According to Kodera Software, developer of the space sim ΔV: Rings of Saturn, quite a lot of bug reports come from Linux users considering the smaller share but that's not actually a bad thing. If you're interested be sure to check out our previous interview with the developer.
Speaking in a Reddit post, creator Mariusz Chwalba mentions how a "disproportionally" large amount of bug reports for their game were being made by Linux users. After actually investigating it, the outcome was a bit of a surprise and not what might be expected. Instead of it being a case of low sales and high support needs, it's somewhat the opposite.
For a game that's now sold over 12,000 units only 700 were from Linux so that's about 5.8% of sales. Out of 1,040 bug reports it seems that about 400 of those were made by Linux users. So on face value, that it's pretty high as Chwalba says "That’s one report per 11.5 users on average, and one report per 1.75 Linux players. That’s right, an average Linux player will get you 650% more bug reports".
So it is it a lot of extra work? Not even close.
Out of those 400 bugs reported, only 3 were actually platform-specific to Linux. As the heading in the Reddit post says "Bugs exist whenever you know about them, or not" and that's certainly true of anything. The rest of the bugs reported affected all players with the dev noting how "the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs" and that " This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone".
Were the bug reports any good? It seems so. Bug reports from their Linux users often had "all the software/os versions, all the logs, you get core dumps and you get replication steps".
Is it worth it then? Seems so "Oh, yes - at least for me. Not for the extra sales - although it’s nice. It’s worth it to get the massive feedback boost and free, hundred-people strong QA team on your side. An invaluable asset for an independent game studio".
You can buy ΔV: Rings of Saturn on itch.io and Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
rustybroomhandle Oct 25, 2021
They do not realise that (aside from all the money spent on this by Valve) there has been a horde of Linux users on the Proton/vkd3d/dxvk github issues discussions providing logs, traces, reports, etc.
we are around 1% of steam users yet we are making 5,8% of purchases for this game
I really would like to know how the percentage of Linux users is determined. If I buy from my phone would the sale be counted as windows or Linux?We have info on our Steam Tracker.
I really would like to know how the percentage of Linux users is determined. If I buy from my phone would the sale be counted as windows or Linux?On Steam:
Linux sales are based on platform of purchase; or after 7 days, the platform with the most minutes playedSo... as long as you play after purchasing, you count.
Last edited by koder on 25 October 2021 at 12:02 pm UTC
I really would like to know how the percentage of Linux users is determined. If I buy from my phone would the sale be counted as windows or Linux?We have info on our Steam Tracker.
Yes. So ios / android sales default to windows. I wager that happens a lot...
we are around 1% of steam users yet we are making 5,8% of purchases for this gameThat either shows that Linuxers are even more interested in this type of games,
or
that there is a world outside steam. You can also buy ΔV on GOG.....
Well, yes, there is a world outside Steam... However, the since those are the global sales figures from that dev, not specifically the steam sales figures, the net ratio of linux users to non-linux users is what it is.
I can imagine the proportion of steam linux gaming users are way higher than non-steam linux gaming users, so the 1% figure is probably not too low below the total gamers vs. non-gamers ratio (more likely higher?) ...
...so you'd get something like 12.000 total sales of which 8.000 are steam sales (no idea about this ratio, just an example)... and 700 linux sales across sales platforms, which would be comprised of ~500 linux sales through steam and some 200 linux sales on GOG maybe. Net result is maybe-not-that-much-more/likely-less than 1% linux gamers responsible for those 5,8%
There is also some game type eschew between platforms, but I'd venture to say that's just repressed demand due to the types of games that have more or less linux support (eg: competitive online multiplayer games being less likely to have native linux support than indie single-player stuff, for very understandable technicall reasons), and that the ones that do release for linux in underrepresented/undersupported genres will actually see high linux demand too.
In any case this is all conjecture until observed over real data and analysed with proper statistical methods.
Last edited by Marlock on 25 October 2021 at 3:16 pm UTC
we are around 1% of steam users yet we are making 5,8% of purchases for this game
That either shows that Linuxers are even more interested in this type of games,
or
that there is a world outside steam. You can also buy ΔV on GOG.....
Well, it's not hard to believe that a higher percentage of GOG users than Steam users are on Linux compared to Windows (though neither would I count on this being the case). However, it is hard to believe that more than 5.8% of GOG users are on Linux (which is what would be implied by attributing the difference to GOG sales). My suspicion is that a higher percentage of Linux users pay attention to indie game developers when they support Linux.
Last edited by CFWhitman on 26 October 2021 at 6:22 pm UTC
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