Leaving Lyndow [Steam], the short, but impressive adventure game has officially removed Linux support on Steam due to the amount of bug reports.
The developer explained their reasoning on the Steam forum post:
QuoteAh, yes I only recently decided to pull support less than two days ago. Anyone who has already purchased the game for Linux can still download it (apparently its working for some), but I have been getting so many bugs from so many different distros I decided to take support off the store page. Linux users account for less than 2% of our customers but over 50% of our bug reports, so I've found myself a bit over my head with Linux. I'm afraid I made a terrible error in judgement when attempting to port for linux, and its my bad. I'm sorry for the confusion!
If interested, you can see the post about it here.
It's not the first time I've heard about this, as I often see the developer of Caves of Qud tweeting about how many bug reports they get from Linux gamers. There's a number of others who I hear the same from too, which is quite a shame, but it's going to happen when developers aren't all that familiar with Linux and the game engines often have issues the developers cannot work around too.
I think a fair amount of developers rely too heavily on just pushing out builds and hoping for the best. Researching the platform and testing it each time you do updates is pretty essential. It may sound dumb and quite obvious to do so, but the amount of times I've seen developers say they don't have "a Linux machine for testing", yet they push out a Linux version and sell Linux copies is quite staggering.
It's a shame, but it's not a massive loss as it really is a short game. Perhaps someone good with Unity can help them fix it up.
Duck Hunt-Pr0 Jun 26, 2017
Quote"Linux users account for less than 2% of our customers but over 50% of our bug reports"
I'd wager there's one main reason for that; Linux users tend to be willing to report discovered bugs faaaaaaaaaaar more often than (those lazy slob) windows users..
Last edited by Duck Hunt-Pr0 on 26 June 2017 at 11:19 am UTC
Doc Angelo Jun 26, 2017
Given that Linux gamers are more likely to give detailed bug reports and that this game has a small audience, I wonder if it is buggy on Windows and Mac too, but less people have reported bugs there. The fact that one of the bugs is saves not actually saving every time makes me think the game could use some more testing work all around. That doesn't sound like a Linux-specific bug.
hardpenguin Jun 26, 2017
On the other hand, I find disturbing what this developer has done. Simply removing support for a platform is really not cool and borderline illegal. What if I only had access to Linux? Plus, removing support is usually done gradually, with a lot of time in advance. Like a year, for example, so that users can find alternative solutions.
Doc Angelo Jun 26, 2017
He is doing what other devs would never do: Say that something isn't up to his standards and apologize for it. Yet, his game is more stable than other games that are still sold for Linux.
GustyGhost Jun 26, 2017
Quoteso many bugs from so many different distrosOk, not to be a jerk or anything but to be bluntly honest here, in this context I think Linux users on other distros than the officially supported distro on Steam - Ubuntu - should just stuff it and stop reporting bugs and either find a solution themselves or dual boot into Ubuntu for gaming. Plain and simple.
Yeah, harsh I know, but it's only doing us a disfavour at this point in time to spam developers with issues that only occurs due to their exotic window manager, sound architecture, graphics drivers or distro quirks. You're not doing anyone a favour, guys. Nope.
Last edited by Beamboom on 26 June 2017 at 2:12 pm UTC
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