Football Manager 2019 announced and sadly it's not coming to Linux

Things is , we need another push in some way. Otherwise i'm afraid we will see many more series like that fading away. According to last response of Paradox ( covered here as an article ) they're the possible next publisher can do that.

Didnt the Paradox thing turn out to be a mistake by their PR person, as in the internally developed game announced was going to be Linux, as for the other one they would explore but its a 3rd party dev, they are only publishing.

People on Linux don't buy games

Why do you bother stating such obviously wrong claims? Why are you even here, on a site with pretty much only Linux gamers buying games (with the possibly single exception being you).

I'm here because i'm a gamer on Linux. That's it.

But problem is that ; Football Manager is a PC exclusive game. Means consoles are out. So that is very niche and Linux gamers can/ could mean so much more to them than Linux gamers did to say Rockstar , Epic Games , CDPR and so on.

That is a warning bell.

There is an obvious statement about strategy genre on Linux: it is maybe most represented genre on Linux. Reason is simple. Strategy games are not on consoles because of their nature.

If that also spread to strategy , you can say pretty much Linux gaming took a devastating blow.

SEGA is one of the most Linux friendly publishers , i hope they continue to support.

Next time explain yourself as you did here from the start, because as you see some people took you point personal, including Liam.
Then I see people using their personal experience to try to elaborate an argument. "I bought 17 games this year", thats cool, but it doesnt mean everyone else is doing it.
Despite this game being a yearly scam release, with some stuff added but basically being the same since 2013, Im agree this is a warning bell, so everyone should take this more seriously instead of pretending that nothing happened.


Last edited by orochi_kyo on 6 Aug 2018 at 9:41 pm UTC

As much as there are good and bad things happening in the world of Linux native ports, it hasn't stopped me from buying plenty of Linux games. At least 100 Linux games added onto my Steam account since 1st Jan 2018 (Now it is early August). Not including duplicate copies which I haven't installed (e.g. Humble Bundles), or my Linux games on GOG and itch.io which have also grown in number.

Mostly I buy Linux games because I intend to play them one day, on Linux. Some titles are AAA, some are very basic one-person indie studio. I don't buy Linux games which are unappealing to me (e.g. shovelware). I avoid buying Windows-only titles which are appealing to me, unless the game is particularly great and it is sufficiently discounted and maybe other appealing factors, such as it has a DRM-Free download (which I'd prefer for WINE gaming). Mostly though, if the game is Windows-only, I'd be very unlikely to pick it up at all. Sure, some of my Windows games have resulted from buying a Bundle with Linux titles that I did want.

Even if I was playing games regularly on Windows (which I am absolutely not doing), I'd still make purchase decisions based on whether the title was available on my preferred platform, Linux, as well. Also, a title without full Linux support (e.g. Arma III) is more appealing (for me to purchase) than a Windows-only title. i.e. Might work is better than Can't work.

I bought a Windows Phone smartphone back in 2015. I really liked that OS and didn't care about being developed by Microsoft. Windows Phone was at his peak, with a good set of apps (nothing like Android or iOS, but still) and a decent performance. Then, the company A stated that they will not release the next version of their app on WP. Ok. Some weeks later, Company B anounced the same. And the downfall of WP started, IIRC on late 2015.

I hope this isn't happening on Linux Gaming world, Rust abandoning Linux was a huge letdown, now Football Manager...two AAA games and I really like both. Thing is, since 2012 until this date we didn't had news like this, the number of AAA games was always increasing. I'm kinda worried because I've seen this before.

Rust, according to one of the developers, is only a temporary situation due to Unity issues and driver bugs. Their situation can't really be compared with this, since they didn't directly remove support due to sales.

This isn't the first time we've had news like this and it hasn't really changed anything when it happened before. There's The Witcher 3, Darksiders 1 & 2, Carmageddon, Street Fighter, Project Cars and plenty of others. So yeah, it's happened before, will happen again and nothing's really changed overall in my opinion.

...and there is also a much older iteration with id software that proves Leopard's point wrong. Everything was operational on Linux, yet they said "it doesn't generate enough money" and didn't release Rage on Linux, even if every single game before got released on our system since 1993. John Carmack even stated that if we want games we should rely on Wine.

It was way before Steam on Linux, and yet, Linux gaming got bigger anyway. It just got bigger without them.

PS: Yes I do write a lot about this story but it really felt like a betrayal to me. They even ended Linux support for Quake Live, which drew all players from Quake 3, so I can't play that game online anymore. And I've been consistently playing Quake since the first game got released on Mac OS. That is pretty sh*tty.

I bought a Windows Phone smartphone back in 2015. I really liked that OS and didn't care about being developed by Microsoft. Windows Phone was at his peak, with a good set of apps (nothing like Android or iOS, but still) and a decent performance. Then, the company A stated that they will not release the next version of their app on WP. Ok. Some weeks later, Company B anounced the same. And the downfall of WP started, IIRC on late 2015.

I hope this isn't happening on Linux Gaming world, Rust abandoning Linux was a huge letdown, now Football Manager...two AAA games and I really like both. Thing is, since 2012 until this date we didn't had news like this, the number of AAA games was always increasing. I'm kinda worried because I've seen this before.

Rust, according to one of the developers, is only a temporary situation due to Unity issues and driver bugs. Their situation can't really be compared with this, since they didn't directly remove support due to sales.

This isn't the first time we've had news like this and it hasn't really changed anything when it happened before. There's The Witcher 3, Darksiders 1 & 2, Carmageddon, Street Fighter, Project Cars and plenty of others. So yeah, it's happened before, will happen again and nothing's really changed overall in my opinion.

...and there is also a much older iteration with id software that proves Leopard's point wrong. Everything was operational on Linux, yet they said "it doesn't generate enough money" and didn't release Rage on Linux, even if every single game before got released on our system since 1993. John Carmack even stated that if we want games we should rely on Wine.

It was way before Steam on Linux, and yet, Linux gaming got bigger anyway. It just got bigger without them.

PS: Yes I do write a lot about this story but it really felt like a betrayal to me. They even ended Linux support for Quake Live, which drew all players from Quake 3, so I can't play that game online anymore. And I've been consistently playing Quake since the first game got released on Mac OS. That is pretty sh*tty.

That is because ZeniMax is not friendly to anything that won't rake in tons of cash. Linux is still one of those things that companies think are impossible to support, and yet even the minimal amount of support is still going to be needed for a port. Bethesda's stuff for example is known to be horrendously buggy upon release and even after years of patching. Imagine them trying to debug that under Linux. If they had some knowledgeable people, then it could be done better than other platforms for sure.

For what its worth, I have over 1000 games on Steam that are listed for Linux. So yeah, there are people who buy lots of games that use Linux.

I haven't bought any Football Manager. In my opinion, It's a bit overpriced but... I'm going to buy their last Linux game next month. They deserve at least one purchase.

Publicly, the iPhone came to life because Apple "couldn't afford to stay out of 1% of a billion dollar market" or something like that.
Now, I don't know how much is Linux gaming worth these days but Linux users DO BUY games and the company that makes games available will have a bigger cut on that and the more games they bring to the platform the bigger that cut will get.

I'm glad to hear that some companies don't need a cut of that because when Linux users come to open their wallets they will not to it for a Windows only game, don't matter what game it is, what franchise it is - they will do it for those regular Linux releases.

SI/Sega/Whatever just closed a door on Linux users and I think it's pretty safe to say that if FM does come back to Linux, sales will be worst than in any other previous version.

But hey, I'm not the business guy. I'm just a guy.

I think our Linux gaming community cant yet absorb an annual franchise delivery.

I'm from South America but i dont like football videogames, surprisingly. I could buy them to support Linux videogame effort. But, if i bought FM18, why will i buy FM19? Nop. Too much.

There should be small communities of Linux gamers around franchises, as there may be in Windows, to absorb that frecuency. How could we achieve that? Simple math, more gamers.

I personally know that there are many people who dont know that (or dont know how to) Linux could be use for gaming.

What could we do? I supose that one or more of these things: Be supportive and nicer with devs that release linux games. Popularize this site and the like. Think viral, viralize, viracum, all with vira*. Be nicer with linux noobs in general. Other things included...

I don't know if Trine meets your croteria for a franchise, but all 3 of the trilogy is for Linux. Damn fun I might add.

I don't know if Trine meets your croteria for a franchise, but all 3 of the trilogy is for Linux. Damn fun I might add.

I have Trine 2. Its good. If Trine 4 then 5 and so on are released, it could be the kind of franchise that I'm referring to.

Honestly I don’t really like anual franchise releases at those prices.
Again: I didn’t buy FM2018 because of the price and I would continue not buying it because of it.
Same goes for NBA2K17. I’m not buying 18 because of the price for a 1 year game.
If the company were to update the teams I’d be happy to buy every two years or so. Under this model, no way!
I almost bought FM2018 when the price dropped but then I thought: what for? 2019 is almost here and then I’m stuck with an old game for nothing.

I've been playing CM/FM for more than 10 years and I always dualboot Windows for games anyways. When I'm on Linux I want to get into a work mindset and have no distractions. This separation has worked decently so far. Previously on Mac I would sometimes boot into games even when I should be doing stuffs, which sucks.

Also IMO FM is really not the biggest "timesink" out there, the reason being that it's unique in allowing you to do a lot of other stuffs at the same time with all the between-match processing, e.g. going over Anki flashcards for learning a new language. The real timesink is repetitive online games, such as DOTA or PES. I played tons of PES Online Division mode and usually remain top 1% by ranking. However I've sold PES 2019 this year already as it takes me a tremendous amount of time and I wouldn't be easily getting anything new out of it, unlike an RPG where I can read the story and learn a foreign language by setting the voiceover/subtitles etc. Unless I can make playing PES into a profession (which I of course still fall short of), I really need to go on with my life.

I have played football games from the text based days, buying never ending hardware upgrades. Then the split and I followed Sega Football Manager and kept rolling year in year out.

I feel abandoned, to read that lack of support by the Linux community, what a joke. What do you think I have been doing, must have been spending monopoly money, I would normally upgrade hardware new Apple Mac but they are no longer up-gradable total waste of money.

FM 2019 means moving to windows which is never going to happen, Microsoft has added Linux to the latest Windows 10, they are heavily invested so what is wrong with the Sega FM team.

They are heading in the wrong direction and loosing support hand over fist as specially now, my addiction is now over as even the IPad app is total xxxxxx. No support, where's my refund for years and years of it?

So, I just finished listening to an hour long podcast about Google Stadia and a different show about Stadia, all prominently mentioning its Linux backbone... And about how Sony, EA, etc are all aiming at the Streaming space, and you know Valve has to be working on it too... Everyone is racing to this, and looking back through the last 3 pages of comments, I can't help but think in, say, 5 years from now, a lot of those comments and arguments will seem as relevant as debates over, "What's better? Blockbuster or Hollywood Video?" (sorry for the US-centric reference)

There are already, spanning Linux native, Windows DXVK/Wine, and all the other emulators tens of thousands more games than I would have time to play in 2-3 lifetimes available on Linux. If we think we're a small market now, think of how much smaller that becomes when a game can be played, in 4K streaming, instantaneously on anything with a *browser*, including a *Chromebooks* and Android phones, anywhere on the planet with a decent internet connection...

It's going, to some measure, be successful, and change everything. Microsoft's "big" announcement about streaming gaming was virtually non-existent at E3, as Stadia has sent them scurrying back to the drawing boards.

So, bye-bye native FM, and for now, screw you guys, but likely see ya again on some streaming service, be it Stadia or Valve or whatever in 5 years, because that's where a *lot* of people will be. Pretty soon, even the idea of a Windows version of something will seem like a small, niche market... As long as we make sure these services can be run on Linux, we'll be fine...


Last edited by iiari on 16 Jun 2019 at 1:36 am UTC

Just in case you didn't know: FM19 runs via Proton like a native version.