Epic Games have awarded the FOSS game manager Lutris with an Epic MegaGrant

Interesting.
I don't know what the current Lutris state of EGS integration is, but if this leads to a very good usability, it might actually make EGS more interesting to some.

Well deserved!

So finally a little nice move from EPIC.
It does not really heal the harm they caused to Linux gaming (pulling games with Linux support exclusively to their non-Linux-store), but it is a nice move anyways.

So lets be friendly and thank them, it is a move in the right direction and every way to go starts with the first (small?) step.

Perhaps Mr. Sweeney can be more linuxfriendly in the future. I can remember, that EPIC once was a linuxfriendly company.


Last edited by einherjar on 30 November 2019 at 12:06 pm UTC

Whilst great for lutris, Surely 25k would have covered the cost of making their game launcher/client run native along with fortnite ? Or at least a good way toward it .

IMHO a cheap brush off for Epic. They can say they are supportive of linux, but without actually providing that support in-house. $25,000 really is just a small fraction of what a single software engineer would make in a year and therefore significantly less than Epic would spend hiring a team with linux experience to provide a native store (and games).

"Here's some pocket change, now leave us alone ..."

I guess we should be supportive of any engagement with the community, but I'm just very cynical about Epic.

Although suspicious, Epic's support of Lutris is a thousand times more welcome than anything that they could have spent that money on in-house. Nothing they do can undo the way they gave gamers the finger by kidnapping titles from wider release and holding them hostage as "exclusives." Nothing short of immediately releasing their prisoners---and maybe super-gluing all of master Sweeny's orifices shut---will see them out from under the banner "Heinous Beasties."

sweeny should give them the epic store source code, so they can make a linux version of it within lutris

I believe epic will eventually help the wine project with anti-cheat

Quoting: pete910Whilst great for lutris, Surely 25k would have covered the cost of making their game launcher/client run native along with fortnite ? Or at least a good way toward it .

That might be enough to fund a small team for a few weeks to get a proof of concept build of the store out. But once you start getting a QA process rolling and either adding a proton like infrastructure or supporting native ports in the store, then the costs go way up in the context of a big company of people with decent salaries.

And in those kinds of companies (especially ones with public shareholders or outside investors) the costs have to have a compelling ROI model. Valve can do what they do precisely because they are incredibly profitable and privately owned.

The lutris grant is a pretty good start to fund a community supported approach. Obviously it's not ideal for us. But improving the tooling around the wine ecosystem can't hurt.

Quoting: yokem55

Quoting: pete910Whilst great for lutris, Surely 25k would have covered the cost of making their game launcher/client run native along with fortnite ? Or at least a good way toward it .

That might be enough to fund a small team for a few weeks to get a proof of concept build of the store out. But once you start getting a QA process rolling and either adding a proton like infrastructure or supporting native ports in the store, then the costs go way up in the context of a big company of people with decent salaries.

And in those kinds of companies (especially ones with public shareholders or outside investors) the costs have to have a compelling ROI model. Valve can do what they do precisely because they are incredibly profitable and privately owned.

The lutris grant is a pretty good start to fund a community supported approach. Obviously it's not ideal for us. But improving the tooling around the wine ecosystem can't hurt.

I said native version of their client, I said nothing regards adding things like proton. Somehow I can't see it taking a team of "good" devs to get what they have now running native .

I see what you are saying though , does seem more like a buy off rather than a legitimate funding grant.

Quoting: yokem55That might be enough to fund a small team for a few weeks to get a proof of concept build of the store out. But once you start getting a QA process rolling and either adding a proton like infrastructure or supporting native ports in the store, then the costs go way up in the context of a big company of people with decent salaries.

And in those kinds of companies (especially ones with public shareholders or outside investors) the costs have to have a compelling ROI model. Valve can do what they do precisely because they are incredibly profitable and privately owned.

While that's true, EPIC is drowning in money. You can't sell me the idea that they're afraid of their shareholders throwing a hissy-fit over spending 0.000-something percent of their last-year's Fortnite bonanza on a dev working on a Linux port of their store. Shareholders care about things that matter, not something that leaves less impact on the bottom-line than their annual office Christmas party.

Quoting: GuestSupporting Lutris/WINE means they have no plans for supporting or releasing for Linux.

That isn't news, though, they said that long ago.
This is... well, it is more than before, so that's a net positive.

Good for them. I hope it helps them fix their game submission form sooner than later – without it I can’t see Lutris continue to grow its userbase since it can’t add new releases. And it doesn’t look like anyone has been looking at the website bugs reported on github in several weeks.

>won't work at all due to the anti-cheat and it's likely going to take a long time before Wine gets to a stage where it can work with it

Wine had no problem with easy anticheat before Epic bought it and ended development of the Linux version.

This isn't a problem that Wine needs to fix, it's entirely on Epic.

Quoting: derram>won't work at all due to the anti-cheat and it's likely going to take a long time before Wine gets to a stage where it can work with it

Wine had no problem with easy anticheat before Epic bought it and ended development of the Linux version.

This isn't a problem that Wine needs to fix, it's entirely on Epic.

People love to repeat this. EAC has never actually worked in Wine. Any time it did previously, was likely when EAC wasn't fully online. I've spoken to developers on this before. It has nothing to do with Epic buying EAC, don't spread it.

Quoting: GuestSupporting Lutris/WINE means they have no plans for supporting or releasing for Linux.

Not to rain in the anti-epic parade (I still believe that they belong in the dog-house) but Valve supports WINE/DXVK and they do support releasing for Linux so I would say that the one is completely disconnected from the other.

Most likely this is $25k taken from their PR budget but it still have no bearing on whatever plans they have or not have for Linux in the future.

Quoting: mylkasweeny should give them the epic store source code, so they can make a linux version of it within lutris

If only there were some way to ensure people other than the author can have access to a program's source...

And yet Epic won't port their most popular game to Linux... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

well deserved

That actually Lutris gets some funding due to that is great. I personally didn't expect it, but if the CEO is actually suggesting it it's probably almost a done thing. But hey - wouldn't be the first thing which didn't happen ;-).

Doubting Lutris has a full time dev with 1,245 on patreon, that's for sure welcome.

After other platforms for gaming on linux, Lutris really has come a long way and it's a great platform. It's just well deserved they get some funding too, and if they can use it for funding their platform or even some development - the better.

I personally was very sceptical about Lutris in the beginning, but they really worked towards making it a platform and not a game launcher as others before them.

Well deserved, and I hope they'll continue their great job on the platform. It's a great tool for gamers who don't want to fiddle too much with wine configs (as me :D).