Supraland, the colourful and inviting first-person puzzle game from Supra Games is now going to be removed from game store GOG after less than a year being there.
Looking at the dates: it released on Steam in April 2019, then came to Linux in July that same year and then onto GOG in that same month. Today, June 9 in 2020 the GOG team posted on their forum that Supraland will be delisted from their store at the developer's request but it will stay in your GOG library. That's not long to be on a store to then ask for it to be removed, so why?
The developer has been quite vocal about it all, as it turns out. Back in July 2019, we posted an article about the developer saying some strange stuff about both GOG and Linux and it seems their opinion didn't change after being live on GOG for some time, as they said on Steam in May this year:
Going onto GOG I expected maybe something like 10% of Steam, but it's more like 1%. Same with releasing a Linux version. It's all worth so little for us that it's rather annoying to have to do the extra work all the time and carry that weight around. I wouldn't do it again.
Sounds like a case of heavily inflated expectations, mixed with some naivety. Still, it's better to request removal than to leave it up and not support it at all, so it sounds like they're doing the right thing overall.
In other posts they also mentioned how in relation to DRM-free gaming that "98-99% of players don't care" and that if there's any "crying about DRM stuff in the gamer scene, it must come from a really vocal but tiny minority. 1-2% tiny". That's some pretty tough words for the DRM-free crowd.
As for the Linux build of Supraland, it appears to have been suffering a few issues lately as posts on Steam will show and the developer isn't sure what they will do so the Linux build may be pulled too see: #1 and #2. They've never been particularly confident about it either as they said before a few times, and it appears they don't know how to support the Linux version. If they do announce a decision on that bit, we will let you know.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Avehicle7887 Jun 9, 2020
There are many other games on GOG from small indies, they don't have deep pockets and yet they can handle much more frequent updates than this game has put out as well as multiple DLC's.
And all of GOG's recent moves point to a deemphasizing of the DRM-free stance of the platform. We already have games like Granda 2 phoning home, for example.
slaapliedje Jun 9, 2020
Quoting: GuestIt is worth to note that the developer didn't support linux, he just compiled it for linux with unreal and released it without tweaking anything. The "port" performs very poorly. I read this on the steam forums a few months ago and I saw the dev recommending proton and that he wants to drop the native version.Weird, it was running flawlessly for me, and I put in quite a few hours into it, though stopped playing it for some reason (I do that randomly though, nothing against the game).
slaapliedje Jun 9, 2020
Quoting: DesumThis dev aside, I tend to shy away from GOG even though I am highly sympathetic do DRM-free gaming. The reasons are that, as a Linux gamer, GOG is simply a bigger hassle than Steam. I have to sort out libfoo problems with 70% of the games in my library that have native support (frankly, I have less problems running ancient Win32 games in Wine often enough). GOG should also be looking to, at the very least, piggy back off of Valve and Codeweaver's work with Proton. But nothing has even been mentioned there.
And all of GOG's recent moves point to a deemphasizing of the DRM-free stance of the platform. We already have games like Granda 2 phoning home, for example.
I have this same issue with GOG. I mean we basically have to use third party applications if we want any semblance of usefulness, and even then I don't think any of them handle automatic updates or anything.
While the Dev talking about DRM and people against it may sort of be correct... that's from a small game. Look at the giant outrage at some of the DRM for games like Doom, and others were large groups of people spend the time to hack them just to remove the DRM that very often completely break systems if not just the game itself!
That's why DRM is garbage and people care. It isn't really so 'oh, I can install this everywhere!', that's just a nice perk. One of the worse DRMs I'd seen was literally 'you're allowed to install this 5 times, if you'd like to install it more, you'll have to buy another license." That was literally 5 activations. If you happen to have to re-install, you're screwed...
Quoting: mphuZNobody in their right mind would disagree with that.Quote..how in relation to DRM-free gaming that "98-99% of players don't care"
But it's true. Does anyone disagree?
People care about being able to play games. In what form exactly isn't really important. Convenience trumps all.
The 10% were very obviously highly inflated expectations, the dev didn't do their research then.
I also bought the game and loved it - but like others, I quickly switched from the linux native version to the proton one, it just ran that much better.
Which is to be expected given the dev has shown no interest whatsoever in dealing with the linux-specific problems. And, well, that was not the latest version of Unreal, and Unreal is known to now have the best linux support out of the box to put it mildly.
Dev is doing the right thing here. They have no investment in either DRM-free-ideologies or linux, are a very small team, etc.
I'm not too surprised that the work of maintaining a GOG presence isn't worth it to them.
Quoting: slaapliedjeI have this same issue with GOG. I mean we basically have to use third party applications if we want any semblance of usefulness, and even then I don't think any of them handle automatic updates or anything.
Not automatic, but lgogdownlader handles incremental updates.
slaapliedje Jun 9, 2020
Quoting: ShmerlYeah, I should use that some more. It's good. Would be better if GOG supported us more directly...Quoting: slaapliedjeI have this same issue with GOG. I mean we basically have to use third party applications if we want any semblance of usefulness, and even then I don't think any of them handle automatic updates or anything.
Not automatic, but lgogdownlader handles incremental updates.
I also get annoyed at the many games on GOG that elsewhere have Linux versions, but they don't provide one themselves.
Quoting: slaapliedjeI also get annoyed at the many games on GOG that elsewhere have Linux versions, but they don't provide one themselves.
Yeah, that's a mess. The worst cases are major games which are missing ports from Feral for instance.
Last edited by Shmerl on 9 June 2020 at 8:27 pm UTC
Arehandoro Jun 9, 2020
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