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.
HollowSoldier Jul 6, 2017
Anyone remembers OpenMW? Let's just write our own Witcher 3. No profit for CDPR.
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Quoting: HollowSoldierAnyone remembers OpenMW? Let's just write our own Witcher 3. No profit for CDPR.
Sound good, but it's a humongous task. It would take some uncountable amount of man hours. Plus, RedEngine is quite more complex than Morrowind one, so reverse engineering it is more complicated as well.
Last edited by Shmerl on 6 July 2017 at 1:56 am UTC
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Look what I found here: https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2015/03/management_board_report_on_cd_projekt_s-a-_activities_in_2014-1.pdf
Clearly they planned to release TW1 for Linux at some point.
Last edited by Shmerl on 6 July 2017 at 2:18 am UTC
QuoteIn April 2012 an extended edition of The Witcher 2 was released on the PC and Xbox 360. Both parts of The Witcher series are now also available for Apple and Linux machines.
Clearly they planned to release TW1 for Linux at some point.
Last edited by Shmerl on 6 July 2017 at 2:18 am UTC
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By the way, if anyone has shares in CDPR, you can ask them about what happened to the Linux release of TW3 here: https://www.cdprojekt.com/pl/forums/topic/lista-pytan-do-zarzadu/
In that thread, there were people who were asking about Linux release of TW2 (before it came out), but surprisingly, not a single person asked about TW3 release.
Disclaimer - I'm not a shareholder.
Last edited by Shmerl on 6 July 2017 at 3:24 am UTC
In that thread, there were people who were asking about Linux release of TW2 (before it came out), but surprisingly, not a single person asked about TW3 release.
Disclaimer - I'm not a shareholder.
Last edited by Shmerl on 6 July 2017 at 3:24 am UTC
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Mountain Man Jul 6, 2017
Quoting: Luke_NukemQuoting: 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.
Absolutely not! We're a small enough market already, and when a seemingly large chunk of that small market is the most vocal about something then that ends up being what people/devs/publishers see AND ASSOCIATE OUR SMALL MARKET WITH.
Justifying and allowing this is not good. It's idiotic. It's harmful.
I'm not justifying the behavior or saying that it should be allowed. But when I look at the developer's response in this case, the phrase "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" comes to mind. Surely there are better ways of dealing with a handful of trolls than by abandoning an entire segment of the market, even if it is a relatively small segment.
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Quoting: Mountain ManBut when I look at the developer's response in this case, the phrase "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" comes to mind.
You assume the claim that they cancelled Linux plans because of trolls is correct. Nothing really substantiates it.
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Mountain Man Jul 6, 2017
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: Mountain ManBut when I look at the developer's response in this case, the phrase "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" comes to mind.
You assume the claim that they cancelled Linux plans because of trolls is correct. Nothing really substantiates it.
That's the premise of the article we're discussing.
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qptain Nemo Jul 6, 2017
Quoting: HollowSoldierAnyone remembers OpenMW? Let's just write our own Witcher 3. No profit for CDPR.It's a fun thought, and I'm not gonna stop you, but I think in this case those efforts are better spent improving Wine and its DX11 support. It's already come very far and would yield us more games (even if not native) and improved status (being able to "play anything modern on Linux" will have an effect and repercussions). At least I'd argue in favor of doing the Wine route first. If anything it'd provide you with a reference that doesn't require Windows to check. ;)
Also regarding "no profit" we'd still have to buy the game to play it, just like we buy Morrowind to play it in OpenMW.
Quoting: ShmerlBy the way, if anyone has shares in CDPR, you can ask them about what happened to the Linux release of TW3 here: https://www.cdprojekt.com/pl/forums/topic/lista-pytan-do-zarzadu/Maybe being shareholders was the way all along. :D
In that thread, there were people who were asking about Linux release of TW2 (before it came out), but surprisingly, not a single person asked about TW3 release.
Disclaimer - I'm not a shareholder.
Last edited by qptain Nemo on 6 July 2017 at 4:46 am UTC
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Quoting: Mountain ManThat's the premise of the article we're discussing.
Right, my point is, it's a very shaky premise, while you discuss it as a granted fact above. Unless the whole discussion is just hypothetical.
Last edited by Shmerl on 6 July 2017 at 5:27 am UTC
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Quoting: ZeloxThey have answered this;
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_galaxy_biggest_update_yet_marks_the_end_of_beta_5e5d5/post525
There is no ETA, but its planned and worked on atm.
I would like some more feed back from the devs tho, dont like the silence, only makes me confused.
But thats the latest news we got from it, atleast what I know of.
That's exactly what i say when i don't want to do something ;) Two years to port a simple think like Galaxy? They already distribute Linux builds, so the only non trivial part of porting Galaxy is networking. Few months would be understandbale, but more than 2 years and still no ETA?
They don't care about porting Galaxy, that's the only rational thinking. But they know that cancelling it would result in a backslash. I'm sure they prefer keeping us waiting for something that may never than creating a massive wave of complaigns. To be honest, i find it insulting. This is extremely rude. They should be honest with their custumers (us).
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