Little Red Dog Games developer of Precipice, Deep Sixed and Rogue State Revolution spoke in an interview with Linux hardware vendor System76 about developing games on and for Linux. It's quite an interesting interview that goes over details about how they make their games, their use of Godot Engine and why they think it's a good idea to develop for Linux.
Starting off as hobby developers making point and click adventures, Little Red Dog Games are now a full-time studio with multiple games out on various stores. Their lead programmer, Denis Comtesse, is a Linux user and so using the likes of Godot makes it all relatively easy for them since it has great cross-platform support.
They're not exclusively Linux developers though, since they support multiple platforms and so they do need to work with other systems too and it sounds like Godot's multi-platform support is in real good shape there too, with LRDG CEO Ryan Hewer stating how "I would say it’s less than a half-hour’s work to be able to support Linux consumers out there" and that "Linux users represent about 7 percent of our market right now as game developers, which is more than enough to justify the minimal steps needed to be able to make the game compatible for Linux PCs".
Seeing 7% might be quite surprising, since according to the Steam Hardware Survey which we track on a dedicated page, Linux hovers around the 1% mark but we've seen lots of other developers show higher than that too in previous articles.
Later in the interview Hewer mentions on the subject of supporting Linux that there's "no reason not to. It would be a huge oversight for any developer to not be putting out packages for that 7 percent demographic, and it’s painless within Godot to do that.".
Go check out the full interview.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
The key take away from this is yes there is no reason if you are already using an engine that supports linux natively. Its a bit more problematic if its not a linux native engine. I mean unreal has a linux version its just nowhere near feature complete to the windows one.
Reading the post, it's even worse: there's no reason if you're not already using an engine that supports GNU/Linux natively, but supports it well, and you're already familiar with a GNU/Linux environment (as their lead programmer was).
People already comfortable with GNU/Linux have little to no troubles in porting a game, and quite often might do so because the workflow suits them better. The real trouble is getting developers not already familiar with the environment more actively involved. As a comment on that, even Google provide Stadia hooks into Visual Studio so that all work on games can be done on Windows (they just essentially remote into a Stadia instance to do everything, from within Visual Studio).
In truth the answer is for a small studio using tools such as Godot losing out on 7 percent is a big deal for EA/Activision/Ubisoft/Take 2 & Microsoft its a tiny amount and can easily be ignored. That mindset has only further been reinforced by the work codeweavers and valve have done on proton. Why bother even looking at a native version when other software companies already have functional work around software that is capable of supporting their latest efforts with no expense to the original publisher and to sweeten the deal if it doesnt work no support costs just profit from the game sale.
PublicNuisance Jun 25, 2021
I really like the cut of their jib so to speak. Sadly the genre they make games for is no fun for me.
I know what you mean. I might possibly find Deep Sixed a bit interesting, but that's the only one there is any hope for.
Seeing 7% might be quite surprising, since according to the Steam Hardware Survey which we track on a dedicated page, Linux hovers around the 1% mark but we've seen lots of other developers show higher than that too in previous articles.
That is hardly surprising; those linux users are more likely to spend their money on a native linux game, so they purchase from a smaller pool of games, increasing the share of linux gamers for those games that support it.
Last edited by emphy on 27 June 2021 at 9:16 am UTC
DebianUser Jun 28, 2021
Seeing 7% might be quite surprising, since according to the Steam Hardware Survey which we track on a dedicated page, Linux hovers around the 1% mark but we've seen lots of other developers show higher than that too in previous articles.
That is hardly surprising; those linux users are more likely to spend their money on a native linux game, so they purchase from a smaller pool of games, increasing the share of linux gamers for those games that support it.
Exactly.
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