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.
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The comments on this article are closed.
slaapliedje Jun 27, 2017
Quoting: BeamboomQuoting: slaapliedjeI'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 SteamOS was always going to be based on Debian. The rumors were Ubuntu based, only because that is what would show up in 'requirements'.
What licensing? I think they probably decided on Debian because it's slow moving and stable as a core, then they can update they few things that matter to gamers (kernel, and video drivers). There has never been a focus on Ubuntu, that just happened to be what they first got the port working on. Pretty sure the Steam package was first officially in the repository of Debian backports.
While I myself do not run SteamOS (though seriously considering getting one to replace the Link, which I keep having poor performance for audio, and even the audio decides to die on me) I am sure there are others out there who are. Distrowatch lists it as 78th most popular as right now.
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Quoting: slaapliedjePretty sure SteamOS was always going to be based on Debian. The rumors were Ubuntu based, only because that is what would show up in 'requirements'.
Gabe Newell confirmed in a press conference that Valve ended up using Debian over Ubuntu for what was simply described as "legal reasons".
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/?p=86638
http://linuxg.net/valves-gabe-newell-said-they-decided-to-use-debian-over/
Quoting: slaapliedjeDistrowatch lists it as 78th most popular as right now.
On place seventyeight... Lol. Dude. I guess you just proved my point there. :) But their chart seems to only be listing hits to their site, ergo users browsing their page. That doesn't say much for a distro like SteamOS. Do people surf much from their SteamOS instance?
I'm not saying "nobody" in a mathematical sense, but in a market sense. "Nobody" uses a distro listed as the 78th most popular distro. That's so tiny a segment it's just dust on the radar.
It's Ubuntu that is the officially supported distro that matters. SteamOS is still in development and will hopefully someday be a solid, viable alternative for gamers out there. But that day is definitely not today.
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slaapliedje Jun 28, 2017
Ha, actually distrowatch's 'hit' list is how many times someone has looked at the distrowatch page for that distribution this month. So yeah, it's a crappy metric, but there is some interest in it. Most people who are going to look into SteamOS aren't going to be doing it through Distrowatch.
I'm really curious on what those "Legal reasons" were. Seems to me that Debian is just a better choice for so many other reasons. Upgrades for Debian have always been far smoother and Ubuntu likes to randomly break things (in my experience). I've had an Ubuntu install corrupt a hard disk to the point it looked like it was failed. Ended up cleaning up the partitioning, then putting Debian on it and it was fine.
Edit: I did check some random games, and under the requirements tab for SteamOS + Linux, some say Ubuntu 12.04 or better, some say Ubuntu 12.04+ and some literally just gave processor, memory and disk space. So there is no 'standard'.
Last edited by slaapliedje on 28 June 2017 at 2:51 pm UTC
I'm really curious on what those "Legal reasons" were. Seems to me that Debian is just a better choice for so many other reasons. Upgrades for Debian have always been far smoother and Ubuntu likes to randomly break things (in my experience). I've had an Ubuntu install corrupt a hard disk to the point it looked like it was failed. Ended up cleaning up the partitioning, then putting Debian on it and it was fine.
Edit: I did check some random games, and under the requirements tab for SteamOS + Linux, some say Ubuntu 12.04 or better, some say Ubuntu 12.04+ and some literally just gave processor, memory and disk space. So there is no 'standard'.
Last edited by slaapliedje on 28 June 2017 at 2:51 pm UTC
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Quoting: Andrei B.I think that developers should be able to mention (on Steam) what distribution they're supporting. People can't seriously expect developers to support dozens of distributions.
There aren't really dozens of distros though. Most "distros" are just modifications of others. How many distros are just Ubuntu with some flavour for example?
Quoting: Andrei B.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?
It's not illegal. At worst he'll have to offer a refund to Linux users if he promised ongoing support and updates.
Quoting: Andrei B.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.
Sure, for systems with a critical function. Games hardly fit into that category. Exactly what problem do you need to find an alternative solution to in this case?
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