Feral Interactive have no plans to update their Linux ports for Steam Deck

I know, some people are still clinging to the "No Tux, No Bux" mantra, but in reality, we're unlikely to see another major AAA game on Linux native anytime soon.

And I'd say "Good riddance!".
NTNB FTW all the way!

I think Feral are out of porting business, so lack of support is not surprising. What are they doing these days?

Why would they update their old ports when the original publisher will get all the benefits without paying them?
I totally understand their position.

To be honest, I expected Feral and Aspyr do less porting-to-Linux and more facilitating-Proton-compatibility after the market had changed, but I guess it just doesn't make sense from business perspective, or maybe publishers were not interested in such services. I am grateful for what they did, when they did it, and have no expectations beyond what I got.

Disappointing, but not surprising. Seems that porting houses will always lag behind primary developers in terms of long-term support.

The Ubuntu thing is an internal standard since they started porting to Linux because it was the trending distro by then. Though they work on Fedora (and test on Ubuntu).
They've always been avoiding officially supporting any other distro because it's a mess to trouble shoot, what OS with which kernel on which desktop environment with which libraries, is it LTS or bleeding edge unstable repos, and so forth and so on.

So basically adapting their whole toolchain to switch to SteamOS 3.0 which is not released yet (though they could have asked for access), doing all the fine tuned adjustments for each and every game despite their philosophy to leave the original as much untouched they can, to finally dedicate most of their QA effort on Steam Deck units they would probably have not received in time.
All this for games they mostly already sold anyway within the lowest market share platform, for no further benefit working for Deck support.
Tbh I can't blame them.

Not to mention the Deck requirements are actually not trivial, fonts (which is a freaking nightmare, took them a couple years on Rome remastered to get it right), suspend and resume/cloud cross play, 720p, controls, battery life optimisations.
ONLY game devs actually understand how much effort is required for any single point of above.

Finally not even gonna talk about them kinda not planning more Linux projects, there is a "before" and an "after" Proton, it was great but I left for a reason.


Last edited by a0kami on 21 Feb 2022 at 7:09 pm UTC

I guess it's another win for Valve and Open source successes. I guess I feel slightly conflicted about it. While I appreciate Feral's work, I'm also glad that open source tools like Wine/Proton have finally taken over in a meaningful way.

I guess it's both a loss and a gain.

it is a loss.
on one hand, its good that an general purpose solution like wine/proton is better than porting, but that says more about the porting process and quality than about wine.
the ideal solution is linux geting enough marketshare to be threated like an first class citizen and open apis like vulkan becoming the standard.
its almost like if we were living the flash era vs html5 era, flash was multiplatform but had an crap support for linux, where html5 would be the "native" solution, using open standards.
while wine is gpl, directX isnt.

Absolutely disgusting statement from Feral but their GNU+Linux native games will work on any distro. It's not like they can restrict them to Ubuntu.

I'm not buying anymore games they've ported or developed going forward, which is fine by me.

Such comments really disturb me and it happens again and again. If a company invests in Linux gaming and drops out or just skips a title for any reason, everyone screams evil and boycot.
Easier to ignore us. If valve makes the game somewhat playable, people will buy.

Feral had a key role in making LinuxGaming as awesome as it is today. It's sad they are not profiting from the current momentum. At the same time it's awesome we are not dependent on porting houses and their ability to get publishers into a contract any more. These contracts often were strangely restricted, we are aware of that for a long time. It's not their games and if the publisher doesn't make it worthwhile for them, they have done their job and are not forced to do work for no pay. Times have changed and they are free to go on. We should wish them luck and maybe they will play a role in the future.


Last edited by const on 21 Feb 2022 at 7:28 pm UTC

I think Feral are out of porting business, so lack of support is not surprising. What are they doing these days?

They are still porting Warhammer III to Linux. Other than that, they having been mostly porting to iOS. They have done some Switch and Android ports as well.

https://www.feralinteractive.com/en/ios-games/ [External Link]

Many Windows-only games are being updated for Steam Deck. Controller support, correct controller glyphs, readable text, support for the quick suspend mode, on-screen keyboard support.

This is not the job of a porter though - it is something that needs to be fixed in the ported source.
Porting is not about altering the content or functionality of the source at all - not even font sizes - it's about making a code base run on another platform.


Last edited by Beamboom on 21 Feb 2022 at 8:05 pm UTC

I love Feral and I respect a lot their work, they are amazing. But yeah, fragmentation IS a issue, and Linux do a little to support older softwares (which is comprehensive) while Windows has a system bloated to just works™.

As their ports doesn't runs in a container, sooner or later it will stop working.

good point, as an reminder, we CANT blame feral for only supporting one distro, its the fragmentation fault that things wich work on one might not work on others to begin with, not feral fault.

I know, some people are still clinging to the "No Tux, No Bux" mantra, but in reality, we're unlikely to see another major AAA game on Linux native anytime soon.

And I'd say "Good riddance!".
NTNB FTW all the way!

i hope you at least play the games even if you have to pirate then, otherwise the only one losing will be yourself, and you will regreat it later looking back.

I think Feral are out of porting business, so lack of support is not surprising. What are they doing these days?

Android, iOS, switch ports (and a few mac/linux) there will always be a market for ports.
https://www.feralinteractive.com/br/upcoming/ [External Link]

To be honest, I expected Feral and Aspyr do less porting-to-Linux and more facilitating-Proton-compatibility after the market had changed, but I guess it just doesn't make sense from business perspective, or maybe publishers were not interested in such services. I am grateful for what they did, when they did it, and have no expectations beyond what I got.

they have the know how for sure, and it would be a better use of their know how to work on a general purpose solution than individual cases.
maybe it dont make sense for their bosses cause that will hurt the demand for the company , but it would make sense for their employees to work at proton.

I guess it's another win for Valve and Open source successes. I guess I feel slightly conflicted about it. While I appreciate Feral's work, I'm also glad that open source tools like Wine/Proton have finally taken over in a meaningful way.

I guess it's both a loss and a gain.

it is a loss.
on one hand, its good that an general purpose solution like wine/proton is better than porting, but that says more about the porting process and quality than about wine.
the ideal solution is linux geting enough marketshare to be threated like an first class citizen and open apis like vulkan becoming the standard.
its almost like if we were living the flash era vs html5 era, flash was multiplatform but had an crap support for linux, where html5 would be the "native" solution, using open standards.
while wine is gpl, directX isnt.

Is it? I'm under the impression most of these porting companies use wrappers, don't they? It's not like they all rewrote the binary and renderer into openGL. Maybe some did, but Valve has toGL, I forget what Aspry's wrapper was, etc. I'd bet some of these older ports looked a lot like a windows game under the hood, and the proprietary porting tech worked a lot like wine in some cases. Heck, there are even projects using DXVK as a wrapper for porting. I believe there are a number of Linux releases on GOG that are essentially wrapped with Wine.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, in a sense, we've put the power to "port" into our own hands, at a level simple users like me can leverage. And if a "native" port is just using its own wrappers and layers under the hood, is there really a huge moral difference there?

I love Feral and I respect a lot their work, they are amazing. But yeah, fragmentation IS a issue, and Linux do a little to support older softwares (which is comprehensive) while Windows has a system bloated to just works™.

As their ports doesn't runs in a container, sooner or later it will stop working.

good point, as an reminder, we CANT blame feral for only supporting one distro, its the fragmentation fault that things wich work on one might not work on others to begin with, not feral fault.

I'd expect the contract to port to be very specific with regards to what they are porting to, probably down to a specific distro/version. Imagine if you were told to port a game to "every Linux distro"; it would be impossible! Maybe some people here who do porting or freelance work have better insight, but it seems sensible to me to be very specific on the deliverables as a protection from client abuse/allegations.

I love Feral and I respect a lot their work, they are amazing. But yeah, fragmentation IS a issue, and Linux do a little to support older softwares (which is comprehensive) while Windows has a system bloated to just works™.

As their ports doesn't runs in a container, sooner or later it will stop working.

good point, as an reminder, we CANT blame feral for only supporting one distro, its the fragmentation fault that things wich work on one might not work on others to begin with, not feral fault.

I'd expect the contract to port to be very specific with regards to what they are porting to, probably down to a specific distro/version. Imagine if you were told to port a game to "every Linux distro"; it would be impossible! Maybe some people here who do porting or freelance work have better insight, but it seems sensible to me to be very specific on the deliverables as a protection from client abuse/allegations.

android is a distro, imagine geting permission to port to android because you can port to ubuntu...
companies would never allow that

Absolutely disgusting statement from Feral but their GNU+Linux native games will work on any distro. It's not like they can restrict them to Ubuntu.

I'm not buying anymore games they've ported or developed going forward, which is fine by me.

Such comments really disturb me and it happens again and again. If a company invests in Linux gaming and drops out or just skips a title for any reason, everyone screams evil and boycot.
Easier to ignore us. If valve makes the game somewhat playable, people will buy.

Feral had a key role in making LinuxGaming as awesome as it is today. It's sad they are not profiting from the current momentum. At the same time it's awesome we are not dependent on porting houses and their ability to get publishers into a contract any more. These contracts often were strangely restricted, we are aware of that for a long time. It's not their games and if the publisher doesn't make it worthwhile for them, they have done their job and are not forced to do work for no pay. Times have changed and they are free to go on. We should wish them luck and maybe they will play a role in the future.

Amen, and I hope so.

Proton is great, but if it puts an end to native ports, it could wind up being a real can of worms!

I mean look at web browsers for example: they've all become chromium clones or lookalikes because of a certain browser being bundled in so many installers over the years. Firefox webextensions can't do half of what XUL addons could, and none of the forks are tenable in the long term. Now most browsers all look and act the same, and I hate it!

The current generation of programmers seem dead-set on taking choices away from the user... phooey!

I guess it's another win for Valve and Open source successes. I guess I feel slightly conflicted about it. While I appreciate Feral's work, I'm also glad that open source tools like Wine/Proton have finally taken over in a meaningful way.

I guess it's both a loss and a gain.

it is a loss.
on one hand, its good that an general purpose solution like wine/proton is better than porting, but that says more about the porting process and quality than about wine.
the ideal solution is linux geting enough marketshare to be threated like an first class citizen and open apis like vulkan becoming the standard.
its almost like if we were living the flash era vs html5 era, flash was multiplatform but had an crap support for linux, where html5 would be the "native" solution, using open standards.
while wine is gpl, directX isnt.

Is it? I'm under the impression most of these porting companies use wrappers, don't they? It's not like they all rewrote the binary and renderer into openGL. Maybe some did, but Valve has toGL, I forget what Aspry's wrapper was, etc. I'd bet some of these older ports looked a lot like a windows game under the hood, and the proprietary porting tech worked a lot like wine in some cases. Heck, there are even projects using DXVK as a wrapper for porting. I believe there are a number of Linux releases on GOG that are essentially wrapped with Wine.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, in a sense, we've put the power to "port" into our own hands, at a level simple users like me can leverage. And if a "native" port is just using its own wrappers and layers under the hood, is there really a huge moral difference there?

take a look at this conference, where the company who ported dying light to linux comment about the porting process:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2015/04/techland-presentation-on-porting-dying-light-to-linux/

TL:DR, it was impossible to rewrite the code writen by 200 employees with only 2~3 employees, especially considering that the game was still under development and as a result the code was changing all the time, so they had to seek for paterns and make an translator or layer or soomething akin to that.
but if they relied only on this layers, the performance would tank and no computer in the world would be able to play the game in an acceptable framerate even on minimal setings, so they had to manually optimize any bootnecks.

i think that is how you port anything, write an general purpose code converter, then look at the profilers to see what is kiling the performance and optimize by hand.

as for anyone who want to complain that 'this or that company' is lazy, then go port something, there are plenty of open source projects on github that are windows only.
in the mean time, try to turn this ports of you into an sustainable business model, and if you can, you can complain about feral all you want.

They do not have contracts for the IPs for SteamDeck. I think it's as simple as that.

A lot of the games they ported would be a good experience on steamdeck. But that would require the publishers to agree for the revenue cut to go to feral, without that it makes no sense for them.

And supporting steamos 3 .. seriously is a non issue technically.


Last edited by STiAT on 21 Feb 2022 at 9:00 pm UTC