The curious tale of vanishing Linux & SteamOS ports, a status on a few of them

People keep asking me to highlight this issue, so I will. There is a growing number of games that have at some point said a Linux port will happen and then we wait and nothing happens.

We have a wiki page setup for a while that is need of some love to keep it up to date, but not many people even realise we have a wiki so an article to highlight some is a good idea.

I'm only going to highlight a few, as to be honest, there's a lot and the wiki page doesn't even cover half of them right now.

This is the status of a few choice picks and what we currently know about them.

The one that is really getting on my nerves personally at the moment is Carmageddon: Reincarnation. It released into Early Access on March 27th 2014, over two years later the developer is still claiming we will one day get some sort of announcement. Their level of commitment to Linux has been a bit shocking.

My next annoyance is of course The Witcher 3. It was announced by a big homepage image on Steam and then included in the big SteamOS sale. Over two years since the initial image on Steam and they still aren't confirming anything. My emails go completely unanswered too. We have a forum post that has been going for a while talking about it, where some people do seem to get replies. I fully believe they at one point intended to, and they changed their minds on it. Considering the developers never publicly confirmed it, I'm leaning more towards Valve acting without gaining absolute certainty on the port as they wanted another big name for SteamOS.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is another annoying one. It was promised in Humble Indie Bundle 11, then it was due in 2015. They then took the port in-house and most recently (April 2016) they said they still want to do it. Looks like it just went to the bottom of their list when they took it back for themselves.

Mad Max is another odd tale that was announced in a Press Release in March 2015, but since then we have heard nothing. However, it February this year it was spotted on SteamDB and still in the last week continues to show progress according to the SteamDB page.

Total War: Warhammer was confirmed to be coming to Linux in April of last year, as it listed SteamOS as an official platform on the official website. Then in March of this year it was stated Linux was still a platform, but probably not at the same time as the others. I've seen lots of posts asking for a status update over the last few months, but no developer has been replying.

An "honourable" mention to the always delayed Rocket League. It has blown way past all the previous release windows and still no sign of it. Most recently, 16 days ago (30th of June 2016) a developer noted it was still nearing a release window.
Edit, Rocket League have since sent us a message on twitter

@gamingonlinux For sure. Saw your article. We're working on getting it optimized and will send out an update when we have a firm date.

— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) July 19, 2016

It's always frustrating when developers just don't deliver, but always remember to be respectful. You are talking to humans after all and being rude is a good way to get ignored. There was a game a while ago that was delayed due to abuse/trolling towards the porter, so don't be a fool about it. Being frustrated is only natural, but you need to think about how you come across, get your wording right before posting a message to a developer.

I say it time and time again: If you genuinely care about playing games on Linux and want to support Linux gaming, never buy a game until the Linux port is actually out and confirmed to be playable.

I personally don't fund and will never fund anything on services like Kickstarter unless they have a working Linux build and even then I remain sceptical. It would have to be truly amazing to get my support.

Feel free to comment about others, and remember to help keep the wiki page updated. Keeping that updated and letting others know that page exists should help keep track of this growing port-mess we have.