Leaving Lyndow removes Linux support from Steam due to masses of bug reports

"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..

I'd say this is the case. I used to report windows bugs for games like space engineers, and 7 days to die, but quit because people kept complaining to me it was a early access game and I should just accept the bugs. Even when I posted in the bug report section. So few people understand that to fix bugs, we need to report them first.

I'm pretty gutted about this. I wasn't really aware of this game until this issue and I'd probably have bought it if I known - I love the walking-sim genre.

I just wish the Dev wasn't so focused on helping everyone. The support goal should be steamos and ubuntu, to hell with the rest. It's nice to be nice, but when you're running a business, you have to be realistic.

So yeah, hugely disappointed with this. I'd be buying it otherwise.

On a more positive note - I'm really enjoying Quern at the moment. It's a walking-sim-with-puzzles, in the style of The Room (a little - mostly I mean in the way you interact with objects). Lots of fun, if a bit frustrating at times.

wait its unity and he does not know how to fix it holy crap.

wait its unity and he does not know how to fix it holy crap.

Yeah, surely you just hit the "Export" button and choose "Linux", right? /s

Ubuntu 12.04 (from the year 2012) is still supported, and will be until 2019. https://www.ubuntu.com/info/release-end-of-life

I have no idea if compatibility with Linux is harder than with Windows. Windows devs have to make sure that the games work with 7, 8, 9 and possibly XP.

No, it really isn't. 12.04 is dead. You have to pay for extended support, just like RHEL 5.x

Pretty sure anyone on the planet that uses Ubuntu to game on isn't going to stick with such an old distribution.

so many bugs from so many different distros

Ok, 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.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but where does it say that Ubuntu is the only supported distro for Steam? SteamOS would be the one, I think the only reason most games show 'minimum requirements for Ubuntu' is due to them not being updated.

Realistically they should say something like "Linux Kernel version: blah, nVidia Driver: blah or AMD driver: blah, CPU: Memory: disk usage:"

Back in the Loki / LGP days, that's exactly what it did because they had cross-distro support. Steam is very Distro Agnostic. I've even ran it on a CentOS7 system.

Pretty sure anyone on the planet that uses Ubuntu to game on isn't going to stick with such an old distribution.

Thanks for the info that the extended period is for paying costumers. Ubuntu 12.04 was still supported just a few months ago. And I know people who had 12.04 on their systems just a few months ago. Not everyone wants to upgrade everything all the time. I've running Debian Stable now, and intend to do so as long as it is supported.

I'm really enjoying Quern at the moment. It's a walking-sim-with-puzzles, in the style of The Room (a little - mostly I mean in the way you interact with objects). Lots of fun, if a bit frustrating at times.

I found the map design of Quern to be excellent - lots of gameplay in a relatively small space.

Realistically they should say something like "Linux Kernel version: blah, nVidia Driver: blah or AMD driver: blah, CPU: Memory: disk usage:"

Back in the Loki / LGP days, that's exactly what it did because they had cross-distro support. Steam is very Distro Agnostic. I've even ran it on a CentOS7 system.

This.

I guess the confusion about the now suddenly perceived need to develop games for "thousand different Linux distributions" again comes from one or more severe bugs in one of the latest Unity game engine versions. For instance that one bug that caused many Unity games not to work with certain window managers. And because many distributions use certain window managers as a default it looked like the distributions are again important. But any distribution can run any window manager. So as far as I know the distribution itself normally shouldn't be important if the game uses the Steam runtime environment and game development platforms like Unity manage to keep their bugs under control. Am I right?

wait its unity and he does not know how to fix it holy crap.

Yeah, surely you just hit the "Export" button and choose "Linux", right? /s

I know it's not that simple but it is unified code ie the problems that are happening in Linux have to be happening in Windows or similar unless the Windows guys are not reporting errors.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but where does it say that Ubuntu is the only supported distro for Steam? SteamOS would be the one, I think the only reason most games show 'minimum requirements for Ubuntu' is due to them not being updated.

I don't think that's due to it not being updated at all. Ubuntu is for all practical purposes the supported distro when it comes to Linux gaming today.

Let's be real: Nobody uses SteamOS, and SteamOS was originally intended to be based on Ubuntu but changed to Debian due to some licensing issues. Steam has always had a focus on Ubuntu and all games for Linux that has a distro restriction in regards to support, restrict that to Ubuntu (and maybe SteamOS but again, nobody uses SteamOS. Most doesn't even bother mentioning that distro).

Pretty sure anyone on the planet that uses Ubuntu to game on isn't going to stick with such an old distribution.

Thanks for the info that the extended period is for paying costumers. Ubuntu 12.04 was still supported just a few months ago. And I know people who had 12.04 on their systems just a few months ago. Not everyone wants to upgrade everything all the time. I've running Debian Stable now, and intend to do so as long as it is supported.

Debian stable is only a few weeks old currently. It's way more up to date than even Ubuntu 14.04 and arguably rivals 16.04.2.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but where does it say that Ubuntu is the only supported distro for Steam?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1504-QHXN-8366&l=english


Last edited by pb on 27 Jun 2017 at 8:48 am UTC

Let's be real: Nobody uses SteamOS

I'm using SteamOS, Steam Machines use SteamOS many people who built PCs specifically for the living room use SteamOS. Of course ~nobody uses SteamOS on their desktop PC, but just because you don't use it doesn't mean that "nobody" does.

Let's be real: Nobody uses SteamOS

I'm using SteamOS, Steam Machines use SteamOS many people who built PCs specifically for the living room use SteamOS. Of course ~nobody uses SteamOS on their desktop PC, but just because you don't use it doesn't mean that "nobody" does.

And how many do you estimate use SteamOS? Is it even measurable on the Steam user stats?

Nobody has purchased Steam Machines yet. It's not even on the market in any proper way - it's not even out of beta. It's almost to be considered an experiment at this point in time. Heck I don't even know where to buy a Steam Machine should I want one - and I'm above average interested in this!

And when I say "nobody", I mean in a practical sense. The stats on this site says 33 guys are using SteamOS - the same amount who use the distro Solus. It's nobody in this context. It's zero. Nill.

I use SteamOS on my living room gaming PC because it is by far the most couch-friendly and "plug-and-play" distro out there. I've encountered several game-breaking bugs or couldn't get a game running at all on other distributions such as elementary OS (which I like).

Just an example: Even though the DualShock 4 implementation seems to be broken in the current stable build of Brewmaster -- SteamOS is by far the best Linux distro for gamepad use. I've got all my Bluetooth and other gamepads working on SteamOS without installing any additional stuff. That's awesome and besides macOS (which has built-in DualShock 3 and 4 support) not possible on a plain vanilla Windows installation.

Back on topic: Leaving Lyndow worked flawlessly for me when I played it back in February/March on SteamOS.

Linux users account for less than 2% of our customers but over 50% of our bug reports...

If they're legitimate bugs then what's the problem? Are they expecting Linux gamers to just suck it up and accept buggy software? I really don't understand the nature of his complaint.

Linux users account for less than 2% of our customers but over 50% of our bug reports...

If they're legitimate bugs then what's the problem? Are they expecting Linux gamers to just suck it up and accept buggy software? I really don't understand the nature of his complaint.

They don't complain about that. They don't expect Linux gamers to just suck it up. They do the exact opposite of that.

Thanks for the info that the extended period is for paying costumers. Ubuntu 12.04 was still supported just a few months ago. And I know people who had 12.04 on their systems just a few months ago. Not everyone wants to upgrade everything all the time. I've running Debian Stable now, and intend to do so as long as it is supported.

Debian stable is only a few weeks old currently. It's way more up to date than even Ubuntu 14.04 and arguably rivals 16.04.2.

I know. The point is that I will run Debian 9 until it will not be supported anymore. I look forward to not change everything constantly for the next few years.

Let's be real: Nobody uses SteamOS

I'm using SteamOS, Steam Machines use SteamOS many people who built PCs specifically for the living room use SteamOS. Of course ~nobody uses SteamOS on their desktop PC, but just because you don't use it doesn't mean that "nobody" does.

And how many do you estimate use SteamOS? Is it even measurable on the Steam user stats?

Nobody has purchased Steam Machines yet. It's not even on the market in any proper way - it's not even out of beta. It's almost to be considered an experiment at this point in time. Heck I don't even know where to buy a Steam Machine should I want one - and I'm above average interested in this!

And when I say "nobody", I mean in a practical sense. The stats on this site says 33 guys are using SteamOS - the same amount who use the distro Solus. It's nobody in this context. It's zero. Nill.

The whole universe would cease to exist if there was no difference between 0 and sufficient small numbers.
Human society could not function if there was no difference between nobody and sufficient small number of people.

0 and nobody are quite important concepts in a practical sense in other words.

On a less serious note:

Steammachines where launched around 1.5 years ago and around the same time SteamOS got out of beta with version2.*
There is a beta branch where updates are tested before they get push to the released branch.

You can see a list of Steammachine makers on the Steam store under hardware http://store.steampowered.com/sale/machines/
Thats fewer than where announced before launch. I know Alienware came out with newer models last year, I bought one of those, Zotac still has the original and I dont know about the others.