It has come to my attention recently that some people have been taking a really hard stance against developers who want to gauge interest for a Linux port. I want to talk about it for a bit.
Note: This is an editorial, so this means these are my personal thoughts. Not agreeing (with me or anyone else who comments) is not an excuse for insults. Please be respectful in the comments.
I should note as well: I don't want to come across like some old know-it-all fart here, but I think this needs to be said.
There may be a large amount of games available for Linux now, but we aren’t even close when it comes to the amount or quality of those on Windows. I seriously don’t think we are at a stage where we can afford to turn away any developer yet. We’ve seen ports delayed in the past due to the attitudes of some people, and I don’t ever want that to happen again.
There’s also the financial aspect, it may be profitable for bigger titles getting ported by the likes of Feral with a lot of experience, but it’s often rather costly for developers to bring titles to Linux when they don’t know the system (time = money and all that). It’s easy to forget, so this is a simple call for calm.
When a developer comes along and responds to the inevitable “will this come to Linux?” email, Twitter or forum post, do remember you’re speaking to another human.
I’ve seen people claim things like “the developer wants us to beg” (and sometimes much more colourful language has been used), but that’s a truly terrible attitude to take and it has been annoying me more and more. It’s not begging if you’re showing a developer that their game is interesting to another potential audience.
We are a smaller community, so such remarks will be a lot louder to developers—especially when it’s an indie developer. You’re often talking to a one or two person setup probably working from home.
If you were a game developer and someone came along to ask for a port to another platform, how would you feel when your reply asking to see interest was met with such outright hostility? It’s idiotic, unhelpful and, to be honest, it’s yet another reason the Linux gaming community has been called Toxic in the past.
Be the Linux community I know and love, be helpful to developers, get in on beta testing when you can (I’ve seen plenty of developers give out free keys for this too!) and appreciate the good games we get. We are a smaller market in most people’s eyes, so let’s not turn away anything that could help us grow even a little.
The fact is, I’ve seen multiple games only come to Linux because Linux fans showed actual interest in it. One such example is Nightside, which I discovered on Steam. After a quick chat with the developer, I was able to convince them to do a Linux build and after a short test they then decided to support a Linux build. There’s many such examples like this, but due to the amount of games I cover that’s one I could quickly pull up (without having to sift through hundreds of articles).
I implore you to think about what you’re saying. Is it making the Linux community sound like entitled and self-important morons or are you being helpful? Be smart, be understanding and keep be awesome. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Note: This is an editorial, so this means these are my personal thoughts. Not agreeing (with me or anyone else who comments) is not an excuse for insults. Please be respectful in the comments.
I should note as well: I don't want to come across like some old know-it-all fart here, but I think this needs to be said.
There may be a large amount of games available for Linux now, but we aren’t even close when it comes to the amount or quality of those on Windows. I seriously don’t think we are at a stage where we can afford to turn away any developer yet. We’ve seen ports delayed in the past due to the attitudes of some people, and I don’t ever want that to happen again.
There’s also the financial aspect, it may be profitable for bigger titles getting ported by the likes of Feral with a lot of experience, but it’s often rather costly for developers to bring titles to Linux when they don’t know the system (time = money and all that). It’s easy to forget, so this is a simple call for calm.
When a developer comes along and responds to the inevitable “will this come to Linux?” email, Twitter or forum post, do remember you’re speaking to another human.
I’ve seen people claim things like “the developer wants us to beg” (and sometimes much more colourful language has been used), but that’s a truly terrible attitude to take and it has been annoying me more and more. It’s not begging if you’re showing a developer that their game is interesting to another potential audience.
We are a smaller community, so such remarks will be a lot louder to developers—especially when it’s an indie developer. You’re often talking to a one or two person setup probably working from home.
If you were a game developer and someone came along to ask for a port to another platform, how would you feel when your reply asking to see interest was met with such outright hostility? It’s idiotic, unhelpful and, to be honest, it’s yet another reason the Linux gaming community has been called Toxic in the past.
Be the Linux community I know and love, be helpful to developers, get in on beta testing when you can (I’ve seen plenty of developers give out free keys for this too!) and appreciate the good games we get. We are a smaller market in most people’s eyes, so let’s not turn away anything that could help us grow even a little.
The fact is, I’ve seen multiple games only come to Linux because Linux fans showed actual interest in it. One such example is Nightside, which I discovered on Steam. After a quick chat with the developer, I was able to convince them to do a Linux build and after a short test they then decided to support a Linux build. There’s many such examples like this, but due to the amount of games I cover that’s one I could quickly pull up (without having to sift through hundreds of articles).
I implore you to think about what you’re saying. Is it making the Linux community sound like entitled and self-important morons or are you being helpful? Be smart, be understanding and keep be awesome. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
OLucasZanella Dec 6, 2016
Why should one see developers as humans when they don't see us as that themselves? Remember the whole thing when it said Linux in the kickstarter, Linux gamers supported the game and then the game wasn't released to Linux because problems*?
I agree we shouldn't be dicks to developers when we are talking directly to them, but here, aren't we among friends? Why can't one notice the whole "if there is interest and people start asking we may develop something" trend and think it's basically a call for begging?
*Which doesn't matter if they are real or not, promising is one thing, getting payed and then not delivering is another.
Edit: I think we all here know about the whole "don't pre-order and don't support a kickstarter", but then didn't this start just because the developers were the ones being the dicks? Yeah, it's not good receiving unwanted dick, but more important than showing we are a loving community is showing we don't take things for granted. The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux and I think part of that was because of the shitty 2 port backlash. If they (all developers in the world) see that and get a bit afraid of porting, then to me this is even good. They don't wanna waste money on porting, great, I don't wanna waste money on bad ports. It's harsh? Hell yeah, I want it to be.
As much as I love Feral Interactive, the lack of complaining means there is a texture bug in Shadow of Mordor that hasn't been corrected in maybe a year. To me, it's all a message: "do not take us lightly, for we too have claws"
Last edited by OLucasZanella on 6 December 2016 at 10:53 pm UTC
I agree we shouldn't be dicks to developers when we are talking directly to them, but here, aren't we among friends? Why can't one notice the whole "if there is interest and people start asking we may develop something" trend and think it's basically a call for begging?
*Which doesn't matter if they are real or not, promising is one thing, getting payed and then not delivering is another.
Edit: I think we all here know about the whole "don't pre-order and don't support a kickstarter", but then didn't this start just because the developers were the ones being the dicks? Yeah, it's not good receiving unwanted dick, but more important than showing we are a loving community is showing we don't take things for granted. The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux and I think part of that was because of the shitty 2 port backlash. If they (all developers in the world) see that and get a bit afraid of porting, then to me this is even good. They don't wanna waste money on porting, great, I don't wanna waste money on bad ports. It's harsh? Hell yeah, I want it to be.
As much as I love Feral Interactive, the lack of complaining means there is a texture bug in Shadow of Mordor that hasn't been corrected in maybe a year. To me, it's all a message: "do not take us lightly, for we too have claws"
Last edited by OLucasZanella on 6 December 2016 at 10:53 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: OLucasZanellaWhy should one see developers as humans when they don't see us as that themselves? Remember the whole thing when it said Linux in the kickstarter, Linux gamers supported the game and then the game wasn't released to Linux because problems*?You're talking about an entirely different topic mate.
2 Likes, Who?
Well said Liam,
remember just because you use Linux you don't need to be have like a certain Mr Torvalds.....
remember just because you use Linux you don't need to be have like a certain Mr Torvalds.....
0 Likes
OLucasZanella Dec 6, 2016
Quoting: liamdaweYou're talking about an entirely different topic mate.Well, it resulted in backlash and "bad words" were said. It's not too strange a path to take from the post.
0 Likes
Truth is the world of gaming is becoming so BIG that its fracturing itself under its own weight; windows store vs steam games not playing together (COD), console wars (PSN vs Xbox live), the high price of PC games - I remember the days when console games where proportionally much more expensive. If we are not careful then game developers are going to increasingly take sides...
Remember; it was not KIDS that took gaming mainstream, it was NERDS like us! We need to shine a light and show the world a new way, open platforms are the only way forward for truly sustainable gaming.
Even AAA titles fail (arkam knight, infinite warfare on windows store), if the big ones can crash and burn even then we as the open-source community should be more supportive of developers with issues.
Trolling them is not helping anybody…
PS: I see a world in not too distant future were you need 3 consoles, 2 PC ‘stores’ and 2 mobile devices to get the games you *want* to play.
The way forward for everyone is open-source platforms and WebGL. (and similar methodologies)
Remember; it was not KIDS that took gaming mainstream, it was NERDS like us! We need to shine a light and show the world a new way, open platforms are the only way forward for truly sustainable gaming.
Even AAA titles fail (arkam knight, infinite warfare on windows store), if the big ones can crash and burn even then we as the open-source community should be more supportive of developers with issues.
Trolling them is not helping anybody…
PS: I see a world in not too distant future were you need 3 consoles, 2 PC ‘stores’ and 2 mobile devices to get the games you *want* to play.
The way forward for everyone is open-source platforms and WebGL. (and similar methodologies)
0 Likes
A certain user in a previous article made a particularly cogent point: Linux ports typically get 1-3% of sales across the board. Asking people to raise their hands repeatedly (across multiple games/developers) to show interest is indeed pointless if you can just look at the stats and figure out if that percentage makes it worth it for you. In fact that's a lot more reliable and safe for developers than trying to gauge subjectively whether X number of posts in a Steam forum in a given time frame means sufficient sales to make a port viable.
I don't resent them at all for asking, but it would be more helpful for us to show them figures when we see them asking for a show of interest than to roll our eyes or say "yes please."
I don't resent them at all for asking, but it would be more helpful for us to show them figures when we see them asking for a show of interest than to roll our eyes or say "yes please."
6 Likes, Who?
Well, the gaming community in general has been considered toxic for the longest time. Remember when a COD dev announced some changes in a patch, which included some nerfing, and the fans went berserk and even threatened to kill his family?
If I was a conspiratorial man, I'd suspect that those things were actually done by people with an agenda who want to the community to seem toxic, but there's no evidence for any of that, so let's not.
Anyway, as I'm an old fogey, who greatly prefers the best of the SNES and PSX over modern PC gaming, I'm not really interested in most announced games and whether or not they're coming to Linux.
If I was a conspiratorial man, I'd suspect that those things were actually done by people with an agenda who want to the community to seem toxic, but there's no evidence for any of that, so let's not.
Anyway, as I'm an old fogey, who greatly prefers the best of the SNES and PSX over modern PC gaming, I'm not really interested in most announced games and whether or not they're coming to Linux.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: XelancerWebGL
Hopefully not that. Perhaps WebVulkan though.
0 Likes
Luke_Nukem Dec 7, 2016
Quite frankly the "elitest/snobbish/arrogant" element coming out in Linux gaming communities is pissing me off big time.
How about let's do something different - if you see that a developer has taken the time and effort to support our smaller market segment, and help to expand and grow it, congratulate and thank them! It's what I do on any medium that they are active on.
And above all, if you have the absolute inability to say things in a constructive non-fucking-wankerish way, then don't fucking say anything at all!
Don't be a cunt. It's that simple.
How about let's do something different - if you see that a developer has taken the time and effort to support our smaller market segment, and help to expand and grow it, congratulate and thank them! It's what I do on any medium that they are active on.
And above all, if you have the absolute inability to say things in a constructive non-fucking-wankerish way, then don't fucking say anything at all!
Don't be a cunt. It's that simple.
12 Likes, Who?
I don't care about developers and their feelings (sorry, Feral, but I don't know you personally guys - we can go for whiskey some day when I'm rich and will feel like landing in US in my private jet). I don't care about Linux "ports" (because I believe software should be developed on Linux first). I care about quality games being released for Linux on Steam with regular updates, sane performance, and sold for a sane price. We aren't 2nd sort people and we shouldn't treat ourselves as we were saying "oh, let's be happy because this lousy job Linux *port* could be worse". I'm not paying less money than Windows user, I shouldn't expect worse product, I'm not happy when it turnes out to be... But I don't lash at anyone, as I assume nobody (but my mom) cares for my feelings either. I just do refunds. Why would anyone do anything else...?
Last edited by cprn on 9 December 2016 at 1:35 pm UTC
Last edited by cprn on 9 December 2016 at 1:35 pm UTC
3 Likes, Who?
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me