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.
Wow... Some of the commenters here actually say they deserved the backlash. Being a game dev must suck. Getting second thoughts about my dream to make my own game...
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Quoting: AlveKattWow... Some of the commenters here actually say they deserved the backlash. Being a game dev must suck. Getting second thoughts about my dream to make my own game...
Don't let them define you. I personally think that while online communities have serious problems with such toxic people - and there's really not that ways to avoid them - it is always someone's choice to react to these nutcases.
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Quoting: AlveKattWow... Some of the commenters here actually say they deserved the backlash. Being a game dev must suck. Getting second thoughts about my dream to make my own game...
Well, you could develop open source applications and get hate mails, because you don't want to fix this or that bug or are not interested in this or that feature or don't provide builds for this or that distribution.
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There's apparently quite a few crackheads in this community, sadly.
To those of you who call this bullshit since they didn't stop releasing for Windows, you must now step away from the keyboard, take a nap, and when rested sit down and ponder a bit why that claim is the most stupid thing you've said so far this summer.
I won't even explain why it is so. If you can't figure that out, Internet is not for you.
To those of you who call this bullshit since they didn't stop releasing for Windows, you must now step away from the keyboard, take a nap, and when rested sit down and ponder a bit why that claim is the most stupid thing you've said so far this summer.
I won't even explain why it is so. If you can't figure that out, Internet is not for you.
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Mountain Man Jul 4, 2017
Quoting: Luke_NukemQuoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.Not even close to the level of pettiness shown by that vocal chunk that spewed forth a wall of toxicity towards those who were trying to help us out.
That's just the background noise you have to put up with when doing business.
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Quoting: omer666There are a lot of good points made in this thread. My own position about this is that there were several justifications for such strong reactions. We must analyse what's gone wrong in context. <SNIP>
Justification for threats of violence? Death threats? Yeah, real classy. I didn't even read past that opening sentence.
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Quoting: BeamboomThere's apparently quite a few crackheads in this community, sadly.
To those of you who call this bullshit since they didn't stop releasing for Windows, you must now step away from the keyboard, take a nap, and when rested sit down and ponder a bit why that claim is the most stupid thing you've said so far this summer.
I won't even explain why it is so. If you can't figure that out, Internet is not for you.
And who certifies you sir to judge for whom the internet is or isn't :D you can express your opinion just like anybody else can, that's all.
I still believe there's much more to it than just the flaming of the community. It seems very naive to believe that community's whining is the only reason why they would give up the entire already predicted development, very likely that finances and costs are involved...
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Quoting: Mountain ManQuoting: Luke_NukemQuoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.Not even close to the level of pettiness shown by that vocal chunk that spewed forth a wall of toxicity towards those who were trying to help us out.
That's just the background noise you have to put up with when doing business.
Again, threats of violence are not "background noise". Can't believe so many people are trying to justify this.
Just imagine if you provided a physical service on the street - pretzels, shoe shine, whatever - and on the one hand, you have a group of people literally 10 feet away shouting that you should just fucking die because your service, in their opinion, is sub standard. Then on the other hand, a second group of people standing 5 feet away telling you to grow a thicker skin, just ignore those guys, pfff, just background noise.
Yeah, sure. This is one of the most depressing threads I've ever experienced on the internet. And, given Reddit, or the Steam Forums, that's really saying something.
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Wishing someone to die or the like is never ever an appropriate reaction to anything that might happen in a relation between people pertaining to a digital product. It's completely unacceptable no matter the built-up expectation, the amount of money paid, time spent waiting or whatever.
Companies are made of people and while most decisions tend to be made based on objective grounds, emotions do play a role.
If 100 Windows users send a developer death threats, they will grow tougher skin, wish they could tell them to fuck themselves but try to ignore the hate and keep on working on their game hoping other non-hate-spewing people will buy it.
When 100 Linux users send a developer death threats, they'll do what they wished they could do to the Windows people: say screw you fuckers, I won't release my game for you. Lots of satisfaction ensues, with very little (if any) financial consequence.
Also:
Are you sure that's a sound decision?
And:
And here's why we can't have nice things.
Companies are made of people and while most decisions tend to be made based on objective grounds, emotions do play a role.
If 100 Windows users send a developer death threats, they will grow tougher skin, wish they could tell them to fuck themselves but try to ignore the hate and keep on working on their game hoping other non-hate-spewing people will buy it.
When 100 Linux users send a developer death threats, they'll do what they wished they could do to the Windows people: say screw you fuckers, I won't release my game for you. Lots of satisfaction ensues, with very little (if any) financial consequence.
Also:
QuoteMy son of 13 is currently playing TW2 bought on GOG
Are you sure that's a sound decision?
And:
Quoting: libookamiWhiny and demanding wall of text
And here's why we can't have nice things.
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Quoting: scaineQuoting: Mountain ManQuoting: Luke_NukemQuoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.Not even close to the level of pettiness shown by that vocal chunk that spewed forth a wall of toxicity towards those who were trying to help us out.
That's just the background noise you have to put up with when doing business.
Again, threats of violence are not "background noise". Can't believe so many people are trying to justify this.
Just imagine if you provided a physical service on the street - pretzels, shoe shine, whatever - and on the one hand, you have a group of people literally 10 feet away shouting that you should just fucking die because your service, in their opinion, is sub standard. Then on the other hand, a second group of people standing 5 feet away telling you to grow a thicker skin, just ignore those guys, pfff, just background noise.
Yeah, sure. This is one of the most depressing threads I've ever experienced on the internet. And, given Reddit, or the Steam Forums, that's really saying something.
And who would ultimately be wrong? People who judge you for not doing your job well or not keeping your promise or people who defend you for no reason, only to look moral? I mean sure, we should behave like people and not make threats and justify barbaric behavior but the answer isn't all that simple... I've seen so many polite critiques on internet where they diss every part of some games and yet they do come out and in some cases sell very well... it's just that we're small market and that's why we got the game cancelled. Even if we were the nicest people in the world when tw2 came out, tw3 would still probably get cancelled when they saw that SteamOS isn't going anywhere.
And I'm NOT justifying the threats to jaycee and his coworkers...
Last edited by MaCroX95 on 4 July 2017 at 11:48 am UTC
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