Armello, a grim fairy-tale board game from League of Geeks no longer advertises that it supports Linux and macOS due to their new party system that landed with the cross-play update.
In the news post they mention how there's "No Party Functionality (including Private Games) on MacOSX & native Linux. Due to the severity of this one, we've removed any advertising of support for Linux & Mac from Steam (and shortly Humble Bundle), though folks can still purchase and play those versions.".
Giving a little more detail on their official site it mentions how "The service provider we use for Armello’s multiplayer infrastructure has decided to cease support for their party services on MacOSX and Linux. Unfortunately, this means that Party Functionality, including Private Multiplayer, is no longer available in Armello on MacOSX and native Linux platforms." but they don't go on to name whatever company that is.
For the Native Linux and macOS versions, they're still functional and up to date they just don't have the new party system or private matches. For Linux users though you can use Proton to run the Windows version, which fully works. It also has a Steam Deck Playable rating, which uses Proton now too.
This isn't the only game to go a similar route, with ARK: Survival Evolved recently putting the Linux Native version behind a Beta.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Arehandoro Jul 15, 2022
Prior to the release of v2.2, multiplayer on Proton would not work either. I really hope it's now fixed, it's one of the few games I play online with friends.
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I've very much enjoyed playing Armello, but I have only ever been able to get the Proton version to work. When I inquired about issues with the native version I was told that it runs fine on their studio Linux machines and they were working on improvements to the Proton experience. I asked what the specs were for their studio Linux machines (thinking that if I knew the differences I could maybe fix things myself) and received no response.
It's a good game, but I haven't been impressed with this studio's support.
It's a good game, but I haven't been impressed with this studio's support.
1 Likes, Who?
The amount of people that don't understand the difference between native gaming and Proton is simply astonishing. Proton is not a replacement and if you value yourself as a consumer you should never be complacent with a proton version. The state of software and how companies behave digitally is entirely responsibility of the consumer, just gather some courage and demand what you want, and don't yield if the company doesn't support your platform and privacy concerns. Just don't buy it, it's a game you don't need it! And this includes mac people! Don't allow software companies to Rosetta all over your face!
Having said that, the other side of the argument is also way off. Armello explained that they will keep updating the platforms to be on the same release/content as the Windows version, for both Linux and MacOS. Retaining all functionality EXCEPT: Crossplay, private games and "Party".
Source: https://armello.com/partysupport/
Why did this happen? As Stated on armello's discussion board, website and forum, they don't handle their own servers, and they don't code their own multiplayer logic, instead they use a third party provider for all their multiplayer features. This provider doesn't support anything other than windows on the desktop, so the Armello team decided to comply with this.
Maybe the Armello team were using something like GameSpark which went down a couple months ago and will shut servers down on September. Many games had to move to other third party backends, and one of the most popular as of today is Microsoft's Azure Gaming, which you guessed is only Windows. We don't know for sure.
Personally I think it's embarassing to not host your own game's backend, and it's disrespectful to your customers if you don't have this transparency, most people didn't knew this was going on until it exploded.
I own Armello on Steam, I never played with other people, for me it was just a single player board game to blow some steam off. I play native games and stay with them. Sadly this news from Armello has pushed me to stop playing it, because I don't want second hand citizenship from them.
Having said that, the other side of the argument is also way off. Armello explained that they will keep updating the platforms to be on the same release/content as the Windows version, for both Linux and MacOS. Retaining all functionality EXCEPT: Crossplay, private games and "Party".
Source: https://armello.com/partysupport/
Why did this happen? As Stated on armello's discussion board, website and forum, they don't handle their own servers, and they don't code their own multiplayer logic, instead they use a third party provider for all their multiplayer features. This provider doesn't support anything other than windows on the desktop, so the Armello team decided to comply with this.
Maybe the Armello team were using something like GameSpark which went down a couple months ago and will shut servers down on September. Many games had to move to other third party backends, and one of the most popular as of today is Microsoft's Azure Gaming, which you guessed is only Windows. We don't know for sure.
Personally I think it's embarassing to not host your own game's backend, and it's disrespectful to your customers if you don't have this transparency, most people didn't knew this was going on until it exploded.
I own Armello on Steam, I never played with other people, for me it was just a single player board game to blow some steam off. I play native games and stay with them. Sadly this news from Armello has pushed me to stop playing it, because I don't want second hand citizenship from them.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: EzequielPersonally I think it's embarassing to not host your own game's backend, and it's disrespectful to your customers if you don't have this transparency, most people didn't knew this was going on until it exploded.
I mostly agree but, I do sympathize with them and understand why they don't.
Have you ever ran your own dedicated server box and had to scale to the thousands? It's another whole skill set that perhaps none of them have or have the time for because they need to focus on other aspects of making games and running the essential business side of things. Maybe it's on their / someone's to-do list. It's also quite possible they don't have the money to pay another person to run the server for them.
It'd be nice if they, and everyone else, did run their own server hardware and could guarantee 99.99% uptime but, that is a high bar to meet and I'm sure if they don't, gamers will have their torches lit.
That all being said, taking a look at LoG's website, there sure are a good number of individuals involved. Let's see if they can make it past the $3,000-10,000 hurdle to buy a server and get everything setup, backed up, migrated, and running smoothly.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: EWGSolid points, although I do feel that if you've got the thousands of players, but don't have the money to set up the servers for those players (including staffing them) then you've made some kind of mistake on the business side of things.Quoting: EzequielPersonally I think it's embarassing to not host your own game's backend, and it's disrespectful to your customers if you don't have this transparency, most people didn't knew this was going on until it exploded.
I mostly agree but, I do sympathize with them and understand why they don't.
Have you ever ran your own dedicated server box and had to scale to the thousands? It's another whole skill set that perhaps none of them have or have the time for because they need to focus on other aspects of making games and running the essential business side of things. Maybe it's on their / someone's to-do list. It's also quite possible they don't have the money to pay another person to run the server for them.
3 Likes, Who?
I've requested a refund for the base game and DLC. Shame, I could see this being one of the games that I actively played online from my Steam Deck.
If they ever rework the backend to drop whichever 3rd party caused this train wreck and reimplement private crossplay matches for Linux users, I'll happily re-buy the game. From the announcement though, this is the last update they're making for this game. :(
If they ever rework the backend to drop whichever 3rd party caused this train wreck and reimplement private crossplay matches for Linux users, I'll happily re-buy the game. From the announcement though, this is the last update they're making for this game. :(
2 Likes, Who?
Expalphalog Jul 17, 2022
Quoting: EzequielThe amount of people that don't understand the difference between native gaming and Proton is simply astonishing. Proton is not a replacement and if you value yourself as a consumer you should never be complacent with a proton version.
Can I play the games I want? Can I play them on the platform that I want? The answers to those two questions are literally the only things that matter to most consumers, myself included. You might look down on us. You might consider us foolish. But our money spends just as well as yours and so our opinion means just as much as yours. As for the "vote with your wallets" idea - we did. All of us have been voting with our wallets for decades. That's how we wound up with Proton in the first place: having enough voting power to get Valve's attention but not enough voting power to get the attention of thousands of individual developers/publishers.
3 Likes, Who?
mr-victory Jul 17, 2022
Quoting: StoneColdSpiderAnd as for the Steam Deck increasing Linux marketshare by any significant margin well that depends on how many people install Windows on it.....Currently minimum ~%85 of them are on Linux.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: StoneColdSpiderdepends on how many people install Windows on it...
What I want to know is what it takes for Valve to register the count that there's another one out there running windows.
Is it just one ping after opening Steam? How does that affect things if, say, the person futzes around for a half how then goes back to a smooth SteamOS?
So far, I've just been pleading with all my nerdier friends to not even install Steam on the walled-side if they're going to dual-boot.
At the same time, Valve isn't doing themselves any favors by not filtering out anomalies like that. Hopefully their statistics methods are a little more complex and they bias towards GNU+Linux.
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