Bearded Giant Games, developer of Ebony Spire Heresy have announced their new online store along with a 'Linux First Initiative'.
I know what you're thinking already "not another store", but fear not. For now, it's mainly going to be a place for them to sell their games directly. Speaking about it in a blog post, they mentioned how they hate having to check over multiple forums, channels, emails and so on to stay up to date and they wish "to spend more time giving love to my projects instead of updating 4 different distribution channels, translating pages, writing different press releases and making separate builds"—can't argue against that.
With their 'Linux First Initiative' they will be targeting Linux first, as it's their main platform. They will still provide Windows builds of their games but their biggest focus is going to be on Linux.
And another advantage of going for Linux as my main target? I don’t have to compete as much as I do on Windows and I can lower my expectations and sales goals. This allows me to stay as small and nimble as possible. I can also start growing a small audience from this point onward that will look for me and my games here.
Direct purchasing only has worked very well for some developers, as long as you have a good enough game available there people will come. After all, Valve might currently be the number one store with Steam but gaming doesn't revolve solely around them.
See their store here and their post about their focus on Linux here. A very interesting way to go indeed, we wish them the best.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: TheSHEEEPIf I ever make a game of my own, I'll only actually distribute a launcher to each platform. That launcher will then take care of actually downloading/patching the game. Sure, it would mean having to maintain my own server(s), but I've been using Amazon S3 & AWS (and other providers) for quite a while now... it's not that difficult.
Seems to be the only way to prevent having to maintain different builds across the various platforms, each with their own uploading, etc.
Also has the added benefit of being able to serve as a built-in mod-manager.
Or perhaps why not create a cross-distribution build platform that can build and handle the distribution to steam, gog, itch.io and so on. Could potentially by worth some real money for game devs?!
Such things already exist and is known as continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) in "regular" application development. The idea is that you use software (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Travis, Circle CI, etc.) to pull code from a repository when you push changes, and then build and deploy to the store fronts you want your game on, eg. whenever you version tag a commit. For this to work, however, the stores must have an API or software that makes it possible to automate the process. Itch has Butler, GameJolt has a similar tool that's in beta, and Steam has SteamCMD, though I've not used the latter.
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Quoting: fleskWhich is a very large amount of work to set up and maintain. You have to do configurations per distribution platform per OS per version per <possible other configuration>.Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: TheSHEEEPIf I ever make a game of my own, I'll only actually distribute a launcher to each platform. That launcher will then take care of actually downloading/patching the game. Sure, it would mean having to maintain my own server(s), but I've been using Amazon S3 & AWS (and other providers) for quite a while now... it's not that difficult.
Seems to be the only way to prevent having to maintain different builds across the various platforms, each with their own uploading, etc.
Also has the added benefit of being able to serve as a built-in mod-manager.
Or perhaps why not create a cross-distribution build platform that can build and handle the distribution to steam, gog, itch.io and so on. Could potentially by worth some real money for game devs?!
Such things already exist and is known as continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) in "regular" application development. The idea is that you use software (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Travis, Circle CI, etc.) to pull code from a repository when you push changes, and then build and deploy to the store fronts you want your game on, eg. whenever you version tag a commit. For this to work, however, the stores must have an API or software that makes it possible to automate the process. Itch has Butler, GameJolt has a similar tool that's in beta, and Steam has SteamCMD, though I've not used the latter.
And then you need to react to API changes, etc.
In large companies, you have people who just maintain the CIs as their main job, because while it does make things easier, it is still far from easy. I've been using a few of those at work and none of them are easy to use if you need to do some more configurations.
And then you still have to upload every single build to the distribution platforms without such an API. So you have to do it anyway if you are on more places than just Steam.
Then you have to make a news post on all the platforms as well, etc.
It might still be in total less work than writing a launcher yourself, but a launcher comes with a LOT of added benefits: News posting within the launcher, version management, mod management, crash reporting (can be done inside the application as well, but is MUCH easier to do in an external application), various settings that don't really fit in the game options, etc. And all of that fully independent from the distribution platform...
Of course, such a launcher would then have to be maintained itself per distribution platform per OS, but launchers do not change often once functional.
The biggest downside is likely the cost. After all, you already pay the distributor cut (which WOULD include the traffic cost for your game bytes), and in addition to that you have to pay whatever traffic is needed so people can download/update your game via your launcher. So you likely need a CDN as well. And so the costs rack up.
You'd have to do the math per case, but in the end, it might just be cheaper to not let your launcher do the downloading/patching. That doesn't mean you can't have a launcher anyway, of course (see Paradox games).
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 16 December 2018 at 10:28 am UTC
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Quoting: TheSHEEEPQuoting: fleskWhich is a very large amount of work to set up and maintain. You have to do configurations per distribution platform per OS per version per <possible other configuration>.Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: TheSHEEEPIf I ever make a game of my own, I'll only actually distribute a launcher to each platform. That launcher will then take care of actually downloading/patching the game. Sure, it would mean having to maintain my own server(s), but I've been using Amazon S3 & AWS (and other providers) for quite a while now... it's not that difficult.
Seems to be the only way to prevent having to maintain different builds across the various platforms, each with their own uploading, etc.
Also has the added benefit of being able to serve as a built-in mod-manager.
Or perhaps why not create a cross-distribution build platform that can build and handle the distribution to steam, gog, itch.io and so on. Could potentially by worth some real money for game devs?!
Such things already exist and is known as continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) in "regular" application development. The idea is that you use software (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Travis, Circle CI, etc.) to pull code from a repository when you push changes, and then build and deploy to the store fronts you want your game on, eg. whenever you version tag a commit. For this to work, however, the stores must have an API or software that makes it possible to automate the process. Itch has Butler, GameJolt has a similar tool that's in beta, and Steam has SteamCMD, though I've not used the latter.
And then you need to react to API changes, etc.
In large companies, you have people who just maintain the CIs as their main job, because while it does make things easier, it is still far from easy. I've been using a few of those at work and none of them are easy to use if you need to do some more configurations.
And then you still have to upload every single build to the distribution platforms without such an API. So you have to do it anyway if you are on more places than just Steam.
Then you have to make a news post on all the platforms as well, etc.
It might still be in total less work than writing a launcher yourself, but a launcher comes with a LOT of added benefits: News posting within the launcher, version management, mod management, crash reporting (can be done inside the application as well, but is MUCH easier to do in an external application), various settings that don't really fit in the game options, etc. And all of that fully independent from the distribution platform...
Of course, such a launcher would then have to be maintained itself per distribution platform per OS, but launchers do not change often once functional.
The biggest downside is likely the cost. After all, you already pay the distributor cut (which WOULD include the traffic cost for your game bytes), and in addition to that you have to pay whatever traffic is needed so people can download/update your game via your launcher. So you likely need a CDN as well. And so the costs rack up.
You'd have to do the math per case, but in the end, it might just be cheaper to not let your launcher do the downloading/patching. That doesn't mean you can't have a launcher anyway, of course (see Paradox games).
Yes, I agree that it might be a lot of work if you don't have a skilled developer on your team, which might be the case for lots of indies. I'm not sure if dedicated software is necessary though, when providing example templates for each combination of engine and CI/CD platform would be enough. Of course, it might be easier to market and charge for a software solution, if that's the goal.
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If you like Bearded Giant's Linux first policy be sure to check out [LucKey Productions](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php?module=viewtopic&topic_id=3248)!
Last edited by Modanung on 20 December 2018 at 9:03 pm UTC
Last edited by Modanung on 20 December 2018 at 9:03 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: fleskQuoting: F.UltraQuoting: TheSHEEEPIf I ever make a game of my own, I'll only actually distribute a launcher to each platform. That launcher will then take care of actually downloading/patching the game. Sure, it would mean having to maintain my own server(s), but I've been using Amazon S3 & AWS (and other providers) for quite a while now... it's not that difficult.
Seems to be the only way to prevent having to maintain different builds across the various platforms, each with their own uploading, etc.
Also has the added benefit of being able to serve as a built-in mod-manager.
Or perhaps why not create a cross-distribution build platform that can build and handle the distribution to steam, gog, itch.io and so on. Could potentially by worth some real money for game devs?!
Such things already exist and is known as continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) in "regular" application development. The idea is that you use software (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Travis, Circle CI, etc.) to pull code from a repository when you push changes, and then build and deploy to the store fronts you want your game on, eg. whenever you version tag a commit. For this to work, however, the stores must have an API or software that makes it possible to automate the process. Itch has Butler, GameJolt has a similar tool that's in beta, and Steam has SteamCMD, though I've not used the latter.
Yes I know about such things but they are just building blocks, one could argue in a similar vain that this is all solved since we have access to a scripting language in BASH.
What I'm talking about is providing a full 100% complete service where game companies simply performs "make dist" at which point their game will be automagically be sent to all the preset stores, post the needed news posts etc. And this includes all the things that do not normally have an API and where the service instead would perform say HTTP POST:s to web sites and what not.
And when stores implements various changes this service should of course support it asap which of course would be #1 USP for the service. This is all practically doable for any one interested in creating a new service, the question as usual is if game devs will see it as a viable option or not (sometimes people and companies complain instead of seeking out the real solution even when it stares them directly in the eye).
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