Destiny 2 is one of the biggest and most popular shooters around and sadly it doesn't work on Steam Deck / Linux. Now is your chance to give your say and maybe Bungie will listen.
A little while ago I wrote about how Bungie had given Steam Deck a pretty firm nope, and sadly the situation simply hasn't changed since then. They took notice of people requesting it, and then issued a statement where they once again gave us a pretty firm nope.
Now, there's a dedicated place on the Destiny 2 Reddit where you can give your feedback on it. This comes in the form of what they call a Focused Feedback post titled "Focused Feedback: Linux and Alternative Platform Support". Writing about why the post was made, a Destiny 2 Reddit moderator noted in a comment:
For some additional context on why this was selected as a Focused Feedback topic, despite lack of recent popular threads about it, posts discussing official support for Destiny 2 on Proton (read: Steam Deck) have been automodded to Bungie's official stance on the matter (listed below) for a while now because - until very recently - there was nothing to discuss besides people expressing that they wanted Proton support and/or whether or not Bungie's rationale for the Proton prohibition is valid.
Given that, in the past week, we've had the announcement of Stadia's planned demise AND a Destiny 2 team lead expressing their love for Steam Deck as a hardware choice for playing Destiny 2 (they were playing D2 on Steam Deck in a manner which is allowed by Terms of Service), there is renewed public interest in the discussion and the decision was made to make it this week's Focused Feedback topic. This way, the discussion can be had and Bungie is provided with fresh, organized feedback on this issue from the DestinyReddit community.
Their comment about the Destiny 2 developer enjoying the Steam Deck is probably this post from Tom Farnsworth, the Senior Design Lead at Bungie, who had to use Moonlight to stream it from a PC to their Steam Deck. Sure would be nice if we didn't have to do things like that huh?
Since the Steam Deck is doing so well (like apparently shipping over a million now), players shouldn't need to resort to installing a different operating system or streaming from a PC to play their favourite games. Hopefully more developers, like Bungie, will start to take notice if the player base on Steam Deck continues growing.
Head over to the Reddit Post to give your say.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Edit: oh it is there: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/xuonok/focused_feedback_linux_and_alternative_platform/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Last edited by Linuxer on 5 October 2022 at 9:53 pm UTC
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: dziadulewiczPlease maybe put the ACTUAL link to Reddit more visible and outstanding; i had to look a long time through the many links in midst of the textThe ACTUAL link is in there, in quotes with the full title of the post. I really don’t see how that’s hard to see.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/xuonok/focused_feedback_linux_and_alternative_platform/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I really didn't either. Did you know that some ppl are challenged with eye sight. This is not about how you can't see how it can be hard to see!
gradyvuckovic Oct 6, 2022
StoneColdSpider Oct 6, 2022
NerdNoiseRadio Oct 6, 2022
-WARNING-: LONG-WINDED:
----------------------------
I enjoyed my time with the original Destiny on the PS4, and what little time I'd spent with its sequel on my gaming PC back when it was still running Windows before my migration over to Linux. While I do have systems where I could play Destiny 2 if I so chose, such as a PS5 that I barely touch outside of major console exclusives, and an XBSX that I touch a little more often thanks to Game Pass, but with it being in just one room with a high impact toddler in the house, that means anything more time-consuming than a few quick rounds of Rocket League and Fall Guys and Tetris Effect rarely gets to happen on it, making Destiny on XBox a difficult proposition for me.
With the Steam Deck, not only do I have the "anywhere / everywhere" flexibility of playing it in handheld mode, but I have a number of docks throughout the house, so that I can use the Steam Deck as a "home console" in a handful of rooms, as well as a "desktop PC" in others, and can do the same, say, when I visit my parents across town, making much easier and more frequent my opportunities to play there - a big part of why it quickly replaced my Nintendo Switch as my #1 most-used system. Moreover, thanks to cloud save, in the distressingly rare instances where I am actually at liberty to sit down in front of my proper "big rig" gaming PC, I can play and experience the game with fewer technical limitations than the more modest Steam Deck hardware would allow.
In short, given the circumstances of my home / work / family life, really the only system where a game like Destiny would be truly viable for me would be on PC, principally via the Steam Deck, and via Linux in all contexts. I would imagine that flashing Windows on my Deck would solve the dilemma for me, but for other reasons, I have no intention of doing this.
Look, I know full well that we Linux gamers are still a very small part of the gaming scene at large, though the Steam Deck is beginning and seems poised to only continue to change that. And it's easy to see, from a business perspective, why a company may not want to invest the time (and ergo, money) for such a small segment, even if it is the fastest-growing. It's not that I don't "get it", but here is my response to it: if it's growing so much, and with Steam Deck, only stands to grow even further, would it not be better to be on the forefront of that and be remembered as forward-thinking and visionary, rather than as stuck in old paradigms up front, and as reactionary at the end? Moreover, unless I am possessed of a serious misunderstanding, the only barrier to Destiny on Linux is just getting a working anti-cheat system going, right? And if so, it seems like a pretty low-hanging fruit to get going.
The question will be "will Bungie do it"?
So, at the end of the day, here's the deal: I like Destiny enough that were it available on the Deck, I'd probably spend some quality time with it, but not enough that I'm gonna bend over backwards to make it work contrary to my use case. Or put a bit more crassly: I'll care about Destiny / Bungie when Bungie cares about us. Until then, I'm as content to live without them as they are to live without me....and that's that.
Thanks for taking the time to read this (if you did), and I welcome your response. I -DO- appreciate Bungie taking the time to set up this focus group! That's a nice step in the right direction, at least!
Cheers!
-St. John from Des Moines (Host of video game music podcast "Nerd Noise Radio - Channel 1" and one of two hosts of "Nerd Noise Radio - Channel 2")
Mountain Man Oct 6, 2022
NerdNoiseRadio Oct 6, 2022
Quoting: Mountain ManMy stance is the same as it has always been: I'm not going to beg developers for Linux support. We're long past that at this point. If I'm interested in a game, and it's playable in Linux, then I'll buy it. If it's not playable in Linux, then I'm not interested, and the developer won't get my money. It's as simple as that.
That's a quality, much more succinct version of what I had said. To be even more succinct yet, I'll just repeat the most important line of my entire earlier, longer comment: "I'll care about Destiny / Bungie when Bungie cares about us". :-)
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