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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.
Also yeah, THANK YOU from me - current version of Witcher 2 works well.
4 Likes, Who?
Hmm, that's unfortunate. I don't have any special love for the Witcher games. However, I definitely want to see more offline 3D RPGs with native Linux versions. Besides Legend of Grimrock and Witcher 2, what other offline 3D RPGs do we currently have with native Linux versions, does anyone know? Are there any others on the horizon?
0 Likes
Sir_Diealot Jul 4, 2017
Others have said it, but... Whether the investment of a Linux port pays off depends on a lot of factors. If a company tries it and gets burned, for whatever reason, then they're likely to not try it again. Windows is a different story. If most customers are using Windows (remember there are other platforms too) then you'll just have to deal with it. Not much you can do.
As for "Divinity: Original Sin": AFAIK they won't release any more patches for it on any platform and Larian no longer has any Linux developer. I guess they could hire an external company to port part 2.
As for GOG Galaxy: They were looking for Linux developers recently and still do: https://www.gog.com/work
That indicates to me that they didn't have the people to bring Galaxy to Linux. I guess they do now. I guess it's on the way.
As for Withcer 2 on Linux: I did not follow the whole controversy . I only tried the Linux version recently and it seemed to work fine. It was apparently made for controllers, which is a bit of a shame. Man do I suck at this game with mouse and keyboard...
There's some of that controller-first thing in The Witcher 3 as well (Gwent for example), but not as bad.
As for "Divinity: Original Sin": AFAIK they won't release any more patches for it on any platform and Larian no longer has any Linux developer. I guess they could hire an external company to port part 2.
As for GOG Galaxy: They were looking for Linux developers recently and still do: https://www.gog.com/work
That indicates to me that they didn't have the people to bring Galaxy to Linux. I guess they do now. I guess it's on the way.
As for Withcer 2 on Linux: I did not follow the whole controversy . I only tried the Linux version recently and it seemed to work fine. It was apparently made for controllers, which is a bit of a shame. Man do I suck at this game with mouse and keyboard...
There's some of that controller-first thing in The Witcher 3 as well (Gwent for example), but not as bad.
0 Likes
And let the WAR begin!
I will pick no side but would like to warn both sides, not to drag in community as they do not speak for community…
Anyway, I personally don't care. I wouldn't buy anything but native anyway. So for me, it's no loss.
It will be ready to play via Wine soon (I have put my bet for september, but we will see if i'm right), so I will do that. That is if I still want to play the game to begin with.
I will pick no side but would like to warn both sides, not to drag in community as they do not speak for community…
Anyway, I personally don't care. I wouldn't buy anything but native anyway. So for me, it's no loss.
It will be ready to play via Wine soon (I have put my bet for september, but we will see if i'm right), so I will do that. That is if I still want to play the game to begin with.
0 Likes
Quoting: sbolokanovAnd let the WAR begin!
I will pick no side but would like to warn both sides, not to drag in community as they do not speak for community…
Anyway, I personally don't care. I wouldn't buy anything but native anyway. So for me, it's no loss.
It will be ready to play via Wine soon (I have put my bet for september, but we will see if i'm right), so I will do that. That is if I still want to play the game to begin with.
Despite what you prefer, impression about community for Linux gamers is very important because it takes considerable good will to justify financial investment to develop/port games/engines for Linux. Because we're small, we can't afford to be arrogant.
So get off from your 'native versions or no go' high course, and get a slap of reality.
Last edited by Pecisk on 4 July 2017 at 7:23 am UTC
5 Likes, Who?
I played through The Witcher 2 from start to finish on Linux. I believe I used my 360 controller the whole game, too. I may have had one or two crashes my entire play-through, but I can accept that to be able to play an excellent, 3D RPG.
I'm actually playing through The Witcher 3 now, but it's on my PS4 this time. I gave up hope of playing it on Linux a long time ago, and I am done investing in games that only run on Windows. It would have been amazing to get The Witcher 3 on Linux, "native" or not, but it's understandable why we're not. When people get behind a monitor and start typing, they forget that they're talking to humans. Would you continue feeding a dog that bites your hand? Hell no. You kick it in the face if you're mad or just let it starve and hope it goes away if you're gentle.
I'm actually playing through The Witcher 3 now, but it's on my PS4 this time. I gave up hope of playing it on Linux a long time ago, and I am done investing in games that only run on Windows. It would have been amazing to get The Witcher 3 on Linux, "native" or not, but it's understandable why we're not. When people get behind a monitor and start typing, they forget that they're talking to humans. Would you continue feeding a dog that bites your hand? Hell no. You kick it in the face if you're mad or just let it starve and hope it goes away if you're gentle.
2 Likes, Who?
Personally, I do not think so. There should be other reasons. There are as many attacks from Windows or console users. That just does not make any sense. Are they also throwing away their Android smartphones, because of rude comments from Linus about Nvidia?
0 Likes
BabaoWhisky Jul 4, 2017
I don't care about this ...
I hate Wine and with m'y desktop i create a PCI Passthrough so ...
I hate Wine and with m'y desktop i create a PCI Passthrough so ...
0 Likes
Crazy Penguin Jul 4, 2017
Well, just another excuse from CDPR and I'm not surprised. Instead of showing that they could do it and repair their burned reputation they only bring another excuse. So typical! I wonder if this is the reason why we still have no Linux-Version of GOG Galaxy also. Wouldn't be really surprised if so.
However other companies are able to support Linux and they getting my money. Simple as that.
However other companies are able to support Linux and they getting my money. Simple as that.
4 Likes, Who?
Wow!!! Thirteen pages already! The game is 2 years old and pretty much "water under the bridge" already, yet, the discussions are as heated as ever!
My personal opinion:
1) No Tux == No bucks;
2) Never pre-order;
3) eON, indirectX, toGL etc. ports are still wrappers no better than WINE, so at least they should perform better than WINE itself in order to not being useless garbage;
4) A company (literally any company, even big ones) releasing a port several years later should not sell it for full release price. Bargain bin is the place those ports should belong;
5) Small number of Linux users is no excuse to either outright lie about port quality or have "Eat what's been served, swine!" attitude. Every job must be done proper, if you can not do it, then don't do it;
6) People saying Linux users "should come off the high horse and start appreciate what we have", "get a slap of reality"; that "beggars could not be choosers" -- all those "advisers" should mind their own business and stop teaching others of what to do and what to think, thank you very much;
7) All mentioned above is no excuse for personal insults, death threats and such. Those are very grave crimes and should be dealt accordingly on a "case by case" basis. One person should not be held responsible for all society.
Thank you for your time. ^.^
My personal opinion:
1) No Tux == No bucks;
2) Never pre-order;
3) eON, indirectX, toGL etc. ports are still wrappers no better than WINE, so at least they should perform better than WINE itself in order to not being useless garbage;
4) A company (literally any company, even big ones) releasing a port several years later should not sell it for full release price. Bargain bin is the place those ports should belong;
5) Small number of Linux users is no excuse to either outright lie about port quality or have "Eat what's been served, swine!" attitude. Every job must be done proper, if you can not do it, then don't do it;
6) People saying Linux users "should come off the high horse and start appreciate what we have", "get a slap of reality"; that "beggars could not be choosers" -- all those "advisers" should mind their own business and stop teaching others of what to do and what to think, thank you very much;
7) All mentioned above is no excuse for personal insults, death threats and such. Those are very grave crimes and should be dealt accordingly on a "case by case" basis. One person should not be held responsible for all society.
Thank you for your time. ^.^
6 Likes, Who?
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