Linux game sales statistics from multiple developers, part 5

I 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.

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.

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

Desktop-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

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.

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.

Why 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.

Why 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?

Let'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.

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.

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.

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?

Positive, instead of negative.

That is my question: does this warrant all of this bashing and bitching about a company driven by profit?

Profit is no justification for crooked behavior like lock-in.

I realise from linux gamers' perspective lock-in is not a great idea,

It's not limited to affecting Linux specifically. Lock-in is bad in general. It's an anti-competitive / monopolistic practice, which harms progress.


Last edited by Shmerl on 4 August 2017 at 5:10 am UTC

I guess that's where we disagree on a deeper level: Apple (and other companies) don't have the luxury linux has. Linux doesn't have shareholders and doesn't have to produce quarterly figures, Apple does. From their perspective they are doing everything right, and whether we like it or not it is all driven by profit and greed. Not an ideal situation but no other system has been shown to work as effectively as this one.

I guess that's where we disagree on a deeper level: Apple (and other companies) don't have the luxury linux has. Linux doesn't have shareholders and doesn't have to produce quarterly figures, Apple does. From their perspective they are doing everything right, and whether we like it or not it is all driven by profit and greed.

Yes, we disagree. Lock-in is not right, and what Apple is doing is crooked. Lock-in means they don't compete on merit, but use anti-competitive methods to advance their interests. It's one of the monopolistic practices (among many others). I don't think we need to spend time here explaining why monopolies are bad from a lot of different perspectives. If anyone, Linux users should know better.


Last edited by Shmerl on 4 August 2017 at 5:44 am UTC

Just to pitch in here too - when I bash on companies like Apple, I don't do so because I'm bitter that if only they changed their practices, Linux use would "explode overnight". I do it because they deserve it. Anti-competitive behaviour should be called out when you see it, not justified as a Shareholder strategy. Infuriating.

And to clarify, I doubt Linux use is ever going to "explode". There won't be a discernible "year of the Linux desktop". The move to Linux is subtle, in stages, for most people. And that implies slow, organic growth over decades.

Yes, we disagree. Lock-in is not right, and what Apple is doing is crooked. Lock-in means they don't compete on merit, but use anti-competitive methods to advance their interests. It's one of the monopolistic practices (among many others). I don't think we need to spend time here explaining why monopolies are bad from a lot of different perspectives. If anyone, Linux users should know better.

Apple is not a monopolist in any market, unlike Microsoft and Google. They hold 6–7 % of the desktop and around 30 % of the mobile market, which is significant, but not threatening to other players.

What you don't get is that they are not comparable to self-proclaimed 'open platform holders' like Microsoft or Canonical. It's not Apple's intention to please you or the whole market. They're not a charity. Apple builds products for their own ecosystem: All-in-one systems, hard and software combined, be it an Apple Watch, iPhone or iMac.

They don't license out their OS, no other vendors need to support their stuff, no one is forced to follow their steps. If you want to spend some quality time in their sandbox, play by their rules. If not, move on, there are many other options: Android, ChromeOS, Windows, Linux, etc.

It's Apple's core concept to control everything within their ecosystem (or walled garden, if you prefer that term) to deliver a smooth user experience and sell them more devices and services tied to their Apple IDs. Amazon is another company like them, Sony and Nintendo are comparable in certain areas.

A Mac per se is not a build-your-own system PC -- it is a 'console-like' device for consumers and creative professionals: Pre-configured, all in one, plug and play. It just works. That's what Apple sells. They are the opposite pole of the Linux community, Microsoft is somewhere in the middle.

If you realise and accept that 'convenience' companies like Apple have a right to exist, you can stop your crusade and focus your energy on solutions how we as a community and educated consumers can make Linux more successful, which will ultimately benefit the whole tech market.

The games Beamdog, Midboss, and Milestone used to show sales statistics are primarily games the larger percentage of people don't want... except for those on the fringe who may actually like low budget indie games (not argueing the entertainment value for the few).

I would much rather see statistics on some AAA games from Feral. Please don't act like you don't know what an AAA game title means. Provide some statistics on games like Hitman, Mad max, Deus Ex:MD, Dying Light, Tomb Raider, Dota2, Metro last Light, CS:GO, XCOM:EU, Civ6, etc. (some more recent titles and games people actually play!)

Hopefully implementation of Vulkan will change things as far as porting is concerned; however, until that happens I recommend supporting WINE development team (who are doing an outstanding job) and stop the 'no tux no bucks' crap.... but hey, to each their own. I just want to play AAA games... don't care how as long as I don't have to dual boot.


Last edited by ShoNuff!!! on 4 August 2017 at 1:38 pm UTC

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'.

There has always been a group of dedicated Mac gaming enthusiasts -- just visit insidemacgames.com and learn more about the topic. Most 'hardcore' Mac gamers used to buy the old-school expandable Mac Pro (which still supports the latest Kepler GPUs) or the high-end iMac, which usually has a decent graphics card (the Nvidia 680MX in the 2012 model was the fastest mobile GPU available back then).

Most Mac users nowadays run a MacBook (Pro). Thanks to official eGPU support (Apple offers a dev kit with an AMD RX580) this won't be a bottleneck in the foreseeable future. My own experiences with unofficially supported eGPUs on the Mac have been mixed. It worked after some Terminal hacks, but the official solution should be stable.

If you ask me to portray an average Mac gaming enthusiast? Creative professional (designer, audio/video editor, etc.), scientist or student who needs a reliable working machine with little to no support costs, well designed (both OS and device), standard software support and likes to play games in his/her spare time. All on one box. Some dual-boot with Windows (Boot Camp), but the majority doesn't. Only half of them use Steam, the remaining 50 % buy their games off of the Mac App Store (according to Feral's numbers).

Apple is not a monopolist in any market, unlike Microsoft and Google.

That doesn't justify anti-competitive behavior in any way. Such examples as ban to competing browsers on iOS are simply disgusting. I agree with others that it's better to focus on positive stuff instead of bashing Apple the the like, but I don't agree with whitewashing of crooked behavior.

It's Apple's core concept to control everything within their ecosystem (or walled garden, if you prefer that term) to deliver a smooth user experience and sell them more devices and services tied to their Apple IDs. Amazon is another company like them, Sony and Nintendo are comparable in certain areas.

Those are all counter examples. I.e. they just highlight how bad lock-in is. Out of those, Nintendo notably started using Vulkan, but overall they have a very bad reputation when it comes to how they use DRM and treat their own users.


Last edited by Shmerl on 4 August 2017 at 3:34 pm UTC

However, we are disappointed by the promotion of piracy by some

I have not seen that anywhere, would be interesting to see where they stumbled across this.

However, we are disappointed by the promotion of piracy by some

I have not seen that anywhere, would be interesting to see where they stumbled across this.

I have seen it justified plenty of times on Reddit

Yeah not just reddit some have suggested it to get around steam/ ea origin et. But it is important to pay for games on linux we need to show there is a market, we really do not want to scare off the publishers we do have.