We already knew that the second and third parts of The Banner Saga wouldn't be coming to Linux, but now the original The Banner Saga is no longer supported on Linux.
Speaking about it on the Steam forum, one of their moderators said this:
Linux and SteamOS are no longer officially supported. You can probably still play the game with in an outdated/obsolete BETAS branch, but most players have problems ("game won't start").
No plans to update/support Linux at this time, sorry
As it turns out, one of the developers actually posted about it on Reddit last year (the same moderator as quoted above pointed this out in a later post) where they explained it a bit more thoroughly:
The problem is, the external developer that did our linux porting went out of business right after it launched, and before we could fix all its issue, tidy it up, and update its supporting technology. There's no way to get a refund or a financial remedy because, well, they ran out of cash. To extend the linux build to GOG, we'd have to be able to make a new build (Steam builds won't run on GOG), and we don't have the developer or budget available to do that.
Financially speaking, the total amount of income we've made from our Linux port on Steam after 2 years on the market is about 1/4 the cost of porting it.
Why is it so expensive and difficult? Because of the underlying technology we chose as a framework. The game rests on Adobe AIR, which provides platform level abstractions like low level graphics, file IO, networking, etc... At the time we started development, Adobe was strongly supporting Linux. Adobe then abandoned Linux and left both the developers and the players flapping in the breeze. Our linux port takes essentially the same approach as our console ports, removing Adobe AIR completely from the equation.
Hope that sheds some light on it.
It's always a shame when this happens. I know a number of developers who were stung by Adobe AIR dropping Linux support back in 2011. Most of them have moved onto using different tools by now, thankfully.
This is a sad case of multiple issues coming together. Luckily, it's not something that happens all that often.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Doc Angelo Aug 15, 2018
Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd what the devs of Banner Saga did was just ill-informed, as Adobe announced dropping linux support very early, yet they choose to use AIR for a cross-platform effort.
If the Banner Saga devs would have started development before Adobe announced that they drop Linux support, would it have been a good idea, because Adobe is a big company with big money? What good is that if they drop support anyway?
Anyway... if everybody would make business decisions like you suggest, we wouldn't have games on Linux - because we wouldn't even have Linux. Linux was that purely "hobbyist" product you speak of. Companies have started to use it, and they succeeded. Is the whole history of Linux a "risky business decision" for you? Would you have advised to use Windows, because they have paid employees?
Last edited by Doc Angelo on 15 August 2018 at 11:38 am UTC
Quoting: Doc AngeloActually, it would have been a terrible idea anyway, because AIR is a terrible product.Quoting: TheSHEEEPAnd what the devs of Banner Saga did was just ill-informed, as Adobe announced dropping linux support very early, yet they choose to use AIR for a cross-platform effort.If the Banner Saga devs would have started development before Adobe announced that they drop Linux support, would it have been a good idea, because Adobe is a big company with big money? What good is that if they drop support anyway?
If it was a good product, then it would have been a good idea, yes. Middleware dropping platform support for platforms that are actually alive (even if not really for games, back then) was almost unheard of - and still is.
And as I said multiple times by now - even if it would have been open source, the developers couldn't have maintained a +linux branch due to lack of resources, and if someone else would have done that (and of what quality) is in the stars.
Quoting: Doc AngeloAnyway... if everybody would make business decisions like you suggest, we wouldn't have games on Linux - because we wouldn't even have Linux. Linux was that purely "hobbyist" product you speak of. Companies have started to use it, and they succeeded. Is the whole history of Linux a "risky business decision" for you? Would you have advised to use Windows, because they have paid employees?I'm sorry, but your idealistic viewpoint completely blends out reality and common sense.
It started out as an hobbist product, sure. But its advantages were so obvious that people started using it and then an industry started forming around it. Industry = money, and that money is what kept and keeps it kicking. Take that (partially closed source, btw.) industry away and we're back at square 1.
And in those crucial years of 1995-2000, when that industry formed, there honestly were no good server platforms available that came close. Running a Windows server was utter trash, and that was known.
Linux wasn't successful just because it was open source (though that may have helped), it was successful primarily because it did something better than everything else. In other words, there was no equal competition - and it was free, too. Whoa!
Yes, even then, picking linux was a risk. But a risk offset by a serious performance advantage.
You can blare about FOSS and idealism all you want, but if you have a choice between a small FOSS project that does what you want, but has like a handful of people developing it in their free time - and a closed source alternative that does the same thing and doesn't cost a lot, then you pick the closed source one if you can afford it and the support is known to be good.
Because that gives you access to people who are paid to aid you in your requests - while FOSS gives you the chance that nobody does anything about your issues or the whole project gets dropped.
I'm not against FOSS, don't get me wrong. There are many FOSS projects that are just outright better than possible closed source alternatives - SDL comes to mind. What matters in the end is the quality, though, not if it is open source or not.
The best case scenario is something like Godot which combines financial stability with open source. It doesn't have the plugin ecosystem of Unity yet, but that is something I grew very cautios about as those plugins are often just shoddy and end up causing more harm than good.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 15 August 2018 at 3:01 pm UTC
Doc Angelo Aug 15, 2018
Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou can blare about FOSS and idealism all you want, but if you have a choice between a small FOSS project that does what you want, but has like a handful of people developing it in their free time - and a closed source alternative that does the same thing and doesn't cost a lot, then you pick the closed source one if you can afford it and the support is known to be good.To this, part of me wants to argue that I can pay anyone I choose to work on the FOSS solution if and when needed, if I'm going to pay anyway, but you would be right to counter that in many cases that would end up more expensive than a subscription/license-based model where the cost of development is shared by a number of customers. I still think it makes sense in several scenarios, though. When it comes to government entities, when you consider that it helps protect citizen data, creates local jobs and contributes to publicly-accessible software (i.e. added value for the entire population beyond your specific office's needs), preferring FOSS over proprietary solutions seems almost like a no-brainer and I'm eager to see more governments make the switch.
Because that gives you access to people who are paid to aid you in your requests - while FOSS gives you the chance that nobody does anything about your issues or the whole project gets dropped.
Last edited by Salvatos on 15 August 2018 at 5:43 pm UTC
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