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

I guess I should point out that Valve have never said anything they do is intended to lead to more native ports. Quite the opposite actually - they've officially said not to bother!

So just like Google never said that Stadia would encourage native desktop GNU/Linux game development and people kind of assumed it would happen, Valve have never said it either and it probably won't happen.

This was one concern long ago about the approach VP did, but at least they supported the title running under GNU/Linux. There's not even that here, and native development (and support) is being discouraged - the result of which is this news. I can't see it ending well for GNU/Linux desktop gaming.

It would make more sense to me to encourage devs/publisher to provide native builds and have Proton as a fallback.
Best would be to establish in-house know how and awareness for nativ ports. Doesn't happen this way.

Just think Microsoft comes up with a Direct3D 13, completely incompatible and there is no such working Proton channel.
No way they could pull off something reliably working within months.

Proton (and Steam Deck) will gain compatibility at a similar time frame than other consoles on the market. Consoles usually play catch up with PC, anyway.

But console builds ARE native builds.
They are fine in this picture.

All I wanted to highlight is, you're creating strong unhealthy dependencies on MS.

You can't expect devs/companies to change habits without a strong position in market.

If Steamdeck can provide that even a bit+ChromeOS Steam project eventually happens; devs might start to consider more cross platform alternatives in their builds.

Such as using Vulkan, instead of using Media Foundation Platform using VP9, using SDL2 etc.

Without a market; even with best tools+apis they will just keep their Windows focused development.

you got to understand since proton has gotten bigger there really is no reason to even have linux ports because 9 times out of 10 the game will probably work and with valve putting even more effort into proton with there steam deck this is only gonna be good things for linux. i know some want ports and those will never go away from the indie developers but when it comes to the AAA stuff we can usually run those titles anyway. with anti cheat being worked on it will get even better so this is not all doom and gloom.

For me is good news! the day that we dont need ports anymore is closer! And linux gaming wont have limitations to grow. And if it grows enough publishers will care a lot that game runs pretty well on linux also :P

i know some want ports and those will never go away from the indie developers but when it comes to the AAA stuff we can usually run those titles anyway. with anti cheat being worked on it will get even better so this is not all doom and gloom.

I remember a statement by the DXVK developer that games with a lot of different shaders (I think it was Tomb Raider) are difficult for DXVK. See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p53sVKwSqZ4

Has anything changed in this regard? After all, it's these games that will push the Steam Deck to its limits. I'm hoping more that with the Steam Deck and Proton the Gordian knot will now be cut. And that there will be many more ports for Linux in the future. Preferably day one releases.

It's not just about the renderers, but ultimately also about the middleware, which is still different under Linux. It also reduces dependencies. Of course, they have to be high-quality ports. But that is precisely what Ferral is known for.

Weeeeelll, they had a lot of people leave

Which, considering the pay and working conditions at Feral, is not exactly surprising, unfortunately. While I never worked at Feral, I did interview with them, and well, it was not a hard decision not taking their offer.

Lets just hope, Total War: Warhammer 3 still gets a Linux port for those who already purchased the first two.
Guess otherwise that player base will have to run proton for all 3 for the big map.

i know some want ports and those will never go away from the indie developers but when it comes to the AAA stuff we can usually run those titles anyway. with anti cheat being worked on it will get even better so this is not all doom and gloom.

I remember a statement by the DXVK developer that games with a lot of different shaders (I think it was Tomb Raider) are difficult for DXVK. See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p53sVKwSqZ4

Has anything changed in this regard? After all, it's these games that will push the Steam Deck to its limits. I'm hoping more that with the Steam Deck and Proton the Gordian knot will now be cut. And that there will be many more ports for Linux in the future. Preferably day one releases.

It's not just about the renderers, but ultimately also about the middleware, which is still different under Linux. It also reduces dependencies. Of course, they have to be high-quality ports. But that is precisely what Ferral is known for.

Difficult as in it will stutter like crazy.

Steam has Fossilize for this very reason. It works in multiple ways:

-If a user with same hw, same driver combo cached those shaders on their gameplay client collects them and ships to other users matching those criterias.

-Steam client also creates Fossilize pipelines. So even if you are on newest driver before anyone else, Steam client will compile shaders for you at background/before going into game. By default background caching uses 1/4 of your threads, when you still have pending compile work and press play it will go full blast which will use all of your threads.

-Steam client will also ship transcoded video files with that system. Ones that you are currently seeing a test screen when you encounter such videos where it is not possible for Valve to transcode them on runtime due to licensing issues.

I still think if Steam Deck is successful we will see more native Linux games targeted towards the hardware. Proton is fantastic for what it does, but it's far from perfect.. It's really ideal for older titles that have stopped receiving updates long ago.

So... if Feral isn't porting it for Linux due to Proton... that just means they make no money on the sale of the game, right? As it is published by Sega. Sega gets that money. Sounds like Feral is going to give in and try to survive off the Mac? Most macs can't even run the total war games...

I'm assuming they're doing other contract work outside of porting and/or outside of games

Like, the company I work for is in the automotive industry, with VW previously being the major customer. VW has been scaling back on external contracts (not just, but also because of the panini), so we had to pivot quite a bit. That's business

This doesn't surprise me at all...
Their IndirectX layer used to be precious, now is worthless thanks to DXVK and VKD3D.


But THEY ARE WRONG; THERE IS demand for NATIVE LINUX ports of BIG GAMES.
The problem is their bad habit of porting games years later after the official release...

If you gonna port to Linux a big game that wasn't released for Windows yet, release it day 1 and no few months later.

Example: When Death Stranding was announced as a timed PS4 exclusive, right away they should have acquired the publishing rights for Linux and coordinate efforts with the Windows publisher, 505 Games... But no...

I can see why. Given that it works under proton, why bother? If there is a Linux and Windows version then the devs have two different bug channels and patches have to be deployed to two different platforms and kept in sync for multiplayer.

I actually don't mind if Proton becomes effectively a Linux API. What I would like to see, even if we don't get devs making native linux games is them fully testing and properly supporting *proton* as a target system. I care about playing games, not about ideological native support for what would be closed source software anyway.

Enjoy your Wine (Proton). Viva Valve.

I think this is good news, Feral ports were usually not very good: lower performance, delayed patches, additional bugs, etc.. The very idea of "porting" smells of a sub-par product.
I like to see *native* releases; it they cannot provide that, ensuring good compatibility with Proton may be better than a port.

The last Feral ports (i.e. Vulkan) run better than the proton/dxvk version. See for example total war here or Shadow of the tomb raider.

So... if Feral isn't porting it for Linux due to Proton... that just means they make no money on the sale of the game, right? As it is published by Sega. Sega gets that money. Sounds like Feral is going to give in and try to survive off the Mac? Most macs can't even run the total war games...

Most of their ports these days are on the Nintendo Switch and iOS.

We'll probably see a native Linux port from them someday again and they will continue porting to Mac OS as well. However, those two platforms are probably low priority for them at this point.

As someone who admittedly never bought or played any of the Feral ports since they were tied to Steam, I have to wonder how much of a ripple effect Proton will have on the native games and developers I do support. I just hope that the kind of developers willing to go DRM free are also the ones most likely to see the benefits of cross-platform development.

I guess I should point out that Valve have never said anything they do is intended to lead to more native ports. Quite the opposite actually - they've officially said not to bother!

So just like Google never said that Stadia would encourage native desktop GNU/Linux game development and people kind of assumed it would happen, Valve have never said it either and it probably won't happen.

This was one concern long ago about the approach VP did, but at least they supported the title running under GNU/Linux. There's not even that here, and native development (and support) is being discouraged - the result of which is this news. I can't see it ending well for GNU/Linux desktop gaming.

It would make more sense to me to encourage devs/publisher to provide native builds and have Proton as a fallback.
Best would be to establish in-house know how and awareness for nativ ports. Doesn't happen this way.

Just think Microsoft comes up with a Direct3D 13, completely incompatible and there is no such working Proton channel.
No way they could pull off something reliably working within months.

It would take a long time to appear DX13 exclusive games.
Its not good to depend on MS, but they cant change the whole development scene that quickly

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

on the one hand you have 1 game from feral and maybe some other devs not porting their game to linux

on the other hand you have 1000s of games you can play, including the ones they would have ported.

imho the answer is pretty clear

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

on the one hand you have 1 game from feral and maybe some other devs not porting their game to linux

on the other hand you have 1000s of games you can play, including the ones they would have ported.

imho the answer is pretty clear

I mean... maybe to be a little gross. But isn't this sort of like the short term gratification of getting a hooker... but then later down the road you figure out you caught something nasty and long term are forever cursed? That's kind of what this seems like, bad things long term, for short term solution.

For me, the specific use case of Proton is for games that would never even remotely get a native port. Games that are years old, and no longer supported. Or for games that won't even run on Windows 10.

but there is generally less demand for native titles since Valve’s launch of Proton.

Here's what I read..

How well this game runs in Proton already represents more then the amount of effort that can be justified putting into a native port for Linux right now.

If Linux had more than 0.9% market share, this wouldn't happen.

Because if Linux had more than 0.9% market share, Feral would very much so care how well their game runs on Linux, enough to want to control the experience by developing a native version and offering the best experience possible, rather than just settling for whatever works via Proton.

This doesn't harm the goal of growing the Linux marketshare, it's just an acknowledgement of how small our marketshare is.


Last edited by gradyvuckovic on 28 July 2021 at 6:18 am UTC