Valve have put out a news post to highlight some of the top games put onto Steam in May and it's another reminder of why Steam Play is needed.
In this blog post they start by listing 20 games that had the top revenue earned in the first two weeks following their release. Without looking, take a guess at the number of games in that list that actually support Linux.
Did you take a guess? The answer is a rather sobering two: Rise of Industry and Total War: THREE KINGDOMS. What happens to that number if we include those that can be run with Steam Play, with a "Platinum" rating from user reports on ProtonDB? That brings it right up to nine, which is far more impressive. It would be even higher, if Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye worked with Steam Play and since both said they're working on it (Sources: EAC - BattlEye), things can only get better.
They also went over the top five free games, measured by peak player count within the first two weeks following release: Conqueror's Blade, Splitgate: Arena Warfare, Minion Masters, Eden Rising and Never Split the Party. Of those, only one supports Linux which is Never Split the Party. If we take "Platinum" Steam Play games again, that only rises to two.
Note: The top free games list has two entries that also appear in the top revenue list.
Without popular games, Linux gaming won't grow to a point where it will be noticeable. Once again, this is a big reason why Steam Play is going to help in the long run. First we get games, then we get players, then we hopefully get developers wanting control with their own supported Linux builds.
What's interesting though, is this only takes into account the first two weeks in both cases. Taking a look myself a bit closer, out of the top 20 games most played on Steam right now (players online) only one of those games Valve listed in the blog post actually make it at all, which is Total War: THREE KINGDOMS and that does support Linux. Going even further, out of the top 100 games on Steam for player count, from Valve's list, only currently Total War: THREE KINGDOMS shows up.
As a quick additional and interesting measure for June: Looking at the top 20 by player count right now, how many in total support Linux? A much healthier 10, so half which isn't so bad. Stretching it out even more, from the top 100 by player count, 43 of them support Linux.
So while we don't get the "latest and greatest" games, keep in mind that we do have a lot of games that stay popular supported on Linux, so there's at least a silver lining of sorts there.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: BeamboomBut if I may ask:
From your perspective, all things considered, does it really matter if Proton or not as long as it works 100% out of the box and on par with native builds? I mean, it's less work for the devs (ergo more profitable per sale) and the same experience for us?
Hm.
* I don't like it.
* I'm disappointed by Linux native gaming not keeping the traction it had (which I only partly accuse Proton for).
* It's technically inferior. Having a binary wrapper fells bad (spoken as software developer).
* Except for the few whitelisted games, it doesn't entitle me for a working game. (Whatever that in reality might be worth for a port...)
* It feels plain wrong to run Windows Exes on Linux.
So... It's a mixture of feelings, technically based gut feeling, call-it-ideology, legal based bad feelings, ...
I don't want to be third class citizen in these aspects.
Though I don't know what to do it native Linux gaming keeps losing traction.
I might buy Windows 10, or I might use Proton (which I might hide from the sales statistic).
Dunno.
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gradyvuckovic Jul 3, 2019
Quoting: EikeQuoting: BeamboomBut if I may ask:
From your perspective, all things considered, does it really matter if Proton or not as long as it works 100% out of the box and on par with native builds? I mean, it's less work for the devs (ergo more profitable per sale) and the same experience for us?
Hm.
* I don't like it.
* I'm disappointed by Linux native gaming not keeping the traction it had (which I only partly accuse Proton for).
* It's technically inferior. Having a binary wrapper fells bad (spoken as software developer).
* Except for the few whitelisted games, it doesn't entitle me for a working game. (Whatever that in reality might be worth for a port...)
* It feels plain wrong to run Windows Exes on Linux.
So... It's a mixture of feelings, technically based gut feeling, call-it-ideology, legal based bad feelings, ...
I don't want to be third class citizen in these aspects.
Though I don't know what to do it native Linux gaming keeps losing traction.
I might buy Windows 10, or I might use Proton (which I might hide from the sales statistic).
Dunno.
One positive of Proton on Linux vs Windows 10, is that at least when you play a game via Proton, it shows as a Linux sale.
That's better than it showing as a Windows sale, and reminds the developers that Linux gamers are playing their games. We may not have a userbase large enough to alter their business decisions or justify native ports in all circumstances, but at least showing up as a statistic on their revenue charts, even if that revenue is only 1% of their total, gives them a tiny incentive to not doing anything to explicitly lock us out of playing their games on purpose or accidentally, if it can be avoided.
Shipping a native Linux version of a game can be expensive. But sometimes making a game compatible with Proton doesn't involve extra work, or testing, or development. Sometimes it's just a matter of choosing 'Option B' instead of 'Option A' when there are two ways of doing something.
A great example is the current issue we have of video playback in some games and WMF. There's no reason why the developers couldn't pick an alternative format to wmv, which is currently an issue, due to patents among other things.
There's a possibility a developer might see Linux gamers trying to play their games, notice the issue that the WMV format creates, and think to themselves. "Hm. Well it's too late now to re-encode all those videos into a different format, but perhaps on our NEXT project, we might use a different format. Maybe WebM.".
That would pose no additional work for the developer, the videos have to be encoded into at least one format, why not pick the format that might just slightly increase the number of sales, even if it's only by 1%?
Those tiny changes in decisions and behaviour, can mount up over time. In that instance, boom, there's a developer already leaning away from a locked down format, and leaning towards a more open format. That's one less issue the developer would face if they decided to port their next project to Linux. Little changes in behaviour like that could eventually build up, until a developer realises that porting to Linux would be very little extra work at all, because they're already choosing to use development solutions that are strongly compatible with Linux by targeting Proton.
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Quoting: Eike* I don't like it.
* I'm disappointed by Linux native gaming not keeping the traction it had (which I only partly accuse Proton for).
* It's technically inferior. Having a binary wrapper fells bad (spoken as software developer).
* Except for the few whitelisted games, it doesn't entitle me for a working game. (Whatever that in reality might be worth for a port...)
* It feels plain wrong to run Windows Exes on Linux.
I don't want to be third class citizen in these aspects.
I call this a good answer.
But it's also an answer based on ideology more than practicality.
But yes - the lost traction. Made us all depressive. It made me think. "Why?". We lost traction before Proton kicked in - it dropped in the wake of the "Steam Machines" flopping.
Then I brushed some dust off the theoretical models learnt during my university years (I got a degree in market economics - but have never worked in that field directly, my career is in the media and IT industry) and started to think about this from a business perspective. And while the depressive outlook remained ;) it all made rather clear sense. Business sense.
I was (and to a certain extent still am) of the exact same opinion as you list above. It feels dirty to run windows binaries on my beautiful Linux desktop. I never installed Linux to run windows bins on it in the first place!
But the gamer in me? Oh man, the gamer in me is just SO delightfully happy that he can finally - FINALLY - play Fallout 4. And man, what an experience. What a fantastically detailed universe to explore. Next up, after some hundred hours spent in F4? Then it's probably GTA5. After that? Maybe Cyberpunk 2077?
Oh joy of all joys. Happy times!
Last edited by Beamboom on 3 July 2019 at 11:31 am UTC
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Quoting: BeamboomBut the gamer in me? Oh man, the gamer in me is just SO delightfully happy that he can finally - FINALLY - play Fallout 4. And man, what an experience. What a fantastically detailed universe to explore. Next up, after some hundred hours spent in F4? Then it's probably GTA5. After that? Maybe Cyberpunk 2077?
Oh joy of all joys. Happy times!
Fallout 4, Witcher 3, Kindom Come Deliverance do... pull on me.
My luck ;) is that I'm so short on time that I couldn't play any of them anyway.
(Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity II and Torment: Tides of Numenera are still waiting to even show me their first minutes...)
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Quoting: BeamboomAnd it's not about greed. It's about making sensible decisions. Even the most credible artist want to survive and live on their art. And to survive you need to run a healthy business. Ideology is what you can afford when your business is doing good.
Not supporting Linux when it's profitable, while arguing that doing Windows only games is more profitable, is totally about greed, not about sensible decisions and healthy business.
How well artists survive such greed, you should know too. EA for example swallowed countless studios, which disappeared into oblivion in result. See below.
Quoting: BeamboomGaming is business. A major player in the entertainment industry, an industry with millions of artists doing fantastic work, from musicians to actors, 3D artists, makeup artists, game designers, composers, painters, map designers, you name it. Art and business can easily go hand in hand, in many cases great art is also good business.
They can, if art part is important. But if greed is the driver, you get EA and other similar crooked legacy publishers, who produce mass market junk and not masterpieces, since it makes more money. With some DRM for the good measure, and naturally no Linux support.
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 July 2019 at 6:07 pm UTC
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Game development is maybe 20% "art" at best. The rest is hard work that you need to pay people for. Bugfixing is not art. Hitting the deadlines is not conducive to art. QA is (largely) not art. Game development needs to be sustainable. People will draw for free, but people will not clean up the mess for free. A typical game has a small "drawing" period and a very long "let's clean up this mess and ship it" period.
Right now game development is still a risky business even on platforms where a reliable monetary feedback exists, Linux gamedev is more a philanthropy. I don't see any factors that would change this on the horizon - Linux gaming squarely is in the same place when it was in 1999, it goes in circles (remember Indrema? Same fate happened to Steam Machines 15 years later). I think only the "emulation" approach (I know that Wine is not an emulator but running a Windows game on Linux is conceptually not that far from running a Xbox One game on Linux, so I'm using the term broadly) is viable. Happy to be disproven by some new unexpected development on the platform.
Right now game development is still a risky business even on platforms where a reliable monetary feedback exists, Linux gamedev is more a philanthropy. I don't see any factors that would change this on the horizon - Linux gaming squarely is in the same place when it was in 1999, it goes in circles (remember Indrema? Same fate happened to Steam Machines 15 years later). I think only the "emulation" approach (I know that Wine is not an emulator but running a Windows game on Linux is conceptually not that far from running a Xbox One game on Linux, so I'm using the term broadly) is viable. Happy to be disproven by some new unexpected development on the platform.
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Who said art is not a hard work? Games themselves are art. Making them is technical sure, and it's not easy. But if it's profitable, it's not a philanthropy. We aren't talking about free work here.
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 July 2019 at 3:49 pm UTC
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 July 2019 at 3:49 pm UTC
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Quoting: RCLLinux gaming squarely is in the same place when it was in 1999Well that's obviously not true.
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Quoting: tuubiQuoting: RCLLinux gaming squarely is in the same place when it was in 1999Well that's obviously not true.
Indeed, that statement is completely false. Linux gaming has progressed a lot.
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: tuubiQuoting: RCLLinux gaming squarely is in the same place when it was in 1999Well that's obviously not true.
Indeed, that statement is completely false. Linux gaming has progressed a lot.
I dunno how you measure that... Here's what leads to my impression. I remember 1999-2000 peak well (my college years).
- There was a lot of hype that Linux is going to be the next big thing not just for games, but overall replacing Windows. A lot of folks around were converting to Linux, myself included (I have always dual-booted though). There were first "memes" (then not known by that name) that Microsoft will release a Linux distro (Microsoft Linux 98.
- Top games were appearing for Linux, with proper 3D acceleration. You could play Quake, HoMM III. Unreal Tournament was being ported to Linux by Dan Vogel (currently of Epic Games, then of Loki).
- Market share was not measured accurately but the impression was that Linux desktop users were far more than 1%
- Literature about developing Linux games started to appear, including a book on SDL that I still have.
- There was even a Linux console in the works (Indrema). A new AmigaOS was supposedly based on Linux etc etc.
Then it all went bust after 2001.
Then there was a rise again in mid-2000s, when XP got stale, Vista screwed up and Ubuntu had it 15 minutes of fame. Open source games finally caught up on tech and while commercial releases weren't many (PC was dying as a platform altogether), Linux again got some credibility as an entertainment platform.
Then a rise in mid 2010s again, after a yet another PC renaissance. First Humble Bundle, then Steam. And again a down-slide.
Perhaps in absolute numbers of games currently runnable on Linux there's a change. Percentage-wise and attitude-wise, it feels the same. Similar technical problems, similar support issues, similar lack of market forces, similar market share.
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