Update: 28/08/21 - The developer is now looking into putting up a Beta version to get the community to help test. So it's possible they may restore native Linux support.
Original article:
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, a silly single-player adventure that reviewed well and one I personally enjoyed has decided to drop Linux support.
Snoozy Kazoo and Graffiti Games recently put out a big free update for the game, which is not coming to Linux. On their Steam forum, the developer posted this announcement on August 19:
Attention gamers and tax evaders,
We will be dropping support for Linux beyond the June 16th release of the game on Linux. If you have the Linux version installed, it will not be updated with future content and fixes unfortunately. You will need to download the Windows or Mac version for future updates.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but it has been a struggle to reliably build and test the Linux version, so it will not be updated in the future.
No further explanation was given on what issues they encountered. It's built with the Unity game engine, which usually has pretty good Linux support so we can only speculate as to anything more on it until they decided to expand on the reasons for it.
A real shame when this happens but it's part of the struggle of being a niche platform. Hopefully the upcoming Steam Deck (which is powered by Linux) will eventually see more developers look to support their games directly either through native builds they have control over, or regular testing with Steam Play Proton.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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They chose to simply ditch a platform. The people on that platform have been shafted, treated like second-class citizens. Of course they have a right to demand their money back.
If you take, say, £50K sales, and assume we're 1%... that's £500. Sure, that's a chunk of money to an individual, but c'mon. If you run your studio like a business, and your experiment with Linux didn't yield results - pony up the five hundred quid. Take the hit and move on.
Exactly.
Are we tiny minority that doesn't matter, in which case pony up. Or are we actually often a reasonable portion of sales and the dev outfit just can't handle the support burden?
They aren't planning on any support burden. I don't know why people would think that you could skip testing and have no bugs in the result, but here we are. Testing brings its own benefits outside of the final sales, but bugs after release that you couldn't be bothered to test for? 1% extra ain't never gonna cover fixing that.
Even Valve's don't port your single-platform spaghetti code, just use Proton advice says that you need to actually test the thing, and they even give instructions on how to do it.
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Kimyrielle Aug 30, 2021
Allow me to clarify, IIUC, kokokk's point is that even if the developer truly wants to support the platform and even if they honestly will try their best, forcing them like suggested may scare them so much they would decide not to take the risk.They wouldn't be forced to support anything. They'd just have to give the money back if they lied about providing support when they don't, rather than just keeping it.
To put it another way: if you've written on your store page that you're going to support a platform, to entice customers on that platform to give you money, but you are unable or unwilling to provide that support, why should you get to keep the money?
I get your point, but your assumption is that any developer who drops Linux support has a malicious intent, and they were trying to cheat people out of their money right from the get go. That's where the disagreement really is. I don't believe for example the developer in this article intentionally thought "let me boost my sales by 1% through lies and deceit". They simply bit more than they could chew.
Well, here is the thing. 100% of game developers who ever promised their game to run on Linux and it ended up not doing so, were either malicious or incompetent. There is no other explanation. All games can be made to run on Linux. 100% of them, 100% of the time. If your game does NOT run on Linux...that was your CHOICE. And if that was your choice (which it always was), and you promised otherwise...the only remaining explanation for your action is malice or incompetence. Take your pick.
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While I agree this is what happened in the past, one cant take it for granted about the future.Allow me to clarify, IIUC, kokokk's point is that even if the developer truly wants to support the platform and even if they honestly will try their best, forcing them like suggested may scare them so much they would decide not to take the risk.They wouldn't be forced to support anything. They'd just have to give the money back if they lied about providing support when they don't, rather than just keeping it.
To put it another way: if you've written on your store page that you're going to support a platform, to entice customers on that platform to give you money, but you are unable or unwilling to provide that support, why should you get to keep the money?
I get your point, but your assumption is that any developer who drops Linux support has a malicious intent, and they were trying to cheat people out of their money right from the get go. That's where the disagreement really is. I don't believe for example the developer in this article intentionally thought "let me boost my sales by 1% through lies and deceit". They simply bit more than they could chew.
Well, here is the thing. 100% of game developers who ever promised their game to run on Linux and it ended up not doing so, were either malicious or incompetent. There is no other explanation. All games can be made to run on Linux. 100% of them, 100% of the time. If your game does NOT run on Linux...that was your CHOICE. And if that was your choice (which it always was), and you promised otherwise...the only remaining explanation for your action is malice or incompetence. Take your pick.
Probably, best thing to do would be:
- allowing refund requests due to ceased support
- evaluate them case by case.
Last edited by kokoko3k on 30 August 2021 at 4:46 am UTC
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If a developer supports Linux, I buy and play the game to the end, with no intention of replaying it, then they remove Linux support, should they give a full refund?Yes.
They've had an interest-free loan from all their affected customers, and they get to not be dicks. Easy choice.
So at the end of the day/year/decade, all games will be free on every platform, because no developer will be able support them forever.
But I agree: easy choice. Even though I develop on Linux, publishing for Linux is probably not worse the trouble.
I get your point... but they're still developing the other platforms. That's the problem here. Not that "after an arbitrary length of time passing, all games must therefore be free because we want a refund".
They chose to simply ditch a platform. The people on that platform have been shafted, treated like second-class citizens. Of course they have a right to demand their money back.
scaine, I didn't replied to you, because I agree. That is an obvious problem in this particular case just as in many others.
I replied to CatKiller who apparently believes that unconditional refunds are a great solution, while I and others expect that such rules would scare developers away from Linux.
If Steam can find a smart solution for this problem, I am all for it. Getting automatic refunds for games I haven't touched for five years or losing all of my earnings from a Linux game after 20 years, because I release an anniversary update just for Windows, doesn't sound smart or acceptable to me.
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I replied to CatKiller who apparently believes that unconditional refunds are a great solution, while I and others expect that such rules would scare developers away from Linux.Yep, and I replied to you because I don't think CatKiller was suggesting any such thing, and I wanted to clarify that there's a big difference between demanding unconditional refunds years later, and demanding unconditional refunds when your platform is withdrawn.
Valve's refund system isn't perfect - indeed, a developer has recently very publicly left the scene because their sub-2-hour game was consistently refunded after completion (despite positive ratings). That's definitely not cool.
Not sure what the answer is, but given the scale Valve operate at, case-by-case analysis probably isn't on the cards here.
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Just dropping in to say that there should be now a beta branch with name linuxqa. So if somebody wants to test the game and give feedback to the developer, it's now possible.
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Just dropping in to say that there should be now a beta branch with name linuxqa. So if somebody wants to test the game and give feedback to the developer, it's now possible.
Latest patch has Linux support again, so beta branch is no longer needed. It's not advertised on store page (yet?) and Liam was already asking about that.
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