently leaving the land of "official support" behind, especially if you use a more niche distro like Arch or Gentoo, and making things work anyway.
To be fair I feel the pain quite personally for both scenarios, whether it be getting a bad port, or no port. But honestly I think if I had to choose between the two, I think I would take the former, because the Linux gaming library is still so far from parity with Windows.
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Quoting: psychodriverQuoting: ShmerlI suppose it's the reason why GOG rejected Metro games. Companies which don't fix their bugs are jerks.
What bugs were in the Metro Redux ports? The only problem I had was it didn't like my custom alsa setup. I played through both games and was happy with the performance and stability.
The lack of Vsync, the lack of manual resolution configuration and the gray dots...
Indeed, the linux version of both Redux were abandoned...
The linux version of the original MetroLL works better then the Redux version (at least for me)
About this, it seems there is a failure in the communications between Deepsilver's people.
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Quoting: psychodriverQuoting: ShmerlI suppose it's the reason why GOG rejected Metro games. Companies which don't fix their bugs are jerks.
What bugs were in the Metro Redux ports? The only problem I had was it didn't like my custom alsa setup. I played through both games and was happy with the performance and stability.
I can't say, since GOG don't publish reasons for rejection. But such blatant refusal to support could have played a role.
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Quoting: Comandante oardoQuoting: psychodriverQuoting: ShmerlI suppose it's the reason why GOG rejected Metro games. Companies which don't fix their bugs are jerks.
What bugs were in the Metro Redux ports? The only problem I had was it didn't like my custom alsa setup. I played through both games and was happy with the performance and stability.
The lack of Vsync, the lack of manual resolution configuration and the gray dots...
Indeed, the linux version of both Redux were abandoned...
The linux version of the original MetroLL works better then the Redux version (at least for me)
About this, it seems there is a failure in the communications between Deepsilver's people.
Aha, I had forgotten most of those issues. Vsync actually worked but the flag was reversed (for me anyway on nvidia). If you had it checked vsync was off, unchecked turned it on.
The gray dots would disappear if you turned off one of the graphical options (tesselation?). I guess an option for manual configuration never bothered me.
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Quoting: psychodriverQuoting: Comandante oardoQuoting: psychodriverQuoting: ShmerlI suppose it's the reason why GOG rejected Metro games. Companies which don't fix their bugs are jerks.
What bugs were in the Metro Redux ports? The only problem I had was it didn't like my custom alsa setup. I played through both games and was happy with the performance and stability.
The lack of Vsync, the lack of manual resolution configuration and the gray dots...
Indeed, the linux version of both Redux were abandoned...
The linux version of the original MetroLL works better then the Redux version (at least for me)
About this, it seems there is a failure in the communications between Deepsilver's people.
Aha, I had forgotten most of those issues. Vsync actually worked but the flag was reversed (for me anyway on nvidia). If you had it checked vsync was off, unchecked turned it on.
The gray dots would disappear if you turned off one of the graphical options (tesselation?). I guess an option for manual configuration never bothered me.
The grey dots were ambient occlusion's rendering. I just got used to it and it doesn't bother me at all. Actually, running the game with 2x SSAA already attenuates this a great deal (but I haven't got a strong enough GPU for this yet).
Last edited by omer666 on 16 June 2016 at 9:11 am UTC
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I always find it strange when publishers and developers go out of their way to spite their customers. They hand us a Linux version but how many copies do they expect to sell with this stance and attitude ? Why put in what effort they did do if not to make money yet they go and shoot themselves in the foot.
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This kind of situation hurts Linux as a gaming platform more than not having a Linux build at all.
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So here's my thoughts on this... pretty sure they would give you the same shit run around if you were running ANY platform. Seriously, besides some of the indie titles, when has any developer/publisher of a big title given two craps about something once their game is out and into the wild?
Granted I also don't understand why the world even needs publishers anymore. They need to die in a fire. Mostly all they do is prey on developers, lock their IP and take the majority of the profits. Game distribution is handled by Steam, Gog, etc. So really, what purpose do publishers serve? Sure, they may help fund the initial game (crowd funding seems to work for a lot of games!), but then they push deadlines which cause the games to be released as buggy pieces of crap.
Sorry for the rant. I'm actually quite happy they released this, I still need to figure out if it's possible to use my old save game from Riptide, but then again I think my hard drive potentially melted that had it on there...
Granted I also don't understand why the world even needs publishers anymore. They need to die in a fire. Mostly all they do is prey on developers, lock their IP and take the majority of the profits. Game distribution is handled by Steam, Gog, etc. So really, what purpose do publishers serve? Sure, they may help fund the initial game (crowd funding seems to work for a lot of games!), but then they push deadlines which cause the games to be released as buggy pieces of crap.
Sorry for the rant. I'm actually quite happy they released this, I still need to figure out if it's possible to use my old save game from Riptide, but then again I think my hard drive potentially melted that had it on there...
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I agree with you 100%, slaapliedje
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Quoting: slaapliedjeSo here's my thoughts on this... pretty sure they would give you the same shit run around if you were running ANY platform.
That means the Windows version is also not supported?
Quoting: slaapliedjeSeriously, besides some of the indie titles, when has any developer/publisher of a big title given two craps about something once their game is out and into the wild?The are many examples where developer do care.
What about Blizzard, they provided regular fixes and minor feature updates to games older than 15 years (Diablo 2, Starcraft).
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