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.
the port was crappy when it was released. people complained because they couldnt play crappy port.. port fixed, people stop complaining...
The message that the porting team SHOULD have taken from this "dont ship broken game!"
The message they DID take from this was "screw them for calling us out on broken shit, lets not give them anything else"
Ill be honest, if THIS is their attitude, im not even sure i WANT their port any more.
The message that the porting team SHOULD have taken from this "dont ship broken game!"
The message they DID take from this was "screw them for calling us out on broken shit, lets not give them anything else"
Ill be honest, if THIS is their attitude, im not even sure i WANT their port any more.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: HexDSLthe port was crappy when it was released. people complained because they couldnt play crappy port.. port fixed, people stop complaining...
The message that the porting team SHOULD have taken from this "dont ship broken game!"
The message they DID take from this was "screw them for calling us out on broken shit, lets not give them anything else"
Ill be honest, if THIS is their attitude, im not even sure i WANT their port any more.
No, message porters take was....if you try to do it, and if you fail to deliver, you get threats and hate mail.
It is huge difference from just being discontent with Witcher 2 release which WAS buggy and slow. One is personal attack, which is just low and huge no. Another is criticism about your professional work - which is all fine. We all have it at some point in our lives.
NONE of that was justified. Doesn't mean we should call out badly done ports or releases. We should. But learn some decency.
2 Likes, Who?
dirkdierickx Jul 4, 2017
How is this any different for when a bad release is done on another platform? Do i need to remind you of Batman? The last instalment on PC was so horrid in performance, a big backlash happened there, that the publisher retracted the game and if i'm not mistaken it is still not available on the platform. Are they never going to release for (win-)PC again now?
They released the Witcher2 game while it was poorly tested and of story, you can't justify that. It's not as if it was a 0day release, so they could have taken a few weeks extra to release it with the performance fixing patches included.
Not that i agree with hate campaigns etc. against the publishers. We are (or supposed to be) decent human beings, you can communicate in a polite way.
They released the Witcher2 game while it was poorly tested and of story, you can't justify that. It's not as if it was a 0day release, so they could have taken a few weeks extra to release it with the performance fixing patches included.
Not that i agree with hate campaigns etc. against the publishers. We are (or supposed to be) decent human beings, you can communicate in a polite way.
0 Likes
Quoting: NyamiouWho know if this guy is really who he claim he is, jaycee_1980 doesn't bring any results anywhere except on reddit and he's only been here for a month.No, he really is who he says he is. You think I wouldn't be able to verify such a thing before publishing? Come on now.
Also, about this:
Quoting: NyamiouAlso who would use this surname, Jaycee is the name of a girl who was born in 1980 and was abducted at 11 year old for 18 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Jaycee_Dugard.Don't ever bring shit like that in here again. Only warning on that. Somewhere, everyone's name if it's close to a persons name will mean something bad somewhere. Don't be a fucking tool, what on earth where you thinking posting utter shit like that? I'm seriously in shock at how utter idiotic that is. Talking about a bad community and someone comes along and says that *claps* well done.
Quoting: Sir_DiealotOthers 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.I know you're not the only one who posted this, but to everyone else who is able to cut through the noise and actually understand that quoted point: Have a cookie.
If you have two communities to bring your product to, one is 99% of the gaming market and one is 1% the fact is you're already going to be massively wary of doing it at all. Now add in all the usual hate in all gaming markets, that 1% suddenly becomes a very loud hateful place because it is smaller and if you end up seeing a ton of it and it's directed at people personally, you can absolutely bet bridges will be burnt away from existence in a flash. Especially if those hateful remarks get talked about within the company(s) doing the work, the upper management will probably think "it's just not worth the hassle".
Quoting: dirkdierickxHow is this any different for when a bad release is done on another platform? Do i need to remind you of Batman?Just including this quote as well to make the point.
Again, they can't do that for Windows, because that IS their bread and butter, we (Linux) aren't actually needed when it comes to making any kind of profit. It's far, far easier to drop Linux if you don't like what you see. Developers are not robots, human emotion can play a part in everything.
Other porters do it because it's their actual business, doesn't mean any other developer will put up with it.
Yes it's almost always about money, but when the money is the 1% market and they're hateful as hell and again much nosier, it's not rocket science to know they would pull out of it.
The people who can't grasp that, to me, aren't capable of being outside their Linux bubble. I just think some people need a cold glass of harsh truths at times.
That said, I love Linux, for the most part I love the Linux community and I will continue to be here showcasing the best (and yes the worst) of games and so on. No one is going to persuade me otherwise :)
I just want people to think a little more, but it's clear from people like "Nyamiou" that we have a lot of work to do. And yes, I know, you will never be able to make a community better than it is, but I will die trying ;)
Anyway...back to actual work for me
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 4 July 2017 at 8:42 am UTC
10 Likes, Who?
thelimeydragon Jul 4, 2017
Can't people put their anger into something more important:
Emacs vs Vi
(I hate both, I normally just use nano)
Emacs vs Vi
(I hate both, I normally just use nano)
11 Likes, Who?
heidi.wenger Jul 4, 2017
It's still possible from another porter now that some time has passed. Through Wine it's getting better and better. Games are getting easier to port later on now that there is Vulkan taking over, game engines get better Linux support.. We've not seen the end for Witcher 3 Linux port plans i reckon.
0 Likes
Quoting: NyamiouQuoting: 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.
Sure. Since you consider that a company deserves hate (because of a product not meeting some people's expectations).
You should apply for a job in the Trump administration.
5 Likes, Who?
I'm not sure I understand. How is this different from the Windows platform complaints of the same type? I still chuckle at all the various comments from the Windows users complaining about extreme problems with WB's Arkham Knight (my favorite saying that it was like watching a PowerPoint presentation, the graphics were so broken!). This seems like a an unfair double-standard showing that they have very thin skin for business acumen. This won't serve them well on any platform in the long run. I ended up purchasing Witcher II despite the problems because I had faith that they might fix it. I was proven right and for that, I would have given them good word or mouth, reviews and more purchases. I know that this is being reported as just rumor but if this truly is their reasoning and it's later confirmed as true, however, I will no longer be interested in buying their products on ANY platform, much less Linux and I will be sure to mention their attitude and thin skin.
1 Likes, Who?
HollowSoldier Jul 4, 2017
I call BS on this. Companies make and release games for profit. If TW2 was a reason for not releasing TW1 and TW3, it was low sales figures. They could care less about community whining. If that was a thing, companies like Activision wouldn't even exist, not to mention being successful...
3 Likes, Who?
Quite a lot of folk don't seem to understand that this is Jaycee's opinion, not an official CDPR press release.
Also, hate is never justified. But criticism can be justified easily, even if it's not always welcome.
Finally, I wish people would stop pointing at Torvlads, or Stallman as justification for abuse. You might as well throw Jobs in there too. These people are/were revered for their vision despite their often abhorrent people skills. Again, there's no justification for hate.
Also, hate is never justified. But criticism can be justified easily, even if it's not always welcome.
Finally, I wish people would stop pointing at Torvlads, or Stallman as justification for abuse. You might as well throw Jobs in there too. These people are/were revered for their vision despite their often abhorrent people skills. Again, there's no justification for hate.
10 Likes, Who?
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