Linux game sales statistics from multiple developers, part 5

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76I do understand that but again: Does Apple force anyone to release their games (or software in general) on MacOS? Do programmers know beforehand they will need to support another backend? If they do know and still release on MacOS is this Apple's fault or the programmers'?

Forcing is the wrong word here. Developers target bigger markets first naturally. So if they need to support N graphics APIs instead of 1, they'll spend N times more effort / money / time on doing it, instead of focusing on improving other things. And out of those N, they'll focus on bigger ones first. And it is lock-in jerks' fault, that instead of collaborating on the common standard, they created their lock-ins, to make the above effort much harder. HTML history can demonstrate you the benefits of the common open standard, and the damage lock-in can cause.

The bottom line, you got the point of lock-in being a tax. So I don't see what you are even arguing about.

Oh it's simple: as i said the original question was why so much Apple bashing as if it had tremendous impact on the state of linux gaming. Does it?
Apple is a company and it will do all it can to earn money, maybe having an extra API specifically tailored for your hardware brings money. If one wants to challenge Apple on that front they need a company too, linux isn't one.

Quoting: manus76Oh it's simple: as i said the original question was why so much Apple bashing as if it had tremendous impact on the state of linux gaming. Does it?
Apple is a company and it will do all it can to earn money, maybe having an extra API specifically tailored for your hardware brings money. If one wants to challenge Apple on that front they need a company too, linux isn't one.

Because Apple is one of the worst cases of lock-in proponents. Metal is the example here. You apparently agree. If you don't understand why it deserves criticism, then I guess you think damage to the industry progress is good and falls into "do what you can to earn money". That's not the first time someone tries to justify such crooked practice.

And if you just don't get why Apple is criticized, and not other lock-in proponents like MS, Sony and etc. it's because the conversation was about Apple above. Of course all of them deserve this criticism.


Last edited by Shmerl on 3 August 2017 at 7:52 pm UTC

Quoting: manus76Desktop-Gamingwise Apple plays almost no role in the big scheme of things - who buys a Mac to play games anyway? Also 'Redundant backends'? If it brings money it's not, from programmers' perspective, redundant I guess. Another point: there are examples of developers successfully supporting multiple backends (e.g.Serious Sam/The Talos Priniciple off the top of my head) without all that much trouble it seems.
So: is that all, as you write, 'consequence of lock-in jerks pushing their APIs'? Or maybe some teams are not competent enough? Work on other projects?

It doesn't matter what they buy it for, it matters what they spend money on once they buy it. People buy phones to make calls and do messages and take pictures, but I would swear there is a mobile game market of some sort. Mac is a significant part of the desktop gaming market, whatever the Mac users buying those games "bought it for". If we think of Linux as mattering at all (and after all, about a quarter of games currently come to Linux), then clearly Mac matters at least three times as much. Which means if we both used the same thing, that matters four times as much as if just Linux uses it.

Meanwhile, no doubt some teams are not "competent enough" (or, not competent enough at that particular skill). And your point is? This actually demonstrates that it's a problem. If we want all the games, that would include games built by people who are better at game mechanics than at graphics backends. If your argument is that it doesn't matter because it would be OK if all developers were perfect, that only counts as an argument if you live in an alternate universe with perfect people . . . where it wouldn't come up because perfect people wouldn't do lockin.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 3 August 2017 at 8:00 pm UTC

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76Oh it's simple: as i said the original question was why so much Apple bashing as if it had tremendous impact on the state of linux gaming. Does it?
Apple is a company and it will do all it can to earn money, maybe having an extra API specifically tailored for your hardware brings money. If one wants to challenge Apple on that front they need a company too, linux isn't one.

Because Apple is one of the worst cases of lock-in proponents. Metal is the example here. You apparently agree. If you don't understand why it deserves criticism, then I guess you think damage to the industry progress is good and falls into "do what you can to earn money". That's not the first time someone tries to justify such crooked practice.

And if you just don't get why Apple is criticized, and not other lock-in proponents like MS, Sony and etc. it's because the conversation was about Apple above. Of course all of them deserve this criticism.

Part of it is also that typically in Linux circles nobody goes around trying to say Microsoft is actually OK and their lock-in was never intended to conspire against anybody and etc., because we all know better. So it doesn't come up. If someone were to make such a fatuous argument, it would certainly be disputed vociferously.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: manus76Why has this thread turned into 'Apple is an evil corporation' diatribe? I thought it was about Linux gaming and I can't recall seeing anyone putting a gun to people's heads, forcing them to buy an Apple product (or Microsoft's for that matter). At least not where I live.

Lots of bad things happen in this world without anyone putting a gun to anyone's head. People's children starve in the streets without anyone having put a gun to anyone's head. Nestle executives conspired to have third world babies die of disease without putting guns to anyone's head. The idea that if something happens subtly it didn't really happen is pernicious and helps a lot of people get away with a lot of really bad stuff.

Of course those things are true but why not use the technology industry as an example. Too contentious? Anybody here willing to boycott cobalt or graphite in the interest of saving lives? Who here REALLY wants to live with the consequences of making a stand against corporate abuse of human rights? The point is, many people seem to take on causes for no other reason than to facilitate their need to compete. Hence the constant stream of Microsoft and Apple comments on Linux forums.

Quoting: Duckeenie

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: manus76Why has this thread turned into 'Apple is an evil corporation' diatribe? I thought it was about Linux gaming and I can't recall seeing anyone putting a gun to people's heads, forcing them to buy an Apple product (or Microsoft's for that matter). At least not where I live.

Lots of bad things happen in this world without anyone putting a gun to anyone's head. People's children starve in the streets without anyone having put a gun to anyone's head. Nestle executives conspired to have third world babies die of disease without putting guns to anyone's head. The idea that if something happens subtly it didn't really happen is pernicious and helps a lot of people get away with a lot of really bad stuff.

Of course those things are true but why not use the technology industry as an example. Too contentious? Anybody here willing to boycott cobalt or graphite in the interest of saving lives? Who here REALLY wants to live with the consequences of making a stand against corporate abuse of human rights? The point is, many people seem to take on causes for no other reason than to facilitate their need to compete. Hence the constant stream of Microsoft and Apple comments on Linux forums.

Sure, if we weren't Linux users, or if Microsoft and Apple weren't making it more difficult to be Linux users, we doubtless wouldn't criticize them as much for being evil. Does that make it unfair to tell the truth about them? Linux is perhaps unusual in not being evil. Does that make it dirty pool to point out the difference? Really, we shouldn't point out that other people are doing lots of stuff to fuck everything up, because it might be rude and although it's true it might be to our advantage and perish the thought we take our own side? Whaaaa??? So, if someone's in a fight with you, do you tie both hands behind your back and offer up your chin, you know, just to be polite?

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: slaapliedjeLet's break that down;
CUPS: Open Source project bought by Apple. Still open sourced.
WebKit: Forked from KHTML, but is updated from various people. Still open sourced.
Swift: I'll give this one to Apple, cool.
Darwin: Open source kernel, but they don't keep it all that updated.
OpenCL: Already covered that it was kind of dropped. Not sure if they invented it or not.
Bonjour/Zeroconf: pretty sure that's a standard called mDNS, no?
USB-C/Thunderbolt: Intel created this.
FireWire: Same thing as above.
HTML5 vs Flash? everyone was behind this, even Adobe...

mDNS was based on an open paper which was adopted by Apple and Microsoft. mDNS/Bonjour is Apple's name for zeroconf, Linux called it Avahi, not sure what MS did.

CUPS was around for a while, Apple didn't buy it, but they did eventually head hunt the main dude behind the company that did.

Don't know much about the rest, but it does seem to me that Apple get credit for stuff that's been around for years. I wouldn't mind, if they actually offered anything (literally, nearly anything, even just "credit", jesus!) back to the projects they use. But since they won't hardly even give anything back to their own shareholders, it hardly surprises me that they don't give anything back to the giants upon whose shoulders they stand.

Oh, sorry, bought/hired them all.. I couldn't remember exactly, but CUPS was around forever... I was convinced at the time it was a Good Thing™. It hasn't really turned out bad, but my thought had been "Cool, for once you can see 'Windows/Mac' on a printer, and know it should also work with Linux due to CUPS.' But I think the decision was more about Apple realizing their own printer support was becoming terrible. I don't now, I didn't use Macs back then, and only grew to dislike them after I used one. One things for sure, CUPS is still superior over Microsoft's printer spooler, which feels like it hasn't really been updated since Windows '95...

So, I just some quick look ups, and referencing other bits in this...

OpenGL 4.1 was released in 2010. OpenGL 4.2 was released in 2011. OpenGL 4.3 was released in 2012.

Pretty continuous updates, yet Apple stuck with 4.1 (or is it 4.2, can't recall, just remember Elite:Dangerous was ported to it, and Elite:Horizons can't run on it because that old of a GL version doesn't support the shaders necessary for the planet landing graphics). That's at least a year between initial announcement of either Vulkan or Metal. Considering Vulkan runs on mobile devices, Metal could have been nothing more than lock-in.

As covered by others a few posts back as well as myself, so many times it'd be stated "Oh, it's already out for Mac/OpenGL, should be easier to port to Linux, since <insert random percentage> is already completed!" We (being the Linux users of somewhat sound mind) can no longer claim that due to Metal.

We can at least say Vulkan is winning over DirectX 12. Last I looked at the two, which was a month or two ago, the only DirectX 12 only games out there were published by Microsoft. No one else was ready to dive in to force people to use Windows 10 yet, which has been out for TWO years! There are games that support DX 11 and 12, but even then the list is slowly being surpassed by ones that have added Vulkan support.

Now about what Feral and Aspyr port. We should realize... when things like Mafia 3 only get a Mac port, it's because of the publisher's wishes, not what Aspyr wants or thinks will be profitable. They make their deal for whatever the publisher will allow. I was thinking about this quite a bit some time ago, trying to figure out the WHY and WHO that buys video games for Macs. The hardware on average isn't that great, unless you don't mind spending $1000 more for lesser hardware... I can't help but think that Publishers/Sales critters have a good amount of Apple fans within them. So they say "Yes, let's publish for our great platform, it can do anything!" Yet even something as old as World of Warcraft that has a native Mac version... a guy I know who loves everything Apple bought a PC specifically to play that game at higher resolution because his Macbook Pro (with an nVidia chip in it) was too slow.

Has anyone done a side by side comparison of graphics for a PC vs Mac to see if they 'console-ize' Mac versions? I know I tried playing Total War: Attila on my Mac and the fan went crazy, the frame rate was barely more than a slide show, and I thought it was going to melt. I just figured the Intel chipset in it couldn't handle it, but it did make me wonder what kind of person uses solely a Mac for gaming? I'm really curious how their numbers are higher than ours, unless it is some sort of 'inside job'.

Mac hardware is clearly inferior for high end gaming. Not surprisingly, Apple will try to push gamers to use external GPUs to skirt this problem. So I'm also surprised, that some demanding games get more sales on MacOS than on Linux.

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76Oh it's simple: as i said the original question was why so much Apple bashing as if it had tremendous impact on the state of linux gaming. Does it?
Apple is a company and it will do all it can to earn money, maybe having an extra API specifically tailored for your hardware brings money. If one wants to challenge Apple on that front they need a company too, linux isn't one.

Because Apple is one of the worst cases of lock-in proponents. Metal is the example here. You apparently agree. If you don't understand why it deserves criticism, then I guess you think damage to the industry progress is good and falls into "do what you can to earn money". That's not the first time someone tries to justify such crooked practice.

And if you just don't get why Apple is criticized, and not other lock-in proponents like MS, Sony and etc. it's because the conversation was about Apple above. Of course all of them deserve this criticism.

Imagine the following for the sake of argument: Apple supports Vulkan and all of MacOS games suddenly appear on linux. How many games would that be? 100? 1000? 2000? What kind of impact would it have on linux gaming? Would it mean linux gaming market share (what the original article is about and not about Apple) would explode overnight? That is my question: does this warrant all of this bashing and bitching about a company driven by profit?
I realise from linux gamers' perspective lock-in is not a great idea, but as already mentioned: a company operating on the capitalist market must take other things into consideration, not necessarily how a couple of nerds feel about computer graphics API's.