Borderlands 2 will see no further updates for Linux / macOS from Aspyr Media

Thanks to Aspyr anyway, BL2 gave me a lot of hours of pure fun in single player mode.

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.

It probably comes down to Aspyr needing to get paid to do the work. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Sad news. Thanks for investigating for us.

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.

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.

Not to mention this broke cross-play between Linux and Windows.. Had to run with wine to play co-op months prior.

Ah, alas. Though the writing's been on the wall for quite awhile now; I'd lost hope for it already. For what it's worth, the game works just fine in Proton, and depending on your position on mods, you might want to have been using the Windows version via Proton anyway, to make use of the newer PythonSDK modding stuff (which embeds a Python interpreter right into the engine, letting you do some pretty great stuff to the game).

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.

About damn time they said something. Can’t believe they had to be hounded for 18 months before finally giving closure. At this point I’d rather buy a Windows-only game that’s been shown to work on Proton than trust an Aspyr port, so good job on that PR.

Hot take: that's why I don't mind Proton "ports". Native ports are better, of course, but only when they work well and the original developer really care about them. When it doesn't happen, playing on Proton unfortunately but eventually becomes the best option.

Thanks 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.

Sad news. Thanks for investigating for us.

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.

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.

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

This is really sad and infuriating. Makes me think twice before buying games nowadays. Such a terrible state this industry has become.

And then they wonder why piracy still exists... go figure.

Sad. They release a late DLC and HD pack, we just think it was a good thing.... but all they do is broke the multiplayer between platforms... great...

Well, I wasn't sure about buying BL3, but after this I will just remove it from my wishlist. Thanks for the heads up Liam.

Thank you aspyr for the Linux port of this game in a time where proton didn't exist. Thanks to them I played it and it was a great game. If I were to replay it now I would probably use proton.

On the note of porting in general;
I was thinking about this the other day. While we have both Unity and Unreal engines with the potential of a 'click to export to Linux' have we really seen a large amount of Unreal based games coming natively to Linux? There are a few here and there, but I remember how much I wanted Raven Shield to be released natively, as Unreal Tournament and several others in that series were released natively. But it never happened, mostly based on publisher choices vs developers (though in some cases they make mistakes of choosing the wrong middleware, which was the reason why UT3 never came out for us).

But it really makes me feel like Epic only added the Linux export option to Unreal so as not to be beaten by the up and coming Unity engine. If they gave a damn about us, we'd see the Epic Games store and Fortnite ported. Not that I would play such a game, as I tend to not play multiplayer games with people I don't know. But it is definitely one of the more popular ones, and would help get more users to Linux, or at least less reasons for people to boot into Windows.

It's sad about BL2, but I honestly barely played it under Linux, as it didn't seem to have all the features enabled that the Windows version did. Like the PhysX effects.

I was thinking about this the other day. While we have both Unity and Unreal engines with the potential of a 'click to export to Linux' have we really seen a large amount of Unreal based games coming natively to Linux?

The major standard engines support Linux, but, yes, a lot of the middleware components devs plug into their games to save time, do not. Since studios tend to develop the entire game on Windows until it's done, even when they promised a Linux version, they often don't even find out until it's too late.

Another, newer effect is Proton, which is totally awesome, but also gave these Windows-only developers an excuse not to care about ports.

And the third one is that Steam Machines failed the way they did. In the beginning, a lot of studios believed Steam Machines to become a thing, but gave up on Linux once it turned out that they did not. We're still just the 1% market share they don't really care about.

In short, yes, it seems porting is largely dead. Thankfully, thanks to Proton, Linux gaming is not. Ironically we can play more games on Linux now than ever.

It's sad to see these "legacy" 2012-2016 native Linux ports (failed Steam Machines) falling into decay like this, one by one, but it's unfortunately not unexpected.

Proton is not the solution either... Linux gaming is still "dependent" on Windows, playing a game of trying to catch up with Windows' new gaming features, thus making Linux a perpetual second grade citizen. Still better than nothing, though.

It's just that it highlights the fact that no solutions are 100% thrustworthy. That's the saddest part, imo.

It's sad to see these "legacy" 2012-2016 native Linux ports (failed Steam Machines) falling into decay like this, one by one, but it's unfortunately not unexpected.

It's pretty similar to how you buy a ROM aka Ocarina of Time for say Nintendo Wii from their and it stops getting updates someday.

Proton is not the solution either... Linux gaming is still "dependent" on Windows, playing a game of trying to catch up with Windows' new gaming features, thus making Linux a perpetual second grade citizen. Still better than nothing, though.

I disagree, Proton is about creating "Containers" around games to preserve them. As long as they're not targeting a "Moving Target" and the game is in a static-state they seem to consistently knock down barriers and enable Games on a Steam Linux OS Platform.

It's just that it highlights the fact that no solutions are 100% thrustworthy. That's the saddest part, imo.

Honestly, I think it just underlines the hardships businesses are having this year from Corona-virus lockdowns. Adapting is hard.

They really should have never broken cross-platform compatibility.

As long as the core games still works I'm not a fan of bitching too hard. For me that's what I bought it for.

I assume you can play it via Proton if you want without too much hassle

https://www.protondb.com/app/49520


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 11 September 2020 at 9:32 pm UTC

That's disappointing, but I've been using Proton to play BL2 for a while. It was the only way I could play co-op with my son, who is a Win-only gamer.

It's just that it highlights the fact that no solutions are 100% thrustworthy. That's the saddest part, imo.

AFAIK, all the Feral ports still work and are still supported, but yeah: native versions have been pulled, ports by these other porting houses have stopped working, and Windows-only games can get changes that stop them working in Wine. And I get the impression that Linux ports for Feral aren't as profitable as the other things they could be doing with their time, assuming they can find a developer-partner that will let them do it in the first place.

As I said a lot of times:
If Valve gives a good incentive to the big publishers, they will port all the AAA games to Linux.

"If your game has fully functional SteamOS/Linux version, instead of charge you the 30% of the game price, I'm gonna charge you only the 5% of the game price"

But nooo! For some mysterious reason GabeN refuse to do this....