Feral no longer porting A Total War Saga: TROY to Linux, citing less demand since Proton

Quoting: PlayXThere is demand for native ports. But if Feral needs months or years to port a game, than I can't blame the people who try proton instead. Games need to be ready on day-1 or a few days after. But not many people want to wait of proton is a working solution.

Yup, native would be nice, but it takes them too long, so I always play with Proton.

I've always had some special attachment to Feral, being the most active porting house to bring use many awesome titles, but things have changed... Unfortunately. I whish them the best of luck.

As for Proton, it's probably the cheapest solution that Valve could come up with that will please developers and lure them to SteamOS (mark my words, I didn't say Linux desktop).

Imo, Valve's Linux gaming strategy was never targeted at desktop usage. The desktop war has been lost a long time ago. Not much moved or will move that needle. The Steam Deck is becoming the corner stone of Valve's strategy and Proton is the way forward, for them, like it or not. It's not targeted at techy savy Linux (or not) users, it's targeted at those that just want to turn on the thing, sit back on the couch and play. It might end up helping Linux desktop, but it's going to be a side effect. I think that what Valve is targeting at, is a Windows computer besides a SteamOS Steam Deck.

Seriously I can deal with that even if it's not my first choice scenario. Thanks to Feral for all it did for us and thanks to Valve for creating the opportunity. It's been a fabulous ride so far... And, for me, away from Windows. Personnallly, on this point, it's "mission accomplished".


Last edited by Mohandevir on 27 July 2021 at 6:28 pm UTC

This is a sad news really.R.I.P Feral future linux ports. Yes this was coming. I saw double rainbows in the sky and winter suddenly changed into summer in 2 seconds. From those signs I knew that there would be no TROY port.. Still Proton kills the need of Linux game ports. Future seems bad but on the other hand making the linux ports wouldn't be simply enough to increase player percentage when it comes to OS statistics in which Windows rules. Probably Steam Deck( which uses Proton) is the the best option to change the situation.Hopefully even slightly.

Quoting: LeopardFor anyone wonders if the game will work at day 1 or not ; i grabbed it last year when it was free on EGS for 24 hours ( perma keep ) :

It works on Wine+DXVK since day 1. So Feral porting this or not really shouldn't matter.

its not the fact it works its the fact its not native and proton is the reason its not native

Quoting: MohandevirI've always had some special attachment to Feral, being the most active porting house to bring use many awesome titles, but things have changed... Unfortunately. I whish them the best of luck.

As for Proton, it's probably the cheapest solution that Valve could come up with that will please developers and lure them to SteamOS (mark my words, I didn't say Linux desktop).

Imo, Valve's Linux gaming strategy was never targeted at desktop usage. The desktop war as been lost a long time ago. Not much moved or will move that needle. The Steam Deck is becoming the corner stone of Valve's strategy and Proton is the way forward, for them, like it or not. It's not targeted at techy savy Linux (or not) users, it's targeted at those that just want to turn on the thing, sit back on the couch and play. It might end up helping Linux desktop, but it's going to be a side effect. I think that what Valve is targeting at, is a Windows computer besides a SteamOS Steam Deck.

Seriously I can deal with that even if it's not my first choice scenario. Thanks to Feral for all it did for us and thanks to Valve for creating the opportunity. It's been a fabulous ride so far... And, for me, away from Windows. Personnallly, on this point, it's "mission accomplished".

Or they could go on making a killing by porting to switch since it runs linux and contracts are easier to get

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: DebianUserExactly what i was afraid of, and why i can't say if Proton is a good thing or not.

Disclaimer: I actually exclusively buy games with native support. That said...

The way I see it there are really two possible futures (10, 20 or whatever years from now):

1. Linux doesn't have a big market share among gamers. In this case, it really didn't matter that proton stopped native ports. People just didn't come to Linux to game, and we few should at least be happy we have a way to play games.

2. Linux gets a significant market share. In this case, do you really think developers will continue relying on Proton? If Linux does get a significant market share among gamers, I don't have a doubt that companies will start doing native ports, simply because you can't have a significant portion of your revenue be at the mercy of some translation layer you can't control.

In short, either proton is irrelevant or good. There is no scenario where proton would be a bad thing long term.

I agree, but the risk is to be in the "1" case partly because of Proton (there is a bias - no offense - in your statement because you start in the future, not now, but i understand your reflexion).

Proton exist -> devs dont have to make native port -> the majority of games are branded "Windows Only" -> users see many "Windows Only" games -> they dont see Linux as a viable Platform (or they dont want to buy games not supported with Proton).... 10 years later... "1" case.

I dont say that is our future (i dont read the future), just a scary possibility.

Hopefully, Steam Deck may change this vision, maybe.


Last edited by DebianUser on 27 July 2021 at 6:32 pm UTC

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: MohandevirI've always had some special attachment to Feral, being the most active porting house to bring use many awesome titles, but things have changed... Unfortunately. I whish them the best of luck.

As for Proton, it's probably the cheapest solution that Valve could come up with that will please developers and lure them to SteamOS (mark my words, I didn't say Linux desktop).

Imo, Valve's Linux gaming strategy was never targeted at desktop usage. The desktop war as been lost a long time ago. Not much moved or will move that needle. The Steam Deck is becoming the corner stone of Valve's strategy and Proton is the way forward, for them, like it or not. It's not targeted at techy savy Linux (or not) users, it's targeted at those that just want to turn on the thing, sit back on the couch and play. It might end up helping Linux desktop, but it's going to be a side effect. I think that what Valve is targeting at, is a Windows computer besides a SteamOS Steam Deck.

Seriously I can deal with that even if it's not my first choice scenario. Thanks to Feral for all it did for us and thanks to Valve for creating the opportunity. It's been a fabulous ride so far... And, for me, away from Windows. Personnallly, on this point, it's "mission accomplished".

Or they could go on making a killing by porting to switch since it runs linux and contracts are easier to get

You mean Feral? I hope so and wish them well... Personnally I have no Switch to benefit from that.

If the Steam Deck is successful eventually developers will start producing Linux builds themselves, as it'll be easier to select Linux as a build target in your game engine than to produce a Windows build and run it through wine and try to investigate issues while an extra layer is sitting between your code and the OS.
The problem right now isn't that producing a Linux build is hard, it's actually easier than using Wine (if you are using a game engine with Linux support that is); the problem is that developers aren't interested in targetting Linux in the first place.

Quoting: GuestI tried some Total War games using wine. I explicitly say wine, because "Proton" never worked with them for me. And then neither did wine. So native ports was the only option I had to play those games (and Rome Remastered is next on my to-play list when I get some free time again).

Furthermore, same problem for the Tomb Raider series. I couldn't play any of those via wine. Native versions though, they run perfectly fine, particularly Rise of the Tomb Raider (owing to 6 cores being highly beneficial).

So this news is, for me, unwelcome and pretty sad.

Feral's ability to take some other company's after-the-fact code dump and beat it, batter it, and polish it into an excellent Linux game, while seemingly magical, wasn't even the best thing about them. Their customer support was way better than any first-party game developer. I'm certain that they made much less money from their Linux ports than from their Mac or Switch ports, but dealing with them you'd always get the impression that your platform was absolutely the most important one in the world.

From other devs we're going to get a response that varies from "get Valve to fix it" to "go stick your head in a pig."

Quoting: sarmadIf the Steam Deck is successful eventually developers will start producing Linux builds themselves, as it'll be easier to select Linux as a build target in your game engine than to produce a Windows build and run it through wine and try to investigate issues while an extra layer is sitting between your code and the OS.
The problem right now isn't that producing a Linux build is hard, it's actually easier than using Wine (if you are using a game engine with Linux support that is); the problem is that developers aren't interested in targetting Linux in the first place.

Or they could just use Proton, which is open source, and create a Proton wraped version of their games, too.

There are multiple exemples of games running better with Proton than the native ports (even better than when run on Windows, in some other cases)... Mad Max, Rocket League, Witcher 2 are 3 such exemples that I personnally witnessed (Proton > Linux port).


Last edited by Mohandevir on 27 July 2021 at 6:36 pm UTC