Vivox, the voice chat middleware used by a number of games that doesn't currently support Linux recently suggested a developer just drop Linux support. They've now reached out to me with a statement.
It all started when one of the developers from Alderon Games, who are currently working on the MMO dinosaur game Path of Titans, posted this response they received from Vivox into our Discord channel about their request for Linux support (click to enlarge):
This was then later posted onto Reddit by the developer, where they got a lot of support from the Linux community.
I sent out a personal Twitter post to express my dissatisfaction with what they said and just today (and to my surprise), Vivox actually replied. Their statement, sent to me on Twitter starts with "To the Linux community and development friends," and then includes the below statement in an image:
I think they made the right call here, as it was an extremely bad look to suggest a developer drop an entire platform just to use their middleware. We're a smaller platform, sure but it's still not something anyone at Vivox should be suggesting to potential partners. You don't win people over, by doing things like that.
Also interesting to see them suggest they may bring Vivox to Linux in future, which would help future Linux ports be made (and likely be needed for Google Stadia support too since it uses Linux/Vulkan).
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: nazandrakeOk it's been some time but doesn't Wine provide libs and tools to compile your project on which makes it compatible with it. I have not used it personally and lately I'm sparsely using Wine (just for playing wow from time to time) so correct me if I'm wrong but I do remember that blizz once said their are using it and thus not release games like wow natively on Linux (don't remember if it was really a blue post).
looks like blizzard has an internal build of wow running on linux, but its most likely and headless version, without anything beeing rendered "on screen", they only run the math part of it, the "physics" of it, without gui, so they can use it on the servers.
unfortunately a lot of linux sites promoted it as if they had the entire game running on it, and just dont relase it for end users...
Quoting: skinnyrafQuoting: gradyvuckovicImma keep it real with ya chief - That response is 100% PR Talk
Of course it is. However, we've seen enough arrogant responses to questions about Linux to appreciate a polite PR response.
I actually prefer an honest answer. I'm sick of constantly hearing "PR Talk" - it's at worst (and often) just plain lying and at best disingenuous.
Quoting: DerpFoxMaybe Mumble is not adapted for that use case.
I don't know about that, but I know S2 games used mumble as their voice chat in at least savage2 hon and strife, and it was good.
Quoting: EikeI might be understanding this all wrong, but... They're making middleware, right? Which doesn't support Linux. So if people want to support Linux, they probably will kot be using their product. (You don't want to use two middleware libs for the same stuff.) So isn't proposing to potential users of their product not to support Linux, so these can actually make real use of their product about the only reasonable thing they can say?Well, if I'm selling you a car and you want four wheel drive and my cars don't have four wheel drive, then sure, I'll try to persuade you that four wheel drive isn't as important a feature as you think it is. But if I'm selling you a translation service and you want it to be used by, among others, Croatian speakers and my service doesn't include Croatian, it would be unpleasant of me to try to persuade you that Croatian speakers are unimportant and you should just ditch them. Saying "You should just dump Linux" is closer to the latter than the former. It's the difference between "I don't have a feature but you don't really need it so buy my thing anyway" and "I don't have a feature so you should throw the users under the bus who need it and buy my thing anyway". There's something a tad tasteless about the latter. Especially for those of us under that bus, to be sure, but there is a general ethical point there.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 May 2019 at 4:43 pm UTC
Quoting: dpanterGood to see them clear up a misunderstanding - but things like these keep happening. I don't understand why. :S:
I do for the reason stated before we are small market and its easier for greedy companies to see the profit margin in dropping support for a small market. However this is just a PR statement there is no action here that proves that this is not the widely held belief at this middleware company that they would prefer devs drop linux to make it easier for them to provide support.
"The official statement is obviously just a PR-Stunt to minimize the shitstorm..." - looks like Termy, above, was right.
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