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A community contributor to the Unreal Engine has put up a Patreon for you to be able to support their effort.

Rather than me ramble on about it, I will leave it to the words of the developer:
YaakuroHi everyone

I am one of the community developer that contributed to the Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) to improve the experience of the Editor on GNU/Linux (GNUX). Most of my Pull Requests (PR) got merged into the main branch of Epic Games on the Github page.
As you might know already we all have to live from something and so do I :D. I am already quite experienced with UE4 and would like to work more on the GNUX side to enhance the Editor to get closer to the same user experience as on Windows. This will make the Unreal Engine 4 better as developer platform and might even beneficial for the games.


They give examples of the work they have done too, like getting the Vulkan rendering system in Unreal Engine to work on Linux:
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This is really cool and shows the power of funding platforms like Patreon. We wouldn't be here without it either!

Find their Patreon here, go support them.

They currently have 5 supporters with $60 a month coming in, anyone care to push that up? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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31 comments
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Kithop Sep 12, 2016
Just put my $5 in. I was wondering where Vulkan in UE4 for Linux was! :D
masteredu Sep 12, 2016
Donating to someone doing the work Epic Games is actualy meant to do... this is insane. I appreciate his work, but come on, that is realy Epic Games work, and I wont support Epic Games any longer!!! They had 2 years to bring the Epic Games launcher to linux, and still 0 AFFORD. No access to the marketplace.

Unity3D is better under Linux.


BTW: You didnt mention even once the name of the developer: YAAKURO .


Last edited by masteredu on 12 September 2016 at 7:20 pm UTC
stickyparadigm Sep 12, 2016
I'm kinda torn on this one. On the one hand I would love to support all efforts to improve the engine for GNUX (that is catchy), on the other hand this is a commercial product with a commercial licence so donating feels like throwing money at Epic for nothing. If they released it under a free licence (MIT/GPL/etc., not too picky) I would not hesitate.
haagch Sep 12, 2016
I wouldn't donate to Epic Games for this either, but you're donating to a developer who is not affiliated with Epic Games. Supporting independent developers that work on Linux stuff is alright in my book. And you're not doing it for Epic Games, you're doing it for all the games that are developed with Unreal Engine and that are going to get better Linux support.


Last edited by haagch on 12 September 2016 at 7:48 pm UTC
chimpy Sep 12, 2016
I understand where materedu and others are coming from, but alot of projects start that way on Linux. Some one from the Linux community with the skills and drive steps up; turns it into their own personal project until the company behind the software is willing and/or able to code it themselves.
tuubi Sep 12, 2016
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I was kinda slow with this one, but here goes anyway:

Donating to someone doing the work Epic Games is actualy meant to do... this is insane. I appreciate his work, but come on, that is realy Epic Games work, and I wont support Epic Games any longer!!! They had 2 years to bring the Epic Games launcher to linux, and still 0 AFFORD.
I can sympathise, but you are still coming off a bit entitled. It would be awesome if Linux was a higher priority at Epic, but allowing a volunteer contributor to do this is infinitely better than not. Of course I wish they'd pay Yaakuro directly for his contributions, but this is how a lot of commercially run open source projects work. You might think it's "insane" to volunteer in a project that directly benefits a commercial enterprise, but please don't decide for others. And please don't pan a company for opening their product to public contributions. That's just counterproductive.
Mountain Man Sep 12, 2016
So I'm a little confused. I thought Epic was developing Unreal Engine 4? Are they seriously leaving Linux support up to random community members working on their own time? That seems a bit silly.


Last edited by Mountain Man on 12 September 2016 at 8:19 pm UTC
t3g Sep 12, 2016
So Epic Games, a company that has made games for decades and makes a lot of money off of licensing their Unreal Engine is now panhandling for money? This isn't some indie dev looking to make ends meet. Its a big company that could spend the resources into GNU/Linux development if they wanted.

You want to support someone who needs it? How about that Axiom Verge guy and his sick kid instead. No way am I paying to support a corporation that takes advantage of the GNU/Linux community for free labor and doesn't release the code that the community worked on as free software.


Last edited by t3g on 12 September 2016 at 8:25 pm UTC
salamanderrake Sep 12, 2016
So Epic Games, a company that has made games for decades and makes a lot of money off of licensing their Unreal Engine is now panhandling for money? This isn't some indie dev looking to make ends meet. Its a big company that could spend the resources into GNU/Linux development if they wanted.

You want to support someone who needs it? How about that Axiom Verge guy and his sick kid instead. No way am I paying to support a corporation that takes advantage of the GNU/Linux community for free labor and doesn't release the code that the community worked on as free software.

I don't think you understand, this is to support a community developer who is taking time out of their personal life to work on the UE4 editor for Linux developers, not Epic them selves. As for the dev with the sick kid, why not support both, nothing says you have to support one person over the other. The Axiom Verge developer is getting money, or made money from selling his game, where as Yaakuro has not made any money on this.
salamanderrake Sep 12, 2016
I'm kinda torn on this one. On the one hand I would love to support all efforts to improve the engine for GNUX (that is catchy), on the other hand this is a commercial product with a commercial licence so donating feels like throwing money at Epic for nothing. If they released it under a free licence (MIT/GPL/etc., not too picky) I would not hesitate.

You really just said a closed source engine is better then an engine you have code access to?
STiAT Sep 12, 2016
A grain of salt that Epic isn't working on this but it needs a community developer to do so. In my opinion this is something Epic should support if not even fully fund.

Though, I'll support him for the efforts, swallowing the salt...
tmtvl Sep 12, 2016
Might wanna highlight the part saying this is an independent dev in the article.

As in, this is not Epic Games who are asking for money (unless it's a front, but y'know).

I mean, seriously:

I am one of the community developer that contributed to the Unreal Engine 4

Learn to read, people.
salamanderrake Sep 12, 2016
A grain of salt that Epic isn't working on this but it needs a community developer to do so. In my opinion this is something Epic should support if not even fully fund.

Though, I'll support him for the efforts, swallowing the salt...

Epic won't support it until there is a demand for it from the community, but the community won't want it until Epic supports it and everything is 100% working and perfect. There needs to be a demand for a company to spend money on something.
commodore256 Sep 13, 2016
Now, I don't really have much cash to spare, but if I did, I would feel conflicted.

On one hand, Unreal would make Linux more viable for AAA games because it's here now and it's usable, but on the other hand, I do miss the days when devs would open source their engines and they can't do that with Unreal and part of me would rather put money in Godot where it's MIT licensed meaning devs would have the option to open source their engines. What Id Software did in the 90's was only really viable in the 90's when having your own engine and not using middleware was feasible because games were less complicated back then.
lejimster Sep 13, 2016
I can understand the conflicts. I used to be a massive fan of Epic games, but let's just say Mark Rein is a douchebag.

Anyway... This will help other Linux developers I guess. Vulkan is being worked on @ Epic but desktop support isn't as far along as DX12 right now.

The more engines that support Linux and "just work" without too much head scratching for developers, we will all benefit as Linux gamers...

If I had more money spare I would consider supporting this guy. But 1 patreon at a time is my limit.
t3g Sep 13, 2016
I hope this developer realizes that Epic is going to take his code, lock it down, not give it back to the community (it's not GPL), and then make millions of dollars from publishers while he gets $0 and has to resort to the good will of a "community" to fund his efforts to help Epic keep their code proprietary.

If the code was going to remain open for everyone to use, then his efforts aren't wasted as others can learn from it and use that knowledge for their own games. But since he insists on contributing to the existence of non-free software free of charge, he's a fool.
elmapul Sep 13, 2016
I hope this developer realizes that Epic is going to take his code, lock it down, not give it back to the community (it's not GPL), and then make millions of dollars from publishers while he gets $0 and has to resort to the good will of a "community" to fund his efforts to help Epic keep their code proprietary.

If the code was going to remain open for everyone to use, then his efforts aren't wasted as others can learn from it and use that knowledge for their own games. But since he insists on contributing to the existence of non-free software free of charge, he's a fool.

except that he is charging for it, and will not receive $0 if we donate?

the issue is, if we dont do anything, unreal games performance on linux will suck, if we do, we will be helping an proprietary software company.

either you let the windows proprietary windows and its ecosystem dominate the market, or you let epic do that, there is no perfect solution here, but an double edge.

if you care so much about this, why you buy proprietary games on steam (that is also proprietary) anyway?

linux need good game ports, otherwise it will not get new users.
salamanderrake Sep 13, 2016
I hope this developer realizes that Epic is going to take his code, lock it down, not give it back to the community (it's not GPL), and then make millions of dollars from publishers while he gets $0 and has to resort to the good will of a "community" to fund his efforts to help Epic keep their code proprietary.

If the code was going to remain open for everyone to use, then his efforts aren't wasted as others can learn from it and use that knowledge for their own games. But since he insists on contributing to the existence of non-free software free of charge, he's a fool.

I think that because its not GPL your not going to support a community developer who is actually trying to benefit the Linux developer community is a silly archaic idea. Name me one person who has made a living on code they gave to a GPL project? But that misses the whole point of his endeavor, its about making Linux a first class citizen, and not a third world political prisoner. Its about making the developer process on Linux a better experience.
Tuxee Sep 13, 2016
I hope this developer realizes that Epic is going to take his code, lock it down, not give it back to the community (it's not GPL), and then make millions of dollars from publishers...

Millions of dollars! For the enhanced Linux support. Sounds like a slight exaggeration. Unless of course Linux becomes the prime gaming platform in the coming years.
Al3s Sep 13, 2016
GNUX
This guy is on to something here.

"Hey why don't you intall Linux?"
"Get out, you freak!!!"
"Let me interject for a moment..."
...

vs

"Hey why don't you intall GNUX?"
"Wow, what is this GNUX thing you are talking about? It sounds modern, dangerous and sexy. I want to know more!!"


Last edited by Al3s on 13 September 2016 at 8:19 am UTC
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