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.
Not buying it.
Insults and threats are bad, but:
Insults are something you get to deal with when growing up (especially on the internet).
Threats are to be handeled by the police.
This 'i got threatened and insulted'-card is a poor excuse or a way to get money for professional victims.
Again, not saying insults or threats are ok.
Insults and threats are bad, but:
Insults are something you get to deal with when growing up (especially on the internet).
Threats are to be handeled by the police.
This 'i got threatened and insulted'-card is a poor excuse or a way to get money for professional victims.
Again, not saying insults or threats are ok.
3 Likes, Who?
Metallinatus Jul 4, 2017
Friendly and well needed reminder that this theory is what Jaycee thinks, he never tried to say it as a fact or anything near official, it's just his guess on the matter....
3 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jul 4, 2017
I probably would have finished the first one by now if it'd been ported. I know it sometimes works great in wine (when I was first trying it, worked perfect, second time around everyone was missing their lower portion of their bodies!)
Still stuck on the first boss...
Still stuck on the first boss...
0 Likes
Quoting: slaapliedjewhen I was first trying it, worked perfect, second time around everyone was missing their lower portion of their bodies!
See https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=26114#notes
Quoting: slaapliedjeStill stuck on the first boss...
Do you mean the Beast? It can be somewhat annoying indeed. Make sure you use Specter Oil.
Last edited by Shmerl on 4 July 2017 at 5:16 am UTC
0 Likes
To jaycee:
I have some questions. In the thread on reddit that points to this article you made an interesting comment:
The first guy says:
The following may sound aggressive but what i want to say is, in this comments you seem to:
1.- Ask people to not blame VP for your own words.
2.- For people to consider that you accepted and corrected a mistake.
You ask people to not blame the whole VP, a company where you was an employee and where it would make a lot more of sense to take the word of one of the key employees as the word of the company.
-¿Then do you consider valid to ask people to take your words when you're an employee as only yours but it's not valid for people who happen to just like linux to ask for not being blamed for the words of other people of a crowd they most probably has never meet personally?¿What is the reasoning behind your answer?
-¿How does it made feel you that people blames VP for words that are supposed to be only yours? ¿Do you think is fair?
-¿how would it make you feel if people blames you for what VP does despite you not being in charge of the decision that made people upset?
The thing is that if what you're speculating may be true then whoever is in charge of deciding if porting or not is punishing a lot of people who didn't had anything to do with the harassment.
I cannot talk for other people and i know there's just too much people that doesn't deserve to be defended because, if i do it, then i also i also need to justify their actions. however i'm talking because i think is fair to see the other side of the coin and even more if you consider that even now there's people talking against that kind of behaviour. Ask yourself the following: ¿I'm filtering only the bad posts and ignoring the people who raised it's voice against the harassment? ¿Do they deserve to be treated like this?
Also please tell me if you think that the people who was not involved in the harassment deserve this:
-¿What about the people who was a linux gamer back then but didn't knew or was interested in the Witcher series, so didn't even knew about the harassment?
-¿What about the people who doesn't like to talk a lot or doesn't want to involve themselves in problems? ¿Do they deserve to be punished due to a situation where they don't have any control or even interest in participate?
-¿What about the people who was a Windows/Mac gamer back when the incident happened and then decided they liked linux and are now linux gamers?
Also. ¿What about the people who was angry back then and was vocal but later they retracted or feel bad about what they said? Yes, they have a fair share of the guilt. Remember that the internet and anonymity enables people to say and do things they'd not dare to do in real life due to the heat of the moment. No, there's no excuse and much less for stupid things like death threats, however you also are asking for people to forgive what you have said in the past and to reconsider that what you said back then doesn't necessarily reflects what you think today. If we assume there's people among the crows that hurt you back then that reflected on what they did. ¿Do they deserve to not be forgiven forever?
I know how being bullied feels and i'm pretty conscious on the kind of sequels and consequences it can have. I don't blame you. Despite i don't have any responsibility on what happened the only thing i can say is: i'm sorry. I'm sorry about what happened to you and is something that should not happen to anyone but i hope you understand that controlling other people is impossible, the most it can be done is to enforce rules and moderate the same way Liam is doing, but this is not possible everywhere and i hope you understand this.
I know you don't work on VP any more and that you don't have any influence on the port. This post is not about the port but about you because i'm worried about your words and because i feel you're hurting yourself and people that doesn't deserve to be hurt more than the ones that actually hurt you back then.
Thanks for your attention and believe me when i tell you that is not my intention to attack you.
I have some questions. In the thread on reddit that points to this article you made an interesting comment:
The first guy says:
QuoteThis is the same company whose employee on twitter insulted Linux users and then set his twitter profile to private.Then you said:
QuoteBlame me, not the company. It was my private Twitter, and my own opinion, not the company one.Then you quote:
QuoteAlso the same company that blamed Linux kernel devs claiming they had a grudge against proprietary software when in fact they had written code that was one half of an exploit that had been reported and fixed in the kernel.Then you said:
QuoteAgain, me, not VP. I retracted the comment. Linus Torvalds himself later came along and said "We should not have broken userspace behaviour".
The following may sound aggressive but what i want to say is, in this comments you seem to:
1.- Ask people to not blame VP for your own words.
2.- For people to consider that you accepted and corrected a mistake.
You ask people to not blame the whole VP, a company where you was an employee and where it would make a lot more of sense to take the word of one of the key employees as the word of the company.
-¿Then do you consider valid to ask people to take your words when you're an employee as only yours but it's not valid for people who happen to just like linux to ask for not being blamed for the words of other people of a crowd they most probably has never meet personally?¿What is the reasoning behind your answer?
-¿How does it made feel you that people blames VP for words that are supposed to be only yours? ¿Do you think is fair?
-¿how would it make you feel if people blames you for what VP does despite you not being in charge of the decision that made people upset?
The thing is that if what you're speculating may be true then whoever is in charge of deciding if porting or not is punishing a lot of people who didn't had anything to do with the harassment.
I cannot talk for other people and i know there's just too much people that doesn't deserve to be defended because, if i do it, then i also i also need to justify their actions. however i'm talking because i think is fair to see the other side of the coin and even more if you consider that even now there's people talking against that kind of behaviour. Ask yourself the following: ¿I'm filtering only the bad posts and ignoring the people who raised it's voice against the harassment? ¿Do they deserve to be treated like this?
Also please tell me if you think that the people who was not involved in the harassment deserve this:
-¿What about the people who was a linux gamer back then but didn't knew or was interested in the Witcher series, so didn't even knew about the harassment?
-¿What about the people who doesn't like to talk a lot or doesn't want to involve themselves in problems? ¿Do they deserve to be punished due to a situation where they don't have any control or even interest in participate?
-¿What about the people who was a Windows/Mac gamer back when the incident happened and then decided they liked linux and are now linux gamers?
Also. ¿What about the people who was angry back then and was vocal but later they retracted or feel bad about what they said? Yes, they have a fair share of the guilt. Remember that the internet and anonymity enables people to say and do things they'd not dare to do in real life due to the heat of the moment. No, there's no excuse and much less for stupid things like death threats, however you also are asking for people to forgive what you have said in the past and to reconsider that what you said back then doesn't necessarily reflects what you think today. If we assume there's people among the crows that hurt you back then that reflected on what they did. ¿Do they deserve to not be forgiven forever?
I know how being bullied feels and i'm pretty conscious on the kind of sequels and consequences it can have. I don't blame you. Despite i don't have any responsibility on what happened the only thing i can say is: i'm sorry. I'm sorry about what happened to you and is something that should not happen to anyone but i hope you understand that controlling other people is impossible, the most it can be done is to enforce rules and moderate the same way Liam is doing, but this is not possible everywhere and i hope you understand this.
I know you don't work on VP any more and that you don't have any influence on the port. This post is not about the port but about you because i'm worried about your words and because i feel you're hurting yourself and people that doesn't deserve to be hurt more than the ones that actually hurt you back then.
Thanks for your attention and believe me when i tell you that is not my intention to attack you.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: NyamiouYou need to stop this. Really, I'm reading with disbelief. I don't know what you think you're doing, if you think you're some kind of cowboy riding to the rescue with your bizarre conspiracy theory about fake identity, but you need to realize that you are in fact mistaken, which means you have been making highly unpleasant false accusations to a developer of a Linux game port.Quoting: GuestQuoting: NyamiouThe idea that a company would judge an entire community over the reaction of a few individuals no matter how loud they can be is completely unacceptable, if CDRP are really like then they got the hate they deserved.
And "they got the hate they deserved" is the problem. People like YOU are exactly the problem.
People like me? WTF? seriously. Also thx for quoting out of context, that's nice.
Seriously, you are a troll trying to turn people of the Linux community against each others. I don't know why you are doing that and I don't understand why people listen to you, but what I know is that they probably shouldn't.
Give me one good reasons you are telling that stuff, even if it were to be the truth, given the harm it does to the community?
It seems as if you may have realized that you were mistaken, but the appropriate reaction to finding that out is not to grudgingly give a few centimeters of ground and continue attacking, it is to swallow your pride, climb down and apologize. It is not too late.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 July 2017 at 5:26 am UTC
6 Likes, Who?
First I am really sad how loudest parts of Linux online community is not that different - and thus childish, petish, vile and toxic - from overall online geek community. Yeah, I know, this happens in almost all online communities. Still I hold open source communities at higher standard despite some of them failing regularly to achieve that.
Thus despite being complete opposite to crowd described here I am really sorry and while I don't feel responsible for their behaviour, I fully understand developer reaction.
I am still sticking with Linux and thanks to all devs and porters who have given me awesome entertainment on Linux platform for last two years.
As for toxicity being major factor of not porting W3 to Linux I doubt that - it seems there were major shifts within company itself due of multiple factors. However it still might have tipped a balance.
As for those justifying any hate speech towards developers or any other person really - grow up. Criticism, even loud one - sure. Hate speech, threats - this is where you lose every reason why. Because there are no any.
Last edited by Pecisk on 4 July 2017 at 6:21 am UTC
Thus despite being complete opposite to crowd described here I am really sorry and while I don't feel responsible for their behaviour, I fully understand developer reaction.
I am still sticking with Linux and thanks to all devs and porters who have given me awesome entertainment on Linux platform for last two years.
As for toxicity being major factor of not porting W3 to Linux I doubt that - it seems there were major shifts within company itself due of multiple factors. However it still might have tipped a balance.
As for those justifying any hate speech towards developers or any other person really - grow up. Criticism, even loud one - sure. Hate speech, threats - this is where you lose every reason why. Because there are no any.
Last edited by Pecisk on 4 July 2017 at 6:21 am UTC
3 Likes, Who?
I agree with some of the people who basically consider this to be two separate topics of conversation. Topic one: Were the developers of The Witcher 2 port, including Jaycee in specific, treated horribly by some Linux gamers? This seems clearly to be the case and I'm very sorry it happened. It's true that it's very difficult for vague groups of consumers to police themselves, but still there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that bad stuff went down, it should not have, and since there is an association with us whether we like it or not there's nothing wrong with expressing some contrition on behalf of the unpleasant persons who committed these verbal assaults.
Topic 2: Is Jaycee correct in his opinion that these unfortunate events had anything to do with the abandonment of the Witcher 3 port? No, I think Jaycee is wrong about this, and frankly looking at the situation in a fairly unrealistic way. Lots of people, and Shmerl in particular, have made some pretty sound points on this.
Topic 2: Is Jaycee correct in his opinion that these unfortunate events had anything to do with the abandonment of the Witcher 3 port? No, I think Jaycee is wrong about this, and frankly looking at the situation in a fairly unrealistic way. Lots of people, and Shmerl in particular, have made some pretty sound points on this.
4 Likes, Who?
Quoting: rkfgQuoting: ShmerlAlso, a simple point: you can't really make a crowd to behave. There are always some individuals that would be displeased and would spread hate. That's how things work, everywhere. Bringing collective responsibility to the equation is unprofessional (if that's really true) to say at least, it only adds to hatred and malice. I'm sure it's easy to find examples of that in history. Collective responsibility is destructive, that's pretty obvious. We can't change everyone in the Linux community, it's not possible. But developers can change their attitude towards the community and control the damage (probably being) done. A dev studio is a single entity that can change but a crowd is always a crowd even if it calls itself "community". It's way too big already to play behavioral games.Quoting: wvstolzingIf CD Projekt thought there was a viable (given what THEY think of as viable) market for their product on Linux, they would have initiated the project, regardless whether the Linux community is made up of saints or demons sworn to eat the developers' babies.
Yes, that's why I don't buy this argument of "attacks from community cancelled the effort". They got many more times attacks from Windows users, and that clearly didn't stop their Windows release.
This is what I think, there are complete piles in EVERY camp, that's just sad. You can't hold everyone who uses something accountable for a few loud waterheads. Otherwise computer users, gamers on all platforms, would never see a single game because of all the vitriol filled posts on every forum for everything I've ever read. I've seen hate spewed in a damn fish forum... people getting upset because someone said their fish was tougher.. I mean of all the idiotic nonsense.
2 Likes, Who?
It won't make any difference, but I'm writing a thank you email for The Witcher 2. I'm playing it these days and works really well.
9 Likes, Who?
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