It’s been a long time since I’ve done this, but here’s part 5 in the series of me talking to developers about how their games have been selling on Linux.
If you missed the previous articles: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
Beamdog
For those who don’t recognise the name, Beamdog are the people behind revamps of classic RPG titles like Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition and Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.
They gave some details about how Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition sold on Steam:
- 91.74% - Windows
- 6.22% - Mac
- 2.04% - Linux
Additionally, they also gave details about install numbers from their own Beamdog client:
- 91.13% - Windows
- 6.38% - Mac
- 2.49% - Linux
Here’s what Beamdog CTO, Scott Brooks had to say about Linux support:
QuoteWe really think the Infinity Engine games are something special and work hard to bring them to people that might not otherwise be able to play them. We've worked with professional and volunteer translators to help bring Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition to 14 languages, and we add things like Story Mode to help people who otherwise would have a hard time playing these great games. We've ported an engine that was originally built in the 16bit to 32bit transition to 64bit in order to let people continue enjoying these games. There are people on Linux that would love to play our games specifically on Linux, and we would love to let them.
Also, if you missed it I did an interview with Beamdog before, you can see that here.
MidBoss
MidBoss, the roguelike where you possess the bodies of your enemies released with Day-1 Linux support back in May. Here’s the figures their developer gave:
- 93.4 - Windows
- 4.7% - Mac
- 1.9% - Linux
Here’s what the developer of MidBoss had to say about supporting Linux now and in future:
QuoteI feel pretty good about supporting both platforms in MidBoss, particularly since Ethan Lee who made FNA did the ports and it wasn't too expensive. Without him they probably wouldn't have happened.
In the future I'll be using a new, completely custom framework that can create .NET executables as well as JavaScript/WebGL builds from a single C# codebase. We're planning to initially use the web builds with Electron to keep supporting Mac and Linux. This should perform just fine for smaller games such as Ultra Hat Dimension which is probably coming out on Steam in early 2018.
When we do wind up doing a bigger more demanding game again (MidBoss 2? Who knows!) I'll investigate getting the .NET versions working on Mac and Linux too. The .NET side uses OpenTK/OpenGL so it shouldn't be that difficult, hopefully, we just don't have the time/resources right now to go into it.
Milkstone Studios
To my surprise, Milkstone Studios were very open and sent over details about multiple titles!
White Noise 2
- 95.31% - Windows
- 4.06% - OSX
- 0.64% - Linux
Only Linux details given for these:
- Little Racers Street: 12.05%
- Pharaonic: 4.59%
- Ziggurat: 2.19%
- White Noise Online: 0.96%
It’s worth noting, that just before the release of Little Racers Street, I did an interview with Milkstone Studios about the title. That may have helped towards the rather high Linux percentage there.
Here’s what they said about continuing to support Linux:
Milkstone StudiosSeeing these numbers, look like Linux players are more used to single player experiences, so that might be the reason.
We support Linux on a pretty basic level (we're not Linux users ourselves, so we have limited experience with it). Linux support takes up lots of support time (I'd say around 20-25% of our support time is dedicated to addressing Linux issues), and it's hard to justify dedicating our time to this platform if sales for it are low. However, Unity allows for easy generation of Linux builds, and most of the work required for a proper port was done with Ziggurat, so for now we'll continue releasing games with Linux support, and trying to solve issues to the best of our knowledge.
While they weren’t able to give any specific details, I did speak to two of the bigger porters Feral Interactive and Aspyr Media.
Here’s what Feral Interactive had to say:
QuoteThe Linux market remains small in comparison to Mac, and tiny compared to Windows. Three years of bringing AAA games to Linux has taught us a lot about what works in sales terms, and what works less well. Although we had hoped that the Steam Machine would gain more traction, we have been pleasantly surprised by the Linux sales achieved on distros other than SteamOS, and continually encouraged by the passionate (and vocal!) audience of Linux gamers. However, we are disappointed by the promotion of piracy by some, which does disproportionate damage to the economics of bringing games to an already small platform.
Take a look at what Aspyr Media said:
QuoteOur Linux business continues to be an important part of our strategy going forward. We consider Linux a viable platform, and continue to make it a target goal of any deal we strike.
I did reach out to Virtual Programming, but they were extremely busy and didn't have time.
I would like to thank everyone who got back to me. Sadly some didn’t reply, but given how busy developers are actually making games, it’s all good!
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: JanApple is not abandoning the Mac at all.
They have just announced the iMac Pro with Xeon CPUs, external GPU support, Metal 2 and a new high-end Mac Pro coming in 2018/2019 along with new Cinema 5K Displays.
After stalling for how long? Dropping in some update after years of doing nothing is not called "not abandoning". Also, they clearly don't care about their own users and developers, otherwise they would have updated their OpenGL to latest versions. I.e. good luck trying to run something like The Witcher 3 in Wine on MacOS - it won't work, because OpenGL is stuck there at around 4.1. For all intents and purposes, Linux is much better for gaming.
Quoting: LeopardMacOS sales are staying high because most of the people are thinking having an Apple branded system is a privelege. So suddenly MacOS being a status sign for them and that is keeping them on the ecosystem : Ego.
Yes, that makes more sense. Technically, MacOS is becoming trash, and Apple simply decided to address complaints of abandonment, rather than pushing it forward. But people use it out of inertia.
Last edited by Shmerl on 2 August 2017 at 3:42 pm UTC
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GustyGhost Aug 2, 2017
Quoting: liamdaweTo be clear, Aspyr has not left Linux at all. I don't get why people say that, they did only recently put out Civ VI (a pretty major title). They are also publishing games coming to Linux.
Because Feral are, by comparison, running circles around them. They raised the expectation for release rate and now even VP appear to have "left linux".
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Quoting: LeopardQuoting: ShmerlNice. As you can see, it's way higher than so called Steam survey, which only highlights, that the later is pretty useless. It all depends on the game, and I'd say on developers and their engagement with Linux community. I'd be also interested in some numbers from inXile and Obsidian, who like Beamdog release cross platform from day one.
Also, I'm somewhat surprised that MacOS sales stay high, despite bitrot of the system, and Apple basically abandoning their own desktop.
MacOS sales are staying high because most of the people are thinking having an Apple branded system is a privelege. So suddenly MacOS being a status sign for them and that is keeping them on the ecosystem : Ego.
Also note that , Apple ecosystem makes people much more binded to their platform. Purchase history made them tied with Apple Market.
On the other hand , Linux is replaceable and there is nothing to lose if you abandon Linux.
If you abandon Windows , you will lose games. If you abandon MacOS you will lose that feeling of being special.
Oh, boy. Are you kidding? macOS -- unlike iOS -- is an open platform just like Linux. You are not forced to buy software from the Mac App Store or use iCloud at all. There's a terminal, X11, whatever you like. The only downside compared to other *nix systems: You need a physical Mac to run it. But even that is not an issue anymore (visit tonymacx86) if you go the Hackintosh route, which Apple doesn't mind at all, they just won't grant support.
Believe me, there are people who have been running their businesses solely on Macs long before Steve Jobs was back at Apple, the iPod or iPhone were even thought about. The old-school Mac community is just as passionate as Linux people and a lot of them are entrepreneurs and top notch creatives. They don't care about ego or advertisements, but about ROI, working solutions and great support.
We couldn't run our studio solely on Linux, because there's no professional video editing or design software available for Linux. Building apps for iOS would be complicated, etc. I'm glad macOS exists, I'm glad Linux exists -- we use both to their strengths and don't need Windows except for testing purposes.
So, please, stop the "Macs are only for superficial egoists" bullshit. It's simply not true. Hundreds of thousands of creative professionals worldwide might agree.
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Quoting: JanOh, boy. Are you kidding? macOS -- unlike iOS -- is an open platform just like Linux.
In many ways it's not. Why don't Nvidia and AMD release proper graphics drivers for MacOS? They could address the problem of lacking Vulkan and stalled OpenGL there easily. Apple doesn't let them. So it's far from open (I'm not even talking about FOSS, I'm talking about some flexibility). In the graphics sense, Windows is actually way more open than MacOS.
Last edited by Shmerl on 2 August 2017 at 4:11 pm UTC
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: JanApple is not abandoning the Mac at all.
They have just announced the iMac Pro with Xeon CPUs, external GPU support, Metal 2 and a new high-end Mac Pro coming in 2018/2019 along with new Cinema 5K Displays.
After stalling for how long? Dropping in some update after years of doing nothing is not called "not abandoning". Also, they clearly don't care about their own users and developers, otherwise they would have updated their OpenGL to latest versions. I.e. good luck trying to run something like The Witcher 3 in Wine on MacOS - it won't work, because OpenGL is stuck there at around 4.1. For all intents and purposes, Linux is much better for gaming.
You do realise Apple has their own graphics API called Metal? They have officially dropped OpenGL support and encourage all developers to switch to Metal, just like Feral did with F1 2017, Hitman or Dawn of War III.
It's not the route I would have taken, but Apple chose to do their own thing just like Microsoft with DirectX. There will be no official Vulkan support on Mac or iOS, which is not good for the API, but Apple will most likely get away with it. They have a strong user base.
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Quoting: JanYou do realise Apple has their own graphics API called Metal?
Which is a jerk lock-in reaction, to open competition (Vulkan), which Apple politically decided not to support. That disgusts me in Apple pretty a lot.
Quoting: JanThey have officially dropped OpenGL support and encourage all developers to switch to Metal
Forcing developers to adopt lock-in, by using bit rot is another stinky political move. Basically, Apple wants to tax cross platform developers. In this sense, they are worse than MS these days.
Last edited by Shmerl on 2 August 2017 at 4:18 pm UTC
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: JanOh, boy. Are you kidding? macOS -- unlike iOS -- is an open platform just like Linux.
In many ways it's not. Why don't Nvidia and AMD release proper graphics drivers for MacOS? They could address the problem of lacking Vulkan and stalled OpenGL there easily. Apple doesn't let them. So it's far from open (I'm not even talking about FOSS, I'm talking about some flexibility). In the graphics sense, Windows is actually way more open than MacOS.
If that is true, allow me to ask you a question: Who is developing the official NVidia Web Driver for macOS to support their latest GPUs like the GTX 1080 if Apple prevents them to do so?
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Quoting: JanIf that is true, allow me to ask you a question: Who is developing the official NVidia Web Driver for macOS to support their latest GPUs like the GTX 1080 if Apple prevents them to do so?
Apple surely let them to do something, but not enough to address lacking APIs. That's why I have quite a strong disrespect towards Apple. They are one of the worst lock-in jerks in existence.
Last edited by Shmerl on 2 August 2017 at 4:24 pm UTC
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: JanIf that is true, allow me to ask you a question: Who is developing the official NVidia Web Driver for macOS to support their latest GPUs like the GTX 1080 if Apple prevents them to do so?
Apple surely let's them to do something, but not enough to address lacking APIs. That's why I have quite a strong disrespect to Apple. They are one of the worst lock-in jerks in existence.
Why should Nividia or AMD develop an API for Apple? They don't develop APIs for Microsoft or any other company either. They try to sell GFX cards and develop optimised software to sell more than their competition to performance oriented users.
And how do you measure the quality of this "something"? Do you use Macs with Nvidia cards on a regular basis to back up your statements?
I agree with you that it would be better if all the big players would have agreed on Vulkan and dropped their proprietary solutions. But it won't happen: Microsoft sticks to DirectX and Apple developed Metal (for iOS) long before Vulkan was a "finalised" standard.
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