Insurgency: Sandstorm no longer getting Linux/Mac support or a campaign mode

Quoting: GuestThe year so in between Steam Machines and Proton was when Valve was visited by corrupting bribing suits from Microsoft as reported by Phoronix.

Can you please point me to this article?


Btw, here comes another crazy conspiracy theory:

What if Proton IS Valve's exit strategy wrt Linux?

I mean they cannot easily just drop the Linux client (can they?).
People have bought games supporting a certain platform and Valve cannot
just say "use the Windows version instead".
So the Linux client is here to stay - even if Valve would maybe better get rid of it.
If you don't have faith in a platform (anymore) but have to stick with it,
wouldn't sth like Proton be a ... natural move?


Last edited by sub on 10 December 2019 at 6:34 pm UTC

This is the second disappointment I have with this game. Well I'm glad I didn't brought it :)

This one? http://richg42.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-faster-zombies-blog-post.html

Quoting: GuestPushing Linux games with Linux support = growth. Pushing Windows gaming = recession. We grew because of Valve and other devs, but now we're in a recession because of Valve no longer encouraging developers to support Linux gaming and instead providing them with ways in which they can avoid doing so.

This is wishful thinking. The brute fact is that our current market share is not enough to encourage native ports even if we all buy only native Linux games. And Valve asking people to is also not enough. There was a big burst of interest in native ports related to the Steam Machine, which has been gradually losing . . . ah . . . steam ever since. We are in a chicken-egg situation, and the only way out is an increase in Linux desktop(ish) use, either independent of games or due to some market share shock like a successful Steam Machine.

In theory, things like Proton could make things even worse, but I have seen no particular inflection point where after Proton became viable there was a sudden increase in the downward trend. I myself have never actually used Proton and used Wine for exactly one game, but the strategy associated with Proton is clear and reasonable: Drop the barrier to using Linux low enough that uptake will increase, resulting in more reason to do native ports in the long term. Whether it will actually work is another question, but emphasizing native games has been proved not to work. Insisting on native games would also be a reasonable strategy, if our market share were significantly larger. Unfortunately, it isn't.

The only thing that could make insisting on native games a workable strategy for Linux gamers at 1% market share would be if it was combined with a successful developer push to make Linux an incredibly easy development platform so that it actually definitively cost less than 1% to release for Linux. So like if you used a game engine like Unity or Godot it really would be almost clicking the Linux button, and there was a sort of standard Linux gaming environment you could aim for, whether by saying "Just targeting Steam Linux" or via a standardized Flatpak to stick games in or something, so that complaints about Linux support and such basically evaporated. I'm not at all sure this is plausible, although as far as I can tell the costs of releasing on Linux are way lower than they used to be and it's just continuing to drop; there are developers working on lowering that barrier. But 1% is, like, really low--how do you push costs that low for releasing on a whole platform? If we were at 5% we'd have a way, way better case.

So yeah. Bigger market share is our only hope. If Proton can help get us that, it will be worth any dilution in our purchasing power for native games. If it can't and nothing else happens, we're probably doomed anyway.

Right now, the only thing I see actually doing anything that resembles increasing Linux desktop share is . . . not my favourite thing to see doing that. Specifically, I see Google's Chromebooks, which are now going to be able to run Google's Stadia games. If ChromeOS was going to move past its little niche it was going to need to be able to run games. Typical of Google that they found a way which wouldn't require them to un-cripple the little buggers.

Comments here derailed so much from the article that I thought it was Phoronix :P

Quoting: gojulI have some another example like this : Eugen Systems (which have turned evil towards their own employees), made the Wargame series.

What happened there ?

Quoting: GuestMaybe you missed it, but the entire problem is that WINE/Proton encourages Linux gamers to buy and support Windows games that come with zero Linux support and from devs who don't care about supporting Linux.

This isn't entirely wrong, but you have to understand that people who aren't complete zealots will never give up Windows unless their favorite games run on Linux. You bash Proton as if the devil itself had coded it, but from my perspective, Proton/DXVK is what allowed me to abandon Windows for good. Feral and the handful of publishers that release native games couldn't do it. Valve did.

I am an MMO fan. If you think I'd no longer play MMOs just to make a meaningless political statement, you're mistaken. And the number of MMORPGs available for Linux that don't suck is exactly zero. I am happy to have Proton/WINE, because it allows me to play these games in Linux. I honestly don't gave a damn what runs them, as long as they run. I am not saying you don't have a point, as running Windows games in Linux will always be considered unofficial and unsupported by devs, and there is no guarantee that a game that runs in Proton today will still run after the next patch.

But I prefer that over having to dual-boot into Windows every single time I want to play the 95% of AAA games that aren't available for Linux natively. Proton might not allow me to get rid of Windows games. But it allowed me to get rid of Windows. And that's a good thing.


Last edited by Kimyrielle on 10 December 2019 at 9:50 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestYou're a fan of us not being given support for running a game on our OS like everyone else gets? Great, thanks for that, and for encouraging Windows gaming. Now those of us who support native releases with real Linux support, and those like you paying for Windows games with no Linux support, can all be 2nd class gamers together! <3

Show some respect? He never stated what you claim he has. We all want a game to be properly developed for Linux. If we didn't why would we be using Linux? There are so many games that I've not been able to play because developers never support the platform. And it has been said a million times, we don't have the userbase to justify major games (Call of Duty, Horizon Zero Dawn, Resident Evil to name a few) be developed for us as well.
Even if numbers were enough to turn a small profit...developing new content for Windows most likely gives more.

So if you think it is right for you to demand Focus Home Interactive to provide a Linux support (and continue doing so) I think you come off as entitled. I believe you are a passionate about Linux, but right now is not a point in time that we can demand things. Unless of course Focus Home Interactive has given a iron clad promise to provide Linux port. Assuming they have not done such thing, at most we should hope for the developers to get involved with Proton. If Proton stays consistent and makes more games available to us, hopefully anti cheat issue will be resolved, then most likely a glorious day will come where we will have adequate enough users to demand. But that day is not today.

Quoting: subI have technically the highest respect for Proton and the like.
Yet, I see it as big problem for native Linux gaming and danger for AAA Linux gaming as a whole.
What if we will see a new Direct3D or similar API which will be widely adopted
and no old renderer is supported by most devs?
Now imagine this new API is - for whatever reason (maybe by intention) - extremely hard to reverse engineer and map to Vulkan/OpenGL? Hence, a well supported Proton/WINE layer is not available or will take years until it barely runs.

Proton not only helps games work on Linux but also improves upon Linux ecosystem in small ways AND promotes Vulkan. From Proton post (FAQ):

QuoteQ: I'm a developer; I wasn't planning on targeting Linux, how can I best leverage the new Steam Play?

We recommend you target Vulkan natively in order to offer the best possible performance on all platforms, or at least offer it as an option if possible. It's also a good idea to avoid any invasive third-party DRM middleware, as they sometimes prevent compatibility features from working as intended.

Last edited by Linuxwarper on 10 December 2019 at 10:09 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestSo the potential developer looks at the situation and says "Why develop specifically for OS/2, when we can just develop for Windows and 'kill two birds with one stone?'".

If IBM had done a better job of selling OS/2 then developers would have had a different answer to the question. Users were asking the question "Why would I spend more money on OS/2 when I just want to run Windows programs anyway.

Quoting: GuestWow, I didn't know that about OS/2. Always fun to find historical examples proving your point.

It would be nice but it's not true, OS/2 failed due to a number of bad decisions made by IBM, the Windows app support was a last ditch attempt to save it. It's a popular myth among Linux users.

Quoting: dubigrasu

Quoting: BeamboomA lot of disappointing news in the Linux gaming world this year :(

True, but the rapid pace of development of Proton/DXVK/D9VK and Valve still cooking Linux goodies are keeping me warm and cozy.

Well yes but if you now buy sandstorm are you not vindicating that decision see the linux guys bought it anyway and didnt cost us a dime.