Tower Unite [Steam], a 'community-based virtual world party game' had a Linux version that was left in Beta since 2016 and eventually it broke. They've now removed it in favour of people using Valve's Steam Play.
Back in September, a user asked the developer PixelTail Games to actually remove the Linux version. They didn't do it then, mentioning the fact that they would have to delete the Linux content since you can't pick between Steam Play and a Linux version but things have changed.
In a post on their official forum, they stated that a few months ago they made some changes to their engine, which broke the Linux beta. For them Linux "wasn’t the highest of priority" and so it sat there doing nothing.
In a follow up post, they directly blamed Epic Games stating that "Unfortunately Epic doesn’t really support Linux all that well, as it was their change to the engine that broke it in the first place."—ouch.
I find it interesting, as Steam Play obviously makes it a lot easier for developers to drop support entirely for our small platform. However, in this case they were very clear even from the start of the Linux beta back in 2016, that Linux simply wasn't a priority and it seems it never became one.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
qptain Nemo Jan 8, 2019
It's a huge shame though, it was quite fun when it worked.
Last edited by qptain Nemo on 8 January 2019 at 1:42 pm UTC
Last edited by x_wing on 8 January 2019 at 1:53 pm UTC
They are not against it, if the work is done free but they don't invest into it either.
Just look at the fixes yaakuro did:
https://www.patreon.com/ue4linux
So many things which don't work or aren't ported to Linux.
Quoting: GuestWhile I don't fully trust a dev pointing fingers elsewhere without proof, there's been enough evidence of late that this is very likely on Epic. Epic started out ok with proper cross-platform engine support, but it's definitely dropped off since.Every single developer I speak to using Unreal Engine say the same thing, the Linux support has been poor and they've had to spend a lot of time working around engine issues. Too many say this, to blame the game devs. I don't like playing the blame game but I think by now it's clear there are certain issues in Unreal Engine.
I still really don't like the idea of devs relying on Valve's branch of Wine so much, but at the same time it's not like some are left with many realistic options.
Basically the whole situation sucks big time.
qptain Nemo Jan 8, 2019
"Currently, there is no possibility to access the launcher on Linux systems."
https://wiki.unrealengine.com/index.php?title=Linux_Support
I visit the site once a year to laugh.
Quoting: qptain NemoMy refund request has been denied based on the playtime (20 hours).
Well sure thing it was denied, 20 hours is more than enough for what the game costs anyway, and don't shy away from Proton, it works really well. I've been getting games left and right for it, it's amazing. I mean, I am 100% with the developer here - if they can't fix the engine to have good performance on Linux and Proton does it better anyway - why should you care how "native" is it?
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