Civilization VI for Linux is no longer certain, only a possibility

Dangit...grammer fail:/ I've edited to fix that

Good luck with your endeavor, and thanks for Layers of Fear!

I never would have deleted my Windows Partition if I'd known that Civ V might be the last Civ game that I get to play.

I never would have deleted my Windows Partition if I'd known that Civ V might be the last Civ game that I get to play.

I wonder if it will rune on WINE.

I'm quite disappointed, I'm guessing aspyr was hoping steamos would be in a better state than it is right now, with a bigger market share.

There are other difficulties as well, the Linux opengl stack is actively being developed and has moved on to supporting Vulkan. Apple have intentionally stopped supporting openGL and gone to their own proprietary metal api.

Aspyr's loyalty has always been Mac and mac has around 5% market share, if SteamOS had taken off, then they would be porting regardless of how many difficulties they would have to overcome, or fireaxis would have ported directly. Right now to fully support Linux they would need to utilise the latest openGL specs, which they cant do as apple doesn't support it.

We are tiny, with just 1% market share and unfortunately some of us have become a bit self-entitled. We were hungry for every game port and thankful for any decent port, now there are talks of boycotts for any company that doesn't meet our expectations.

I wish people would just chill out, being kind and nice to every developer or porter is better than turning nasty if we dont get our own way. I think the saying goes you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar ( http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/You+can+catch+more+flies+with+honey+than+with+vinegar)

Ultimately when we are a nice polite community, developers will be more open with us, if we treat them with respect they will treat us with respect. Stop demanding, stop rioting, chill out, be polite approach the developers with a polite and respectful attitude. I am forever grateful for Aspyr porting civ 5, its the game I've played the most on steam since it came to Linux, Both Aspyr and Feral try hard and there really isn't much reward for them porting, having to deal with a spoilt angry community will drive them away.

Our market share isn't making them super rich, but they still port games. I hope some day SteamOs does take off and I hope Linux can break free from the shackles imposed by companies like Apple and Microsoft and be able to stand on its own two feet with its own respectable market share, but for now I am always grateful to any games company or studio taking the time out to try and do a respectable port.

Ultimately though I am pissed with Valve, they just Half-Ass everything, seriously no new games in years, their steamos support has been shite, steamos boxes are far too overpriced, they jump onto vr don't even provide steamos support and vr on pc is just too expensive and by all accounts its flopped.

They are all over the shop and they are the only ones that can actually make a dent / make a difference. If they announced left for dead 3 tomorrow, using vulkan, with stellar performance on SteamOS, with a 3 month timed exclusivity for SteamOS, it would dramatically impact linux gaming, but they wont do it, they dont even need to have timed exclusivity they just need to bring out new AAA games with SteamOS as a 1st party citizen with stellar performance, something to really show off what SteamOS and by extension Linux is capable of.

Look at it this way, can you blame Aspyr or any games company for having waning Linux aspirations, when the company that initially headed up this charge, has been half-assing support as much as valve has recently for steamos ? What new feature in SteamOS have you seen that has made you think, yeah Valve are definitely still trying ?

Maan I was so awaiting this release, so sad. :(

-And I was hoping someone else but Aspyr did the porting this time, I've delt with their support...

Relevant quotes below -on the "Civ-BE crashing on CPU's with more than 16 vCPU's" support ticket, I cut out all the standard "send us steam system information" and me explaining how it works on the exact same system with an older cpu and if I use taskset to lock Civ to fewer cores.. And so on..:
-------------

Me: "it is a threading issue, the CPU has 20 threads (and the stacktrace points to this aswell)."

Aspyr: "Its possible that there are missing updates or firmware that are causing the issue.
We have not been able to replicate this issue on a similar hardware configuration".

Me: "If you don't mind me asking..
- What CPU is in your similar setup?"

Aspyr: "AMD fx-6300 CPU"

Aspyr: "Thanks so much for following up on this issue. Unfortunately, since the issue is inconsistent and hasn't been reported directly with support to either Aspyr or 2K save for a few players, there are no plans to provide an update to resolve it."
------------------

I'm speechless.

I never would have deleted my Windows Partition if I'd known that Civ V might be the last Civ game that I get to play.

I think that we should just ignore games and publishers that have no intention to provide cross-platform games, there is no future in forcing users to use certain OSs for playing certain games, I've plenty of games that are not supported on Linux and lately I'm just like OK, I buy and support only cross-platform developers and publishers, I've seen that a lot of Windows users do that as well, I've talked to a guy in Youtube comment section who said that he still uses Windows because of performance issues (hardware) but plans to switch on long-run and is constantly buying only games that he will be able to play on Linux. There is no point in supporting someone if he completely ignores you or has no intention to support you because you don't use certain OS.

I'm quite disappointed, I'm guessing aspyr was hoping steamos would be in a better state than it is right now, with a bigger market share.

There are other difficulties as well, the Linux opengl stack is actively being developed and has moved on to supporting Vulkan. Apple have intentionally stopped supporting openGL and gone to their own proprietary metal api.

Aspyr's loyalty has always been Mac and mac has around 5% market share, if SteamOS had taken off, then they would be porting regardless of how many difficulties they would have to overcome, or fireaxis would have ported directly. Right now to fully support Linux they would need to utilise the latest openGL specs, which they cant do as apple doesn't support it.

We are tiny, with just 1% market share and unfortunately some of us have become a bit self-entitled. We were hungry for every game port and thankful for any decent port, now there are talks of boycotts for any company that doesn't meet our expectations.

I wish people would just chill out, being kind and nice to every developer or porter is better than turning nasty if we dont get our own way. I think the saying goes you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar ( http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/You+can+catch+more+flies+with+honey+than+with+vinegar)

Ultimately when we are a nice polite community, developers will be more open with us, if we treat them with respect they will treat us with respect. Stop demanding, stop rioting, chill out, be polite approach the developers with a polite and respectful attitude. I am forever grateful for Aspyr porting civ 5, its the game I've played the most on steam since it came to Linux, Both Aspyr and Feral try hard and there really isn't much reward for them porting, having to deal with a spoilt angry community will drive them away.

Our market share isn't making them super rich, but they still port games. I hope some day SteamOs does take off and I hope Linux can break free from the shackles imposed by companies like Apple and Microsoft and be able to stand on its own two feet with its own respectable market share, but for now I am always grateful to any games company or studio taking the time out to try and do a respectable port.

Ultimately though I am pissed with Valve, they just Half-Ass everything, seriously no new games in years, their steamos support has been shite, steamos boxes are far too overpriced, they jump onto vr don't even provide steamos support and vr on pc is just too expensive and by all accounts its flopped.

They are all over the shop and they are the only ones that can actually make a dent / make a difference. If they announced left for dead 3 tomorrow, using vulkan, with stellar performance on SteamOS, with a 3 month timed exclusivity for SteamOS, it would dramatically impact linux gaming, but they wont do it, they dont even need to have timed exclusivity they just need to bring out new AAA games with SteamOS as a 1st party citizen with stellar performance, something to really show off what SteamOS and by extension Linux is capable of.

Look at it this way, can you blame Aspyr or any games company for having waning Linux aspirations, when the company that initially headed up this charge, has been half-assing support as much as valve has recently for steamos ? What new feature in SteamOS have you seen that has made you think, yeah Valve are definitely still trying ?

Actually, it's more than doubled. We're sitting at 2.21% atm for Linux usage. I follow the stats on other sites. Steam stats are not accurate.

I'm quite disappointed, I'm guessing aspyr was hoping steamos would be in a better state than it is right now, with a bigger market share.

There are other difficulties as well, the Linux opengl stack is actively being developed and has moved on to supporting Vulkan. Apple have intentionally stopped supporting openGL and gone to their own proprietary metal api.

Aspyr's loyalty has always been Mac and mac has around 5% market share, if SteamOS had taken off, then they would be porting regardless of how many difficulties they would have to overcome, or fireaxis would have ported directly. Right now to fully support Linux they would need to utilise the latest openGL specs, which they cant do as apple doesn't support it.

We are tiny, with just 1% market share and unfortunately some of us have become a bit self-entitled. We were hungry for every game port and thankful for any decent port, now there are talks of boycotts for any company that doesn't meet our expectations.

I wish people would just chill out, being kind and nice to every developer or porter is better than turning nasty if we dont get our own way. I think the saying goes you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar ( http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/You+can+catch+more+flies+with+honey+than+with+vinegar)

Ultimately when we are a nice polite community, developers will be more open with us, if we treat them with respect they will treat us with respect. Stop demanding, stop rioting, chill out, be polite approach the developers with a polite and respectful attitude. I am forever grateful for Aspyr porting civ 5, its the game I've played the most on steam since it came to Linux, Both Aspyr and Feral try hard and there really isn't much reward for them porting, having to deal with a spoilt angry community will drive them away.

Our market share isn't making them super rich, but they still port games. I hope some day SteamOs does take off and I hope Linux can break free from the shackles imposed by companies like Apple and Microsoft and be able to stand on its own two feet with its own respectable market share, but for now I am always grateful to any games company or studio taking the time out to try and do a respectable port.

Ultimately though I am pissed with Valve, they just Half-Ass everything, seriously no new games in years, their steamos support has been shite, steamos boxes are far too overpriced, they jump onto vr don't even provide steamos support and vr on pc is just too expensive and by all accounts its flopped.

They are all over the shop and they are the only ones that can actually make a dent / make a difference. If they announced left for dead 3 tomorrow, using vulkan, with stellar performance on SteamOS, with a 3 month timed exclusivity for SteamOS, it would dramatically impact linux gaming, but they wont do it, they dont even need to have timed exclusivity they just need to bring out new AAA games with SteamOS as a 1st party citizen with stellar performance, something to really show off what SteamOS and by extension Linux is capable of.

Look at it this way, can you blame Aspyr or any games company for having waning Linux aspirations, when the company that initially headed up this charge, has been half-assing support as much as valve has recently for steamos ? What new feature in SteamOS have you seen that has made you think, yeah Valve are definitely still trying ?

Developers don't give a shit about us, all they care about is money... Riot games is definite proof of that (huge number of rioters use linux on a daily basis, but refuse to support it because of financial concerns...) so there is no good reason in being nice to someone who gives up on porting games to SteamOS as soon as he sees that there is no huge profit... Linux has never been about profit, it's about making better world software wise and if developers built their games from the ground up for cross-platform they would have no problems providing support for all of them, but they just don't care. We need more companies like Feral and Valve, companies who know that they won't make too much money on the short-run but will make computing and gaming better on the long run...

Developers don't give a shit about us, all they care about is money...

Developers are humans, too.
(I remember a company that hung up a poster with the best Linux user thank quotes - don't remember which one it was.)

Actually, it's more than doubled. We're sitting at 2.21% atm for Linux usage. I follow the stats on other sites. Steam stats are not accurate.

Steam stats match Steam game sales quite nice often.

Developers don't give a shit about us, all they care about is money...

Developers are humans, too.
(I remember a company that hung up a poster with the best Linux user thank quotes - don't remember which one it was.)

@Eike I agree, some developers are really great and like openness and challenges as well as care for their consumers, but I wish that more developers were like that and knew that some people just hate having Windows install installed on their PC because of many reasons, but would still love to pay to play their games... However it really hurts my eyes when I see how many games already support DX12 and on how many games support is coming soon, however they seem to be adopting Vulkan only for android devices eventhough there are a lot of engines that already support Vulkan... the direction that Vulkan adoption is going with developers doesn't look really promising at this point...

Actually, it's more than doubled. We're sitting at 2.21% atm for Linux usage. I follow the stats on other sites. Steam stats are not accurate.

@cxphergmailcom Yeah, Linux marketshare as a whole has grown much in the last year, but not many of Linux users are actually gamers... and for the gamer part it's somewhere from 1-2% IMHO on steam...

Linux adoption rate at one point was rumoured to be about 8 - 10% world wide, the numbers have since nose dived mainly due to apple going the unix route (although I would bet its still around 7 -8%). A few years back many laptop manufacturers where providing linux laptops in places like Malaysia, china etc. this was the tail end of winxp era. Ive been running linux solely as my main platform for a long time, a very long time and I am a believer in the open source model and its also the field I work in.

Numbers always fluctuate, we are talking about games sales here (which puts linux about 1%) and all companies are driven by money, most of us also want to be financially independent, which requires us to have decent well paid jobs. Forget the mega corps here, the ones that wont even look our way (like activision or EA) these developers are by no means massive and they are trying their best.

Its also Aspyr that hangs posters of peoples comments on their walls, read this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/2inq5s/why_aspyr_for_greatness/?st=iu1z51ls&sh=880b7fd3

or this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2sm72d/aspyr_media_are_you_profitable/?st=iu1z50b1&sh=5022a4ab

Which practically confirms what I was thinking, I just looked up aspyr and poster comments in google and came across those two threads. They were just about breaking even with the ports, believe me when I say this, that's not enough to justify sustained development, especially if your met with hostile customers. Honestly the one thing I've learnt is patience and being polite and kind, you do catch more flies with honey, its a simple truth. I also hugely respect Aspyr, because their feedback and their response, tells me they are passionate about what they do and they do genuinely care.

I am also pissed at valve for good reason, they opened this whole thing up because they said they believed in an open platform to try and push gaming, because they were afraid that windows would become a walled garden and they are in a unique position to push for change, but they have so far half-assed this whole endeavour. I get the feeling from them that internally it was a nice to have, but since then they just seemed to have lost interest, chasing after the next shiny toy.

I know Microsoft, they will take any opportunity to advance their cause, the will lie, cheat and steal (like they have in the past) to advance whatever keeps them at major desktop monopoly status, without that monopoly they become irrelevant, they know this, we know this. With valve half-assing and with the quality of games on the steam store tanking, it opens the doors for Microsoft to make a solid walled garden and to lock their users solidly inside it.

Right now they have kind-of backed off with the windows store, but windows 10 is a clear sign of their intent and this whole xbox live, buy a game on xbox and play across xbox consoles or windows pcs, is them sugar coating the poison that will follow. People are ultimately like sheep, they can be herded quite easily, none of us like to admit this, but its the truth successive wars have shown this about us, advertisements are designed to trigger this in our brains and its something we have evolved with and is inherent in our psychology, in our dna. When given the choice between something difficult and something easy we take the route of least resistance. Also the older we get, the more resistance to change we develop. Mega corps and even governments exploit this, they exploit our resistance and fear of change, our fear of difference. This is where FUD comes from, anyway I digress. Linux isnt the cure for all of the worlds ills and its something that Microsoft cannot stop. It does however stand up to the mega-corps of the world and does show an alternative route based around collaboration rather than just purely competition and its a world I would rather live in, who knows what the future will hold and what will ultimately happen, however technology will advance and things will change. Empires will rise and empires will fall, valve would do well to take note.

@truebluewoo

I'm also wondering because data is much different comparing different sites on Linux marketshare... Some say that it's way over 3% and somewhere they say it's 1%... I think that this is also one kind of a strategy to keep people on dominant platform and prevent them from migrating (because of mindset: oh, noone uses Linux, there is no support there...), however I think that this is far from the truth. Linux proves with forums and active community that it's completely viable platform for doing same kinds of things (of course different way) and does majority of them better... Gaming of course is not the case, if I was unbiased and had to choose only for performance Windows 7 would curently be the obvious option, however I do believe that every computer that runs linux counts and that eventually we will prove that our community can stand up against Mac so there would be again 3 major platforms as they were 15 years ago... Strangely all developers back then really considered linux as a platform however today they are way more ignorant...

I agree on the Valve part, however I don't think that they will back off with their Linux plan... Valve has primarily opened a whole new gaming platform to block crazy ideas from Microsoft of overtaking the gaming part of computing as they did with pretty much everything else (except the browser, edge still sucks :D) and for the platform so young it has quite a lot of availible games, performance issues will be irrelevant after a few years when we all upgrade our rigs and these games will run extremely well. I don't know why Valve doesn't ban the new exclusive titles like if you want to have a game availible on Steam platform it needs to be cross-platform... It might sound rough to developers but in fact it is not. Steam has a huge community and every gamer would agree with such an attitude from valve. And community and numbers are ones that would "force" big companies to make cross-platorm games from the ground up. And they could have easily done that because with mindset that is present now in developers' heads (except Feral, Aspyr, Valve, Croteam...) I don't think we'll ever see Day 1 AAA releases on Linux sadly...


Last edited by MaCroX95 on 9 October 2016 at 10:48 am UTC

Developers don't give a shit about us, all they care about is money...

Developers are humans, too.
(I remember a company that hung up a poster with the best Linux user thank quotes - don't remember which one it was.)

@Eike I agree, some developers are really great and like openness and challenges as well as care for their consumers, but I wish that more developers were like that and knew that some people just hate having Windows install installed on their PC because of many reasons, but would still love to pay to play their games... However it really hurts my eyes when I see how many games already support DX12 and on how many games support is coming soon, however they seem to be adopting Vulkan only for android devices eventhough there are a lot of engines that already support Vulkan... the direction that Vulkan adoption is going with developers doesn't look really promising at this point...

Actually, it's more than doubled. We're sitting at 2.21% atm for Linux usage. I follow the stats on other sites. Steam stats are not accurate.

@cxphergmailcom Yeah, Linux marketshare as a whole has grown much in the last year, but not many of Linux users are actually gamers... and for the gamer part it's somewhere from 1-2% IMHO on steam...

Actually, every Linux user I know and all of you here are obviously gamers. It think it's a gross assumption that many aren't.

Biggest thread on most game discussions on Steam are Linux port requests.


Last edited by [email protected] on 9 October 2016 at 3:33 pm UTC

Actually, every Linux user I know and all of you here are obviously gamers. It think it's a gross assumption that many aren't.

Biggest thread on most game discussions on Steam are Linux port requests.

You mean, people on GamingForLinux and Steam are gamers? Really? Wow.

My wife and my mother-in-law are using Linux but are not gamers.


Last edited by Eike on 9 October 2016 at 3:50 pm UTC

Actually, every Linux user I know and all of you here are obviously gamers. It think it's a gross assumption that many aren't.

Biggest thread on most game discussions on Steam are Linux port requests.

You mean, people on GamingForLinux and Steam are gamers? Really? Wow.

My wife and my mother-in-law are using Linux but are not gamers.

That was exactly my point... My father, grandma, grandfather, 2 neighbours they use linux but aren't gamers... I'm the only one that is...

And there is estimated 80+ milion Linux users worldwide... if cxphergmailcom's assumption was right and every Linux user was also a gamer we would be quite big community on Steam, not 1-2% of the marketshare...

Gamers are a minority on both Windows and Linux.

Any other news on this? Because Civ 6 strategic view is awesome!
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/56r0mw/civ_6_strategic_view_is_fing_beautiful_it_looks/

Actually, every Linux user I know and all of you here are obviously gamers. It think it's a gross assumption that many aren't.

Biggest thread on most game discussions on Steam are Linux port requests.

You mean, people on GamingForLinux and Steam are gamers? Really? Wow.

My wife and my mother-in-law are using Linux but are not gamers.

Yes. You read me right. If you're here and you're not a gamer, then you're at the wrong site.

Go to www.omgubuntu.co.uk.

Same goes for Steam.


Last edited by [email protected] on 10 October 2016 at 5:16 pm UTC

Actually, every Linux user I know and all of you here are obviously gamers. It think it's a gross assumption that many aren't.

Biggest thread on most game discussions on Steam are Linux port requests.

You mean, people on GamingForLinux and Steam are gamers? Really? Wow.

My wife and my mother-in-law are using Linux but are not gamers.

Yes. You read me right. If you're here and you're not a gamer, then you're at the wrong site.

Go to www.omgubuntu.co.uk.

Same goes for Steam.

My point was that gamers are a minority on both Windows and Linux, on this site obviously every one is a gamer but you cannot compare marketashare of Linux gamers vs the Marketshare of Linux desktop users... proportion is completely different

Actually, every Linux user I know and all of you here are obviously gamers. It think it's a gross assumption that many aren't.

You mean, people on GamingForLinux and Steam are gamers? Really? Wow.

Yes. You read me right. If you're here and you're not a gamer, then you're at the wrong site.

The random sample you have taken to judge if most Linuxers are gamers is the opposite of random.