UPDATE: The developer provided some clarifications here. I think the key point to take away is this "Last but not least, we are shelving the Linux port, not outright killing it. This doesn't mean we won't do it after the launch."
ORIGINAL: Book of Demons [Steam], a dungeon crawling hack and slash with deck-building will no longer get a native Linux port. Steam Play is part of the reason.
It won't be the last game to do this I'm sure. At least in this case, they aren't pulling support for an already released game like Human: Fall Flat as Book of Demons didn't have a public Linux version. Anyway, writing on the Steam forum the developer noted a few vague issues they were having.
Things like "We had as many different issues with the build as testers. With each flavor of Linux came different issues." along with "Right now everything indicates that Linux port would be very high maintenance.". I always find these types of statements highly unhelpful, unless they actually say why that is. Let's be clear on this again too, you do not need to support all Linux distributions, support the most popular.
They went on to mention the issue of users only getting a single choice between Native or Proton, since Steam has no built-in way of picking between Steam Play or a Native build. An issue that seems to be mentioned more lately by gamers and developers. So, they said they will "focus our efforts on supporting Steam Play and Proton.".;
This does bring up some interesting thoughts. To be clear, I'm very open minded about Steam Play especially since sales will still show up as Linux and that I do like.
However, there's a lot that's unclear right now. When developers say they will support Steam Play/Proton, how will they do that? It would at the very least, require them to test every single patch they do on a Linux system through Steam Play to ensure they haven't broken it. Anything less than that and I wouldn't say they were actually supporting it. If it is broken, finding out why might end up being a hassle and hold them back and end up causing more issues. They can't really guarantee any degree of support since it is Valve and co handling it for them, the way I see it is that the game developer is not really doing anything.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Nevertheless Nov 5, 2018
Quoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
And it's also what the optimists were hoping for. Instead of maybe just giving up Linux support completely, the developer now looks out for Steam Play compatibility at least. What's the harm in it? If you want the game, you will be able to play it on Linux.
Problem is , what kind of compability they would be looking for?
Using Wine / Proton just as a surface for not dealing Linux specific things but using OGL or Vulkan in their game , not including crazy drm etc
OR
Just hoping it works alright with existing Windows version?
There is a huge difference between them.
"By "official support" for Proton we mean that if issues specific to Proton occur we will work on fixing them, not just write them off to "well it's a weird emulator on Linux we don't support that"."
Is that sounds realistic to you? Seriously , devs who can't deal with native build will fix issues on Proton side things which i'm sure they never used Wine before.
Eventually, all they can do will be reporting issues to Wine tracker in order to get them fixed
I'd say if that's really so, we're better off with a Proton version all the more.
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Quoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
Sounds more that they would have dropped the Linux port anyway and thanks to Steam Play we now have a official way to enjoy this game after all.
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This is expected to happen and I guess a sensible decision by smaller teams. Let's focus on the long-term. Higher market share and Linux visibility is still the most important goal to reach imho, everything else will follow. Proton/Steam Play contributes to that, so I'm cool :)
(That said I feel sorry for the people that prefer GOG as their favorite store)
Last edited by jens on 5 November 2018 at 10:53 pm UTC
(That said I feel sorry for the people that prefer GOG as their favorite store)
Last edited by jens on 5 November 2018 at 10:53 pm UTC
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Quoting: NeverthelessQuoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
And it's also what the optimists were hoping for. Instead of maybe just giving up Linux support completely, the developer now looks out for Steam Play compatibility at least. What's the harm in it? If you want the game, you will be able to play it on Linux.
Problem is , what kind of compability they would be looking for?
Using Wine / Proton just as a surface for not dealing Linux specific things but using OGL or Vulkan in their game , not including crazy drm etc
OR
Just hoping it works alright with existing Windows version?
There is a huge difference between them.
"By "official support" for Proton we mean that if issues specific to Proton occur we will work on fixing them, not just write them off to "well it's a weird emulator on Linux we don't support that"."
Is that sounds realistic to you? Seriously , devs who can't deal with native build will fix issues on Proton side things which i'm sure they never used Wine before.
Eventually, all they can do will be reporting issues to Wine tracker in order to get them fixed
I'd say if that's really so, we're better off with a Proton version all the more.
So that is not supporting SteamPlay , that is expecting SteamPlay to support their title.
Which i was all debating from the start.
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Nevertheless Nov 5, 2018
Quoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
And it's also what the optimists were hoping for. Instead of maybe just giving up Linux support completely, the developer now looks out for Steam Play compatibility at least. What's the harm in it? If you want the game, you will be able to play it on Linux.
Problem is , what kind of compability they would be looking for?
Using Wine / Proton just as a surface for not dealing Linux specific things but using OGL or Vulkan in their game , not including crazy drm etc
OR
Just hoping it works alright with existing Windows version?
There is a huge difference between them.
"By "official support" for Proton we mean that if issues specific to Proton occur we will work on fixing them, not just write them off to "well it's a weird emulator on Linux we don't support that"."
Is that sounds realistic to you? Seriously , devs who can't deal with native build will fix issues on Proton side things which i'm sure they never used Wine before.
Eventually, all they can do will be reporting issues to Wine tracker in order to get them fixed
I'd say if that's really so, we're better off with a Proton version all the more.
So that is not supporting SteamPlay , that is expecting SteamPlay to support their title.
Which i was all debating from the start.
Ok.. the longer form. I meant: If it really is true what you say, and they are unable to do it right, which I wouldn't dare to state, then they won't be able to port the game OR help with Proton compatibility. In this case we're still better off with a Proton version.
Last edited by Nevertheless on 5 November 2018 at 11:32 pm UTC
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Quoting: GuestMost people who pretend that "Everything is fine", are casuals who only use vanilla versions of Ubuntu/SteamOS, possibly even outdated versions... But Ubuntu will inevitably have to be upgraded at some point and you will lose access to those games then.
At least with WINE/Proton you know that if a game works 100% fine, it will probably work fine FOREVER, no matter how much sdl2 or other libs change, no matter the distro. Even if a regression happens in WINE, it will be a matter of time before fixing it again. This won't happen with poor "native" ports, those will be abandoned.
Wait, what part of Wine will make it a "will work forever?" And SDL does not?
It's pretty clear you haven't seen how Wine has changed over the years. Yes, as an extended life platform it's probably does do a better job than it's sister platform Win10 does now. But what it does well with Windows executables does not make everything else now unable to compete in support, even if Valve supports Wine.
Also, I can count with just my fingers how many "native" games I've come across no longer work on Linux. Exactly zero. Regressions, nada.
As far as distros go, I can count as many that have broke games due to upgrades, out of those that really worth putting any time into. Yes the debian world, how they handle libraries, packages, and updates, I find very user unfriendly and prone to the troubles that people talk about. But there are better distros out there that don't have these issues.
You also got one more thing to really consider. Most games do end up "abandoned" even those still sold. Platforms have nothing to do with it.
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Great update from the developers. It's tough being a small studio, and way too easy to sit here as a gamer and criticise their coding, experience, resources, commitment or whatever.
It's probably even more frustrating for them - if they'd just announced for Windows and Mac, this game wouldn't even have hit our radar and life would have gone on, everyone happy. We're only getting agitated because they TRIED TO SUPPORT OUR PLATFORM.
I don't like the way it's turned out, and no, I'm not (yet) paying for Steam Play titles, so they won't be getting my money. But kudos to them for trying. And you know what, maybe their next title will benefit from their attempts?
But it would be a shame if all the grief they went through, and all the negative comments on this very site actually contributed to put them off any future support.
The only aspect of their decision that bothers is locking out GOG. But I suppose if they support Proton, perhaps DXVK will offer a solution there too.
It's probably even more frustrating for them - if they'd just announced for Windows and Mac, this game wouldn't even have hit our radar and life would have gone on, everyone happy. We're only getting agitated because they TRIED TO SUPPORT OUR PLATFORM.
I don't like the way it's turned out, and no, I'm not (yet) paying for Steam Play titles, so they won't be getting my money. But kudos to them for trying. And you know what, maybe their next title will benefit from their attempts?
But it would be a shame if all the grief they went through, and all the negative comments on this very site actually contributed to put them off any future support.
The only aspect of their decision that bothers is locking out GOG. But I suppose if they support Proton, perhaps DXVK will offer a solution there too.
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At the end of the day, it ends up as a Linux sale. So I'm happy enough with that. Its not perfect, sure, but such is life.
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[quote=Guest]
I don't really agree with that remark. If you replace 'Proton' with 'SDL', 'OpenGL', 'PixiJS', or something similar, that'd be awkward. Game developers don't *need* to know certain stuff, as long as they can make their games work well.
There are differences between those things and Proton, of course, but if it's sensible to use Proton, I don't really feel bad about them doing that, as long as, of course, they're supporting it properly.
Quoting: subThey're just letting "Proton" handle things for them and see it as the easy way out.
I don't really agree with that remark. If you replace 'Proton' with 'SDL', 'OpenGL', 'PixiJS', or something similar, that'd be awkward. Game developers don't *need* to know certain stuff, as long as they can make their games work well.
There are differences between those things and Proton, of course, but if it's sensible to use Proton, I don't really feel bad about them doing that, as long as, of course, they're supporting it properly.
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In my opinion using Wine/Proton to provide a Linux port is an implementation detail that the end users shouldn't even have to know about. The important thing is that the developers support the Linux version, meaning that they test it on Linux, make sure it runs reasonably well and fix bugs.
Optimally, they would contribute to the Wine development if something does not work yet, or at least report bugs upstream and work around or avoid features that do not work yet. And improvements to an open source project like Wine is something I personally care more about than getting the last bit of performance in a closed source game.
Optimally, they would contribute to the Wine development if something does not work yet, or at least report bugs upstream and work around or avoid features that do not work yet. And improvements to an open source project like Wine is something I personally care more about than getting the last bit of performance in a closed source game.
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