November marked 7 months of Linux rising on Steam & 5 months above 1%

It's been at least two years since I had the popup on my main gaming machine, but within the last two weeks I've had it pop up on two of my other machines (with significantly lower specs).

Quoting: elmapul370 million dollars may sound like a lot, but its not, the cost of production of an modern game can go easy to something like 200~250 millions, and those companies dont make games for margins of profit lower than 20%.
not to mention that the money dont belong to a single person who might be an good person that believes in linux/free software and want to see it suceeed, it belong to a bunch of stake holders so its very unlikely we can convince all of the parties involved to support us.

For big budget games, around half the cost goes on marketing (so platform doesn't matter). The biggest chunk of the remainder goes on asset creation - models, textures, motion capture, voice recording, scripts, and so on (where platform doesn't matter). The next biggest chunk goes on the game engine, with particular emphasis on the rendering loop since it's so critical to performance. Platform doesn't inherently matter here, but some platforms have poor support for some rendering APIs. The part where it really matters which platform you're on - your compile target, how you handle files, how you handle input - is a really tiny part of it. If you're not using a platform-specific engine, then adding another platform is cheap.

What isn't cheap, and what scares people away from new platforms (other than simply being bribed for exclusivity), is testing and support costs. It needs to be clear that those costs are going to be significantly lower than the additional revenue that they'll get from the new platform, and that they couldn't make as much extra money by doing something else (like adding new languages).

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: elmapul370 million dollars may sound like a lot, but its not, the cost of production of an modern game can go easy to something like 200~250 millions, and those companies dont make games for margins of profit lower than 20%.
not to mention that the money dont belong to a single person who might be an good person that believes in linux/free software and want to see it suceeed, it belong to a bunch of stake holders so its very unlikely we can convince all of the parties involved to support us.

For big budget games, around half the cost goes on marketing (so platform doesn't matter). The biggest chunk of the remainder goes on asset creation - models, textures, motion capture, voice recording, scripts, and so on (where platform doesn't matter). The next biggest chunk goes on the game engine, with particular emphasis on the rendering loop since it's so critical to performance. Platform doesn't inherently matter here, but some platforms have poor support for some rendering APIs. The part where it really matters which platform you're on - your compile target, how you handle files, how you handle input - is a really tiny part of it. If you're not using a platform-specific engine, then adding another platform is cheap.

What isn't cheap, and what scares people away from new platforms (other than simply being bribed for exclusivity), is testing and support costs. It needs to be clear that those costs are going to be significantly lower than the additional revenue that they'll get from the new platform, and that they couldn't make as much extra money by doing something else (like adding new languages).

It's sad to see that most of the big companies are giving more money to marketing than actual development. I understand that you need marketing so the market is aware of the product, but the product itself should have some quality and not only good advertisement.

I would say that if they spent less on marketing and more on making the actual game, it will be much better for their revenues. But I didn't saw any actual numbers, so it's just my opinion.

Quoting: ZlopezIt's sad to see that most of the big companies are giving more money to marketing than actual development. I understand that you need marketing so the market is aware of the product, but the product itself should have some quality and not only good advertisement.

I would say that if they spent less on marketing and more on making the actual game, it will be much better for their revenues. But I didn't saw any actual numbers, so it's just my opinion.

Sadly the data does show that good marketing leads to good sales, and that good games don't necessarily lead to good sales. There's quite a big analytics industry that's looked at it.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: elmapul370 million dollars may sound like a lot, but its not, the cost of production of an modern game can go easy to something like 200~250 millions, and those companies dont make games for margins of profit lower than 20%.
not to mention that the money dont belong to a single person who might be an good person that believes in linux/free software and want to see it suceeed, it belong to a bunch of stake holders so its very unlikely we can convince all of the parties involved to support us.

For big budget games, around half the cost goes on marketing (so platform doesn't matter). The biggest chunk of the remainder goes on asset creation - models, textures, motion capture, voice recording, scripts, and so on (where platform doesn't matter). The next biggest chunk goes on the game engine, with particular emphasis on the rendering loop since it's so critical to performance. Platform doesn't inherently matter here, but some platforms have poor support for some rendering APIs. The part where it really matters which platform you're on - your compile target, how you handle files, how you handle input - is a really tiny part of it. If you're not using a platform-specific engine, then adding another platform is cheap.

What isn't cheap, and what scares people away from new platforms (other than simply being bribed for exclusivity), is testing and support costs. It needs to be clear that those costs are going to be significantly lower than the additional revenue that they'll get from the new platform, and that they couldn't make as much extra money by doing something else (like adding new languages).

This is why it was such a huge win back in the day when engines like Unity added Linux support.
Not that the AAA are going to be using Unity, but in the lower tiers I wouldn't be surprised if we owe a lot of Linux native games to that.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 2 December 2021 at 5:10 pm UTC

Quoting: mr-victoryBut we are stronger than ever. And we are growing.

sigh.
any sucessfull gaming platform grow faster, an sucessfull platform grown from 0 to 40 millions~ 157 millions in an space of just 5~10 years.

we are at ~15 millions of users and we have been like this for almost 25 years!
(and not all of then are gamers)
those small changes in marketshare are caused by facors like staticstic errors or chinese gamers moving into or out of steam, not by people installing in masses an platform or purchasing linux machines.

Well, let's not lose hope. Last month I commented that if the rate of increase continued at a compounding rate, the exponential growth would lead us to world domination in ~9 years or something.
And today I'd like to note that if the rate of increase we saw over the last 9 months were to continue arithmetically, adding that same amount reliably every 9 months on average, we'd be at nearly 50% in only 100 years!


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 2 December 2021 at 5:38 pm UTC

Judging by the look of that graph, we might need to stop fitting just a straight line pretty soon. At least a second-order polynomial.

Quoting: elmapul370 million dollars may sound like a lot, but its not, the cost of production of an modern game can go easy to something like 200~250 millions

A modern AAA game, sure. I doubt most indie games (of which there are vastly more than AAA games) cost more than a few million to develop, at most. I see this a lot, that people conflate "modern game" == "AAA game", and it bugs me no end. There are tons of modern indie games that came out this year.

Quoting: PhiladelphusA modern AAA game, sure. I doubt most indie games (of which there are vastly more than AAA games) cost more than a few million to develop

omg i say the words AAA and Triple A or blockbuster all the freaking time, i cant believe i forgot right now.
on the other hand, people always complain when i use those terms.

Quoting: ZlopezIt's sad to see that most of the big companies are giving more money to marketing than actual development. I understand that you need marketing so the market is aware of the product, but the product itself should have some quality and not only good advertisement.

actually, many games are expensive to make too, i forgot to mention that about 75% of the budget is marketing, in the case of GTA5 it was 100 millions but only because at the scale they did their marketing it was impossible to put more money into it than they already put. (i mean, if some one didnt purchased the game already with their marketing than this person would not buy for any reason no matter how many ads they see)
that said, i think many companies already invest in their game as much as they can, puting more people at the project would not translate into more quality, i would just make the management more of an hell than it already is, i think the reason why a lot of games launched with tons of bugs has more to do with poor management than not puting enough money into it.
there are exceptions of course, nintendo games dont seem to be the type of game with an huge cost of production, they make simpler graphics but with a gameplay that is very polished instead of focusing on cuting edge graphics, they can invest more than they do but dont.
and gamefreak is lazy as hell, they can put a LOT more effort into their games.
i cant comment in many individual cases, i didnt played much in the last 10 years.