Note: Multiple updates at the bottom.
Sad news, Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of their survival game Rust [Official Site] after removing mentions of Linux support yesterday from their Steam page.
Linux support has been available in Rust since 2013, along with continued support during Early Access and after the official release earlier this year. It was a bit of a surprise that we got an email from a reader, to mention that the Steam store page for Rust was no longer showing the SteamOS/Linux icon or listing it in the system requirements.
Thinking it was a mistake, since nothing was announced, I reached to Facepunch to which they replied with:
Hey dude - yeah we stopped selling Rust for Linux.
I did request more information as to why and will update this article if I receive any further information. To be fair, they haven't had a lot of time to respond again yet, but I feel it's important to get the word out.
It's possible it's due to issues with the Unity game engine, which has suffered some nuisance problems with their Linux support lately. We've gone through black screens, no input in fullscreen and the latest being double-input issues—all issues that have plagued a number of games that use Unity. All of which have been solved in updated versions of Unity though. Still, it has become more of a hassle for developers to support us due to issues like this repeatedly coming up.
To be clear on something though, it might only mean that they're not actively advertising it as a Linux supported game, while still allowing Linux users to buy it and play it—something a few other developers do as well. I highly doubt they would actually remove the Linux version, after it being around for so long.
Really sad about this, we have an active community-run server with plenty of people enjoying themselves on it. Sin has livestreamed plenty of it on our Twitch Channel, purchased skins and all. With all the additions to the game, it was really becoming quite interesting. Even I was also going to be jumping back in soon, so this has me a little down as I did quite enjoy the game as well.
As always, please remain respectful in the comments. Issues like this can become quite heated, but let's not go throwing any insults around. Now is a time to show your support, not have a war of words.
Updates
Garry responded on Twitter and said this:
We stopped selling Rust on Linux because we won't/don't give it the QA support it needs. There are situations where there's a Unity Linux bug that pops up, and we ship with it - because it's the right decision for 99.99% of our players.
And while 60% of Linux users are fine with this, they understand their position in this world, it's probably not the right thing to act like it's fine. So while we're still going to ship Linux updates and keep it up to date.. we're not going to sell it anymore.
Also Linux Community - being abusive, demanding, rude to the few developers actually shipping games to your favourite OS isn't the way to go. It makes me regret ever shipping Linux versions.
I've said it before and I will say it again: Developers are human, people do need to understand that and not resort to throwing insults around right away. Even so, if you sell a game on any platform you should be doing QA on it—there's no excuse for not doing it.
Update #2 - Here's what another developer said on Reddit:
Linux is and will still be supported but the decision to remove Linux from purchase was mainly based on multiple issues in the current Unity version (2018.1.4).
We're currently unable to downgrade to a Unity version which corrects these Linux issues and we're unable to upgrade Unity to 2018.2 due to a number of new issues.
Linux is in a state of limbo in which we're unable to resolve, instead of selling a broken platform we decided to remove it from purchase but still offer it to existing players.
Once Linux is in a working state we'll review the decision.
Hat tip to Basiani for letting us know.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: KristianIs it confirmed that new purchasers actually get the Linux files?
Linux content is still linked to the Rust store package so yes.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: KristianIs it confirmed that new purchasers actually get the Linux files?
Linux content is still linked to the Rust store package so yes.
So like Arma 3 and some other games?
Quoting: rapakivLiam as a journalist you already new that this post would be a wildfire, just suggesting that sometimes you should block comments in some articles :), freedom of speech sometimes can be really annoying.
That would be stupid. Some of you guys sounds like you're frightened that some of our comments gets to others devs and they will stop supporting due to what we say, but most of our nagging here are quite moderate and quite respecful.
Sorry, but if some of them gets offended of what we have been saying so far I just can quote to one of our gods: "...I think people who get offended should be offended."
Last edited by x_wing on 28 July 2018 at 2:24 pm UTC
So I guess Garry Newman being blunt and honest and him hating Linux are not mutually exclusive.
Quoting: KristianWhitewolfe80, is it okay for Garry to act basically like he is accusing the Linux community of doing?
He not accusing he is outright saying it and is he wrong as there is plenty of shade being thrown his way on twitter
Quoting: Whitewolfe80Quoting: KristianWhitewolfe80, is it okay for Garry to act basically like he is accusing the Linux community of doing?
He not accusing he is outright saying it and is he wrong as there is plenty of shade being thrown his way on twitter
I will grant that for the sake of argument. But is it okay for him but not everyone else? If so, why?
Edit:
It just seems to me that Garry Newman is expecting much more of everyone else than of himself.
Last edited by Kristian on 28 July 2018 at 3:12 pm UTC
I've played 250+ hours of Rust on Linux, and I've found it very enjoyable. I have just played another 2 hours of it. Although performance might not be great for some people, I do find it acceptable for me, and I'm playing it at 4K resolution, ultra. Also noting that the game is cross-platform, so I've been playing it on the same servers as Windows gamers and I appreciate this too.
A number of months back, I did have problems with Rust related to the Anti Cheat service (It would not run for me on my system.) Also, months ago the performance was worse than it is now. Noting that back then it was still Early Access, and now it is a full release. (Minimal problems for me, following full release.)
Based on the latest news, twitter feeds, and so on - It would appear to me that the Rust game is losing official Linux support, and the SteamOS icon has disappeared from the Steam purchase page. However, the game is still available to play under Linux, but it is a little unclear how that status will be in the future. My impression is that Rust developers will try to make sure it continues working on Linux and they might even return things back if they solve the development issues.
The communication of the dropping of Linux support was not well handled. This has upset some Linux gamers. Pulling support on a product that was released for Linux is also upsetting to Linux gamers who paid money for the game with support. Some Linux gamers are upset about the public-facing comments from Facepunch company representatives.
I feel I've had great value for money, playing Rust. I'm mildly confident that the game will continue to work fine on Linux, into the future, and it will have Linux updates and fixes. (There might be a period of Linux game breakage though.)
I feel that being nice and respectful to developers is more likely to keep them working on Linux games. Developers are humans with feelings. If they receive insults, death threats or criticisms from Linux gamers then that can tarnish the Linux platform from their viewpoint. It doesn't really matter how valid the criticism is, it is going to aggravate the developer reading it and turn them away from our platform.
Quoting: Whitewolfe80As for the throw away community line we have this every so often it goes back to once again the linux die hards that think they throw f bombs and act like Stallman or Linus.
It comes as shock to them no doubt when it doesnt actually work its the reason nvidia wont embrace open source for linux is his constant rants and actively literally telling the linux team to "fuck off" in person. I ll break it down you cant do stuff like that not if you actually want people to develop games for your platform,swearing death threats etc for not bringing a game to linux.
I think you mix a lot of stuff here. First off, Torvalds rant's has a reason and he explain them quite often: he wants to be completelly sure that you understand that he doesn't like what you're doing. He can't be polite when you're doing something wrong and that's why he said "Nvidia, fuck you" years ago. Funny things is that time proven he was right, as you can see how AMD open source Linux driver end up being as good as Nvidia (if not far better). So, Nvidia doesn't embrace foss driver not because of the community, but because they want to do everything as they want, even if they do it the wrong way.
And dammit, you have no idea how much we rant to AMD with their catalyst drivers. We really fucking hated them and we really make them notice how shitty they were. But now that they are doing things as should be done, try to find anyone ranting against them. Try to find someone that doesn't recommend buying a AMD gpu to others Linux users (yes, even being slightly expensive than Nvidia counterpart).
The community has always had two coin face, and definitely nobody rants to the devs that does things right.
I do understand the developer, but in my opinion they shouldn't have sold it in the first place if they don't have intentions to support the platform from a QA standpoint.
That said, I'm sad it didn't work out, but we know the stability of Unity releases on Linux, quite some games have suffered this.
Maybe they review the decision in the future, even though, I do not expect it. We'll see.
Quoting: rapakivBut I never seen so much hate in GOL as in this thread, relax, life is short, enjoy itHate? Really?! What bemuses me about this discussion actually is that the reaction is more extreme than the dislike of the actual developer. I don't really have a dog in this fight--I don't know this Garry guy, I don't care about Rust to be honest, I'm not finding myself outraged by the fellow's comments given what people have said about context but I'm not thinking they necessarily represent stuff said by a wonderful guy either.
But what I've noticed is that his detractors have said basically
a) that he's kind of a jerk, and
b) that he is anti-Linux (which isn't even technically an insult from perspectives other than ours)
That's about it. Now again, I don't know if either of these points is true or not. But it's hardly "hate"--sheesh, have some of you people ever looked at a Youtube comment?
Whereas contrariwise, some of the people arguing that Garry is not a jerk, just outspoken et cetera, and that he's not anti-Linux but simply has a habit of saying negative things about everything, and that isolated tweets are being blown out of proportion--perfectly decent arguments--have often been reacting with anger and outrage to the people who don't like Garry, much more anger than Garry's detractors themselves have expressed towards Garry. One person even called one of the Garry-complainers a fascist. So like, maybe the people who are so solicitous of developer feelings could, if they are so big on not having toxic discussions, not be more toxic than the people complaining about the developers. Developers deserve consideration, but I think people in the GoL community do too.
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