The developers of Mantis Burn Racing [Steam] are still willing to port the game to Linux, with enough demand. Sadly, current demand isn't strong enough.
I asked the developer on Steam what type of response they were looking for on Steam with this question:
What sort of demand are you wanting to see and how can it be shown? We have 10 pages here and most of that is people requesting it for Linux.
To which a user replied with:
10 pages equals 150 comments and if you subtract dev comments and people who posted more than once you have maybe 140 individuals. I would love this game on Linux but to demand a developer port a game that costs $16.99 CAD for 140 people is not practical. Even if everyone here paid full price that's $2378.60 CAD before Valve takes their cut. All we can do is request a port and hope for the best. Spread the word, make sure GOL knows of thos page, that Phoronix knows of it, that Reddit knows of it, share it on your social media. Hopefully more people come by to lend their support.
It's hard to argue against that and I won't of course, that's not a lot of money to port and support a game on another platform. For really small developers it may be enough, but realistically it's not a large amount of money considering support alone can take a long time. The developer said this in reply:
Yes, as you correctly point out, those kinds of numbers are not sufficient for us to develop a Linux version of the game, unfortunately. We would definitely like to, but we are a small indie team and just dont have the resources to take too many financial risks. We are listening and hope to see more and more people wanting a Linux version. Thanks for all your comments, and keep them coming!
So if you want to see Mantis Burn Racing on Linux, we need to show our numbers. The easiest way right now is to post in this linked forum topic to give your support. Obviously, don't post if you wouldn't actually buy it - as that will only inflate numbers and make Linux look bad in the end.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
[email protected] Nov 9, 2017
Quoting: EhvisThis quite clearly demonstrates the pointlessness of these threads. They're always the same numbers and they'll never be enough to justify a port. In this case it is even weirder because the game itself is not selling at all. SteamDB estimates about 2200 copies sold. So if the "140" sales from the thread would be accurate, that'd be 6.3%, which would actually be a very good result. If the more generic 1% would be used, then it is a complete disaster. So this game has a much bigger problem than the potential sales on Linux.
Agreed on the problems the game has.
marcin1509 Nov 9, 2017
Why devs can't make any better game? There are not much good racing games for Linux, unfortunately.
If I knew how to make games, I would make the racing game of my own.
In this case, I think you're right that it seems the game as a whole is struggling, which doesn't help.
Perkeleen_Vittupää Nov 9, 2017
Perkeleen_Vittupää Nov 9, 2017
Quoting: marcin1509I don't know why it is so expensive. 16 euro for stupid 2D racing game ? Maybe I'm blind but I can't see anything nice in it.
Why devs can't make any better game? There are not much good racing games for Linux, unfortunately.
If I knew how to make games, I would make the racing game of my own.
My initial thoughts too.. This is not exactly a DiRT Rally or F1 2017. Porting to Linux wouldn't be that much of an unbelievable effort these days?
Looks like a nice little passtime game though & more racers on Linux the better.
slaapliedje Nov 9, 2017
With the small amount of numbers sold, why wouldn't they just pot it? The amount of people to buy it short term would be more than zero, and longer term it might be a bigger number, assuming it is a good game and gets good reviews.
I will show my support for a Linux port. Depending on the engine they use, it could be a click of a button and they get free money.
Something like kickstarter:
You can buy the game, the money stays at steam, until there is enough incentive for the developer to act on it. The developer then builds and delivers, and the money is now delivered to the developer.
Or better:
You have money in your steam wallet, with which you can pledge with a 2 or 3 fold over commit.
If the developer decides there is enough pledged, the pledges turn into a commit.
Which means the money in your wallet is reserved and not spendable.
If the developer after that time have a working version, they can pass on the money.
I hate all these fake promises.
But then again, that system will probably going to be abused somehow.
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