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.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Developpers don't want us to beg, they want to create a hype around their game before they consider releasing on Linux, they don't want to release on Linux and go unnoticed. If we get so much games these days it's also because of Liam and GamingOnLinux and also because of the Reddit community, without this developpers would probably would have no way to reach to the Linux gamers and make them know they released the game on Linux.
But developpers don't know us, they don't know how the game will be received by the Linux community, I've heard many times developpers saying that they are afraid to release their working Linux version because if a user on Gentoo / Slackware or whatever cannot run the game he might give a negative review and ruin the game reputation.
That's why it's very important that we stay nice to developpers even when they don't always deserve it, because the reputation of the Linux community is vital for all of us. Sometimes things need to be said, like the fact that X is still not released on Linux months after the announced release date or that Y is still broken months after release, be being unrespectful to the developpers is not going to help in any way.
But developpers don't know us, they don't know how the game will be received by the Linux community, I've heard many times developpers saying that they are afraid to release their working Linux version because if a user on Gentoo / Slackware or whatever cannot run the game he might give a negative review and ruin the game reputation.
That's why it's very important that we stay nice to developpers even when they don't always deserve it, because the reputation of the Linux community is vital for all of us. Sometimes things need to be said, like the fact that X is still not released on Linux months after the announced release date or that Y is still broken months after release, be being unrespectful to the developpers is not going to help in any way.
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Quoting: iskaputtIt was a couple articles here on GOL about developers asking for this kind of show of hands. The titles should make them obvious to find if you look at the past few days.QuoteIt 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.
Can you link some examples? I'm not actively reading the Steam forums, so maybe I'm out of the loop?
The discussion in the comments here also seems to go all over the place, touching various issues.
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Luke_Nukem Dec 7, 2016
Quoting: edddeduckferalQuoting: PompesdeskyDid Feral note how often the word "Dirt3" comes up in the comments on this site ? Certainly is a sign that this community likes it a lot ^^
Yes, we note many things in these forums and other similar places :)
I bet you noticed how often "Doom" comes up too :)
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Quoting: hurt138I have been a gamer on every platform since the Atari 2600 back in the 80s. I can say that games these days are much more cross platform than any back in the days of old. True it does suck when that game you really want to play is not on your OS or console of choice, but its up to the developer and always has.Perhaps too, those were the only days when hardware compatibility was a actually real issue...
The cost of console games costing more was mostly due to the cartridge days. No way to make that cheaper (back then). The issue I see with the cost of console and PC or even physical and digital these days, is the dev cost of AAA games. When companies put armies of staff and huge budgets on marketing that game, the actual media ends up being such a small fraction of the total cost.
These days the only real reason to exclude any gaming community is 'the boardroom'. I am not upset by that, my point is that the more the gaming communities fracture from boardroom politics the increasingly important and relevant open-source platforms become. We need to be the shining light and an example to the world that the open-source community cares more about people, safety, freedom and choice than it does about money.
Trolling game developers, especially when things go wrong (and as I pointed out in previous posts - even AAA titles go wrong more often then you think) really does not help anyone.
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