After repeatedly trying to get an answer, we now finally have it confirmed that Aspyr Media will be doing no further updates to Borderlands 2. While Aspyr Media are still continuing to update their ports of Civilization VI for Linux / macOS, the situation with the Borderlands series is just sad.
You might be confused, since Borderlands 2 is from 2012. So why are we mentioning this now? Well, it came to Linux later in 2014 and last year it gained one final DLC with Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary plus the Borderlands 2 Ultra HD Texture Pack. Both of which are missing for Linux and along with those and updates to support them, this broke cross-platform play between Linux, macOS and Windows.
Aspyr Media said last year they were working to get it all up to date on Linux. Time went on, we reached out to them a few times and each time it went unanswered. Until today that is, where their partners got in touch with us with a statement: "At this time, we can confirm that there are no further updates planned for Borderlands 2 on Linux and Mac. We will continue to provide customer service support to players via support.aspyr.com.".
Note: while it wasn't mentioned, this all likely affects Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel too.
Obviously all games stop being updated at some point, not everything is a live-service style game and developers do move on. Still, missing entire updates and DLC is ridiculous. We have no idea if this is due to Gearbox Software, 2K or Aspyr Media directly and we likely never will as these sorts of deals are never made public.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
QuoteWe have no idea if this is due to Gearbox Software, 2K or Aspyr Media directly and we likely never will as these sorts of deals are never made public.It probably comes down to Aspyr needing to get paid to do the work. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
Quoting: GuestSad news. Thanks for investigating for us.The key if you want a well supported native linux port of a game, is that the developer cares about it themselves to justify the port outside of financial reasons, and has a history and skills to do the work themselves. The porting houses are great, but they can't work for free. And if the money isn't there from the original developer, then it won't be there for the porting house, and the work won't get done.
Personally, all these news make me even more suspicious before buying a game. Too many games which either stop working or have their cross platform play broken or nonexistant. Rendering the game close to useless.
apocalyptech Sep 11, 2020
I know that Gearbox didn't have nice things to say about working with the Linux port -- I suspect that the problem was probably just them (or 2K, or whoever) not being willing to pay for the work.
no_information_here Sep 11, 2020
Quoting: kokoko3kThanks to Aspyr anyway, BL2 gave me a lot of hours of pure fun in single player mode.Me too.
Sad to see Gearbox/2K not following through.
Quoting: yokem55Quoting: GuestSad news. Thanks for investigating for us.The key if you want a well supported native linux port of a game, is that the developer cares about it themselves to justify the port outside of financial reasons, and has a history and skills to do the work themselves. The porting houses are great, but they can't work for free. And if the money isn't there from the original developer, then it won't be there for the porting house, and the work won't get done.
Personally, all these news make me even more suspicious before buying a game. Too many games which either stop working or have their cross platform play broken or nonexistant. Rendering the game close to useless.
I think at least Feral Interactive made deals where they would get all the profit from Linux sales, so it made sense for them to give support for the games and keep porting new games. Aspyr was first in the new wave of the market, but they never did port that many titles to Linux.
I would suppose Proton has killed market for the more commercial side of the porting. With Feral Interactive it was just easier to see as they released new ports so often. Ethan Lee and others are kind of different as they do work more in the shadows and don't care about the money as much
Last edited by Anza on 11 September 2020 at 5:23 pm UTC
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