The Witcher 3 is something Linux users have been practically begging to have, but the problem is that it seems it will likely never come to Linux. An ex-Virtual Programming developer has taken to reddit explaining why this may have happened.
I should stress, for our own record here that this is not the official word from Virtual Programming or CD Projekt RED. This is the personal opinion of an ex-VP developer.
Here's the issue: The Linux version of The Witcher 2 was released in a poor state, it had poor performance and just didn't really work well at all. It was later fixed-up and last time I tried it, the performance was absolutely fine for me. The real problem, is the amount of hate that was sent towards the porters Virtual Programming and directly to CD Projekt RED as well. Even I personally saw some of the hate that was sent their way and it was downright idiotic and absolutely uncalled for.
I will absolutely hold my hands up as well, I made mistakes around it since I simply didn't know enough at the time, and to be honest three years ago I was still learning a lot about everything. I later corrected what I said, as I always aim to.
Writing on reddit, this developer said (source):
It seems we may have also seen a port of The Witcher 1 as well, as the developer also said (source):
There's also this post from another user, who said at the time The Witcher 2 released for Linux, CDProjekt apparently lost a fair amount on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Apparently due to such a big backlash from the community about the initial release quality. I haven't verified that myself, but if true it would certainly make CDProjekt rather against doing another Linux port with anyone.
This is sad, really sad. I hope this makes a few people reconsider their attitude when talking to developer about the performance of ports. Performance can be worked on and fixed, burnt bridges are harder (and sometimes impossible) to fix.
This reminds me of the time the Blizzard President responded to a small petition asking for Linux ports of their games. The response to the petition was really nice to see from such a big company and truthfully the response I fully expected, but the original statement in reply to it from the petition author (now deleted by the author, but captured in my article) was downright childish and idiotic.
Yes problems are annoying, but throwing insults around helps no one and yes it does make us look bad. I get where people are coming from, to an extent, since some games do end up getting left in a terribly broken state for a long time and sometimes forever. However, in this case VP did good and continued working and now, as stated previously, The Witcher 2 seems fine. Their others ports are generally pretty decent too.
I just hope in future that this developer who got a massive amount of hate and CD Projekt RED can look past it somehow, for all the fans of their franchise on Linux.
Note: I personally spoke to this developer about publishing this with their approval, in the hopes that it might get a few people to re-think their initial attitude towards problems in games. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I should stress, for our own record here that this is not the official word from Virtual Programming or CD Projekt RED. This is the personal opinion of an ex-VP developer.
Here's the issue: The Linux version of The Witcher 2 was released in a poor state, it had poor performance and just didn't really work well at all. It was later fixed-up and last time I tried it, the performance was absolutely fine for me. The real problem, is the amount of hate that was sent towards the porters Virtual Programming and directly to CD Projekt RED as well. Even I personally saw some of the hate that was sent their way and it was downright idiotic and absolutely uncalled for.
I will absolutely hold my hands up as well, I made mistakes around it since I simply didn't know enough at the time, and to be honest three years ago I was still learning a lot about everything. I later corrected what I said, as I always aim to.
Writing on reddit, this developer said (source):
QuoteI agree, things were not right on release... but the vocality of people went way beyond that. It was an all out hate campaign against VP, against CDPR for "lying about the port being native". I attempted to help people out in my own time and got absolutely roasted and abused for it.
The community needs to realise it simply cannot justify this sort of behaviour if they want to convince devs and publishers to support them. There is no excuse.
It seems we may have also seen a port of The Witcher 1 as well, as the developer also said (source):
QuoteThe vitriol was unbelievable. Yes we messed up the performance on release but we put it right. However a huge hate campaign ensued. Both VP and CDPR got lots of vengeful hate mail sent to them. I cannot help but feel this damaged CDPR's view of the Linux platform irrevocably.
They certainly didnt blame us, because they had us work on a Mac port of Witcher 1 to replace the non-functioning Wineskin version. The same port would have ran on Linux too with very little extra work, but they were not interested in releasing it.
There's also this post from another user, who said at the time The Witcher 2 released for Linux, CDProjekt apparently lost a fair amount on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Apparently due to such a big backlash from the community about the initial release quality. I haven't verified that myself, but if true it would certainly make CDProjekt rather against doing another Linux port with anyone.
This is sad, really sad. I hope this makes a few people reconsider their attitude when talking to developer about the performance of ports. Performance can be worked on and fixed, burnt bridges are harder (and sometimes impossible) to fix.
This reminds me of the time the Blizzard President responded to a small petition asking for Linux ports of their games. The response to the petition was really nice to see from such a big company and truthfully the response I fully expected, but the original statement in reply to it from the petition author (now deleted by the author, but captured in my article) was downright childish and idiotic.
Yes problems are annoying, but throwing insults around helps no one and yes it does make us look bad. I get where people are coming from, to an extent, since some games do end up getting left in a terribly broken state for a long time and sometimes forever. However, in this case VP did good and continued working and now, as stated previously, The Witcher 2 seems fine. Their others ports are generally pretty decent too.
I just hope in future that this developer who got a massive amount of hate and CD Projekt RED can look past it somehow, for all the fans of their franchise on Linux.
Note: I personally spoke to this developer about publishing this with their approval, in the hopes that it might get a few people to re-think their initial attitude towards problems in games. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Funny how developers actually blame us for their mistake, if you don't do your thing right, sure there's gonna be a lot of people complaining and being mad at you.
Their act is quite childish in my opinion, why would they listen to a group of trolls from our community and get insulted, money is what's their primary motive and if they take money and give people half-baked product, yeah, people will get pissed off because they din't get what they paid for.
It's not only our fault, feral has a few bad ports and people got pissed off and after time they actually got much much better instead of whining of how rude that linux community was for getting mad at us because we didn't do our job well...
And everything good to CDPR, they have norhing to do with that.
Last edited by MaCroX95 on 3 July 2017 at 10:40 pm UTC
Their act is quite childish in my opinion, why would they listen to a group of trolls from our community and get insulted, money is what's their primary motive and if they take money and give people half-baked product, yeah, people will get pissed off because they din't get what they paid for.
It's not only our fault, feral has a few bad ports and people got pissed off and after time they actually got much much better instead of whining of how rude that linux community was for getting mad at us because we didn't do our job well...
And everything good to CDPR, they have norhing to do with that.
Last edited by MaCroX95 on 3 July 2017 at 10:40 pm UTC
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lucifertdark Jul 3, 2017
If they're going to turn tail & run because of a few small minded people then they might as well shut up shop altogether as it's only going to get much worse now thanks to this.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: lucifertdarkIf they're going to turn tail & run because of a few small minded people then they might as well shut up shop altogether as it's only going to get much worse now thanks to this.
I'd say damage to their reputation for not keeping their word is worse, than damage from some angry jerks who attacked initially poor Linux port.
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 July 2017 at 10:41 pm UTC
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lucifertdark Jul 3, 2017
Quoting: ShmerlI'd say damage to their reputation for not keeping their word is worse, than damage from some angry jerks who attacked initially poor Linux port.I still want to see Witcher 1 & 3 on Linux, so if anyone from CDProjekt is watching, ignore the morons & sort out the ports so WE can buy them.
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Quoting: ShmerlNot only them. Red Thread Games (which is an indie company) kept silence about all Linux issues in Dreamfall Chapters that I sent them. I posted on Steam forums, on their own forum, bugged them on Twitter and got nothing. Maybe in their GOTY version or whatever it's called all that is fixed, I dunno. Even if the bugs were in Unity they could at least post something about being aware of that and waiting for a fix. Instead I felt left in the dark without any knowledge about the Linux version future. I didn't want to ruin the immersion because of visual glitches but in the end completed it as is. Same silence and lack of any confirmation I saw in Planetary Annihilation bugtracker, regarding the UI crash.Quoting: rkfgLack of communication is what kills any trust and respect, not bugs and other issues. Sadly, still many don't get it, they ignore people instead of at least saying them "we're aware of that/working on it/looking for a fix/getting better with your platform of choice/well, at least weather is nice and you're alive/oh come on gtfo already". Anything would do better than ignorance and silence. Literally anything.
Lack of communication is the primary approach of legacy publishers. I feel CDPR fell into that trap, and adopted same approach to communication.
Not only we, as a community, have a long way to go. Devs should step it up as well. Respect is a mutual thing, you know.
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Quoting: lucifertdarkIf they're going to turn tail & run because of a few small minded people then they might as well shut up shop altogether as it's only going to get much worse now thanks to this.GOG Galaxy not being ported to Linux could also be a part of this conspiracy, now I understand that. GOG is owned by CDPR.
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: lucifertdarkIf they're going to turn tail & run because of a few small minded people then they might as well shut up shop altogether as it's only going to get much worse now thanks to this.
I'd say damage to their reputation for not keeping their word is worse, than damage from some angry jerks who attacked initially poor Linux port.
And there is nothing wrong in attacking a bad product. If we're 2% of the market it still doesn't mean that we need to be treated like gatbage and yet be blamed for not accepting the poor port that we paid money for. It's really childish of them how they try to actually make us feel bad about ourselves.
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Mohandevir Jul 3, 2017
Quoting: GuestQuoting: GuestJaycee is not a reliable source. He always twists things to make others (usually Linux users) look like horrible persons.
Yeah, I hate the platform so much that I put so much of my time and effort into it. Even now I have left VP, I just helped them get Micro Machines out of the door on Linux, because I hate Linux :P
My memory is blurred but I remember reading that TW2 was a first try for the eon wrapper and that TW2 was a "work in progress".
I always wondered why VP didn't released TW2 Linux as an open beta? Wouldn't it have "lessened" the backlash?
This is no critic and I respectfully ask because I know there are a lot of reasons to explain that. I'm fully aware that my knowledge of the gaming industry is limited.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 3 July 2017 at 10:56 pm UTC
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Quoting: GuestGuys, you are all missing the point. I am not talking about attacking a poor product. I am talking about PERSONAL attacks.
A few trolls cannot represent the whole community that anticipates their games. Geting upset about 5 people that called you names and then canceling all the upcoming ports seems like a very bad excuse to me. It's just not worth financially to them probably eventhough I'd love to play tw3 and think that it's an awesome game...
Last edited by MaCroX95 on 3 July 2017 at 10:54 pm UTC
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Quoting: webcreatureQuoting: LeopardProblem is ; when a port or a game is bad people will start to roast it. That is very normal in our era , for the recent example ; take a look at Mass Effect: Andromeda. People went hard on Andromeda , so what Bioware did? They didn't get hard feelings for gamers.
Are you sure they did not? Windows gamers are a big part of their customers. I think they just didn't show, cause they can't afford to act on it.
Let's fantasize what might have happened if a minority with 1% of only the Steam market would have flamed them for a Linux-port they were not so sure it was viable in the first place...
And yes, it might not be completely professional to act as CDPR did, but certainly understandable, for most of us 1% of the Steam market, and for the rest all the more!
So being minority is equal to accepting consequences?
Let's put it with an example : At X country there are two kind of people.
One with the white skin ( i'm not a racist) others with black skins.
Black skins are most of that X country , while white skins are minorities.
They go for shopping at a mall. But this mall has a policy : Black skins can complain about bad products and mall management can go with it but whenever a white skinned guy complains about a bad product they forbid him to enter this mall ever again.
We are gamers too , we're not different than Windows gamers. Having a small share doesn't mean being treated as second class citizens and expecting that " Linux users should be greatful for that port , even if it is broke "
Why the hell we would do that? If a product is bad we have right to shout that to developers.
Of course , personal attacks are not welcomed but a backslash is pretty normal when a product is not meeting expectations.
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