Overkill drops Linux support for PAYDAY 2

We've seen this a few times over the years, due to a mixture of reasons but the ultimate reason is pretty much the same as always — Linux and Steam Deck together hold a less than 2% user share on Steam. For many developers, right now, it's not worth the extra overhead to continue Native support until there's more of a market.

even worse, linux marketshare is 1~2%... on the desktop!
50% of the market for this game is on consoles, the other 50% is on pcs.
and if this was an game that "works on mobile", this share would shink even more, that is, if mobile attracted the same type of gamer.

You know what would be hilarious? If WSL2

I can't take that acronym seriously. I always imagine it being involved in a Winnie the Pooh story, like "Where the WSL2 Wasn't".


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 8 Jun 2023 at 10:30 pm UTC

Instead, you need to make portability a feature of your code outright, you need to make the same single codebase run on all the individual platforms. No forks, just one portable repository that can run everywhere. That's not new knowledge either, we've known that for decades!

Proton totally nuked this concept.
There is only one platform for personal computer gaming and it's DirectX.
Even Apple gave up dedicated ports, they went fully Wine.

yeah they use one code base for all platforms...
directX on windows.
directX on top of wine on linux.

we can complain but facts are facts, linux is not sustainable for an game like this.
those companies dont spend 1 dollar and earn 100, linux have 1~2% marketshare on the desktop and even less if we count consoles, porting is not as expensive as making an entire game from scratch but there is no sense in spending as much money on linux as the other versions (playstation, xbox, pc), building something to be multiplatform from day 1 just mean you probably will have an horrible performance on all platforms and may break the budget before you make any cent.

if you dont believe go open your own company and prove how everyone else is wrong.

i hate to be the guy deffending big corportations here, but come on, there is an limit on how much we can lie to ourselves.
and no, indies being able to do that dont prove anything.


Last edited by elmapul on 8 Jun 2023 at 10:43 pm UTC

I don't sympathize at all, moreover, these "corporations" are adversaries to me. They hate their customers and don't deserve to have any.

You put something out, that people bought in good faith and are still using, you bloody well fix it. You don't just say "too bad, we're adding new shitware to our game and have decided to exclude you"

I don't sympathize at all, moreover, these "corporations" are adversaries to me. They hate their customers and don't deserve to have any.

You put something out, that people bought in good faith and are still using, you bloody well fix it. You don't just say "too bad, we're adding new shitware to our game and have decided to exclude you"

Pretty much. It is far worse in my mind to say you are going to support a port, and then drop support while still updating the other platforms, than it is to never support Linux in the first place.

I'll just make sure to not buy anything from them later. Granted I never got around to playing Payback 2...

This is sad. I wonder if the next step is to implement anticheat which doesn't work on Linux. That was the next step after Rocket League dropped official support for Linux.

Imagine selling a game and then DROPPING support for WINDOWS, and telling customers that the Linux version still works over Cygwin and VirtualBox.

Anyways -- this is more a problem with SaaS (Software as a Service) -- because it's not really clear what I'm buying when I spend money-- A Physical Copy -- Is a Physical Copy -- -- Is a Physical Copy -- Is a Physical Copy.

I'm sympathetic, but not enthusiastic or pleased.

Imagine selling a game and then DROPPING support for WINDOWS, and telling customers that the Linux version still works over Cygwin and VirtualBox.

Anyways -- this is more a problem with SaaS (Software as a Service) -- because it's not really clear what I'm buying when I spend money-- A Physical Copy -- Is a Physical Copy -- -- Is a Physical Copy -- Is a Physical Copy.

I'm sympathetic, but not enthusiastic or pleased.

Yes, there is a strange expectation Linux users are supposed to have, which is to be grateful they were supported at all, for any length of time. Because this platform is so hard for developers to support. And besides, you can work around it, right? You guys are always working around stuff

It seems Linux ports are treated more like charity work than anything else.

The absolutely only thing I mind is that, I feel, they could've stated that it does work via Proton.

It seems Linux ports are treated more like charity work than anything else.

This is why I put my money where my mouth is and throw it at as much Linux stuff was possible. I bought 5 Steam Decks, a Valve Index, 5k-10k in GPUs and computer parts the last year or two.

I'm not attempting to flex, it's just that I can't think of another way to put a [ X ] big beacon on Linux.

Of course I bought Payday 2 for the Linux support, and now -- I guess they'll have to take a back seat and back burner for prioritizing my purchases (as such I'm not compelled or incentivized to buy Payday 3 just like I haven't purchased Serious Sam 4 -- as a matter or ethics and principle -- what is the draw when there are so many other pro-Linux choices for me to support?)

And so it goes. I wish them well, but make room for somebody else who values my money.

You know what would be hilarious? If WSL2 and some Mac layer actually got to the point of being performant enough for gaming... and everyone just switched to doing Linux Native games, as they'd just work on Windows and Mac anyhow.

as things are moving the future looks more like:
driver developers start focusing more on WSL than linux (at least for the desktop hardware) we end up having more performance virtualizing linux than runing natively, linux aways having just an subset of windows games and being perceived as the inferior platform as an result, and even if someone made an game exclusively to linux so people dont feel like "why use this system if windows can do everything this can+ more", people would just use WSL to access the content.

Anyways -- this is more a problem with SaaS (Software as a Service) -- because it's not really clear what I'm buying when I spend money-- A Physical Copy -- Is a Physical Copy

i hate this mindset since an idiot told me that i need an physical copy of an software in order to "own" it...
in my opinion having the source code to an software and the right to use/modify/distribute worth much more than being able to just use it.
but no, according to him i need an physical copy of the software, in an cd or catridge format otherwise i dont own it...

You know what would be hilarious? If WSL2 and some Mac layer actually got to the point of being performant enough for gaming... and everyone just switched to doing Linux Native games, as they'd just work on Windows and Mac anyhow.

as things are moving the future looks more like:
driver developers start focusing more on WSL than linux (at least for the desktop hardware) we end up having more performance virtualizing linux than runing natively, linux aways having just an subset of windows games and being perceived as the inferior platform as an result, and even if someone made an game exclusively to linux so people dont feel like "why use this system if windows can do everything this can+ more", people would just use WSL to access the content.

Ha, the problem is that performance of wsl2 is pretty trash. I am convinced it is sort of on purpose to give Windows users the perception Linux is slow for any GUI stuff.

Anyways -- this is more a problem with SaaS (Software as a Service) -- because it's not really clear what I'm buying when I spend money-- A Physical Copy -- Is a Physical Copy

i hate this mindset since an idiot told me that i need an physical copy of an software in order to "own" it...
in my opinion having the source code to an software and the right to use/modify/distribute worth much more than being able to just use it.
but no, according to him i need an physical copy of the software, in an cd or catridge format otherwise i dont own it...

I think the idea is that if you have a physical copy, you have access to install it at anytime. With digital platforms they could close down, or the internet goes out for a long period of time, etc.

Granted you have shit releases like Postal 3, which I bought a physical copy, but all it did was redownload the whole thing through Steam... so it took a long time to install off the two DVDs it came on, plus the time it took for my slow internet to refetch it all.

I think the idea is

there is no idea, the average joe knows jack shit about computers, he probably dont know what an source code is, or open source and call game modifications "mods" even if the mod was done with full source code access.
we dont call that mods, its "forks".

i own a few physical media games, and let me tell you, i dont know how to rip their content to save my life.

I see some reader trying to make sense of not porting to Linux using a rentability computation. It makes zero sense, it will almost always be profitable to port on Linux for the extra copies sold for popular games.
But financial computation are all about RoI not profit anymore. From a RoI point of view, porting on Linux is not so interesting anymore.
Worse, assuming a marginal RoI computation, proton makes porting on Linux all the more uninteresting as there is still some copies sold on Linux with absolutely no cost.
While proton has been formidable for the Linux players it has given to company incentive on not caring about Linux.

I am actually just glad if they keep supporting proton.
The fact is: proton is the only middle ware that guarantees support for the next 20 years. Not because it acts like windows, in fact it doesn't. Unlike windows, proton guarantees a fixed API and bug compatibility.
None of my original Linux games still work, but their windows counter parts work without problems or patches on proton. And no, they don't work on windows 11 either.
The good thing about proton is this: you can implement any buggy windows API in proton that microsoft has made incompatible (as they do that a lot), but you can not implement that buggy windows API in the next windows release if you changed that API, because that would break new applications.

I am actually just glad if they keep supporting proton.
The fact is: proton is the only middle ware that guarantees support for the next 20 years. Not because it acts like windows, in fact it doesn't. Unlike windows, proton guarantees a fixed API and bug compatibility.
None of my original Linux games still work, but their windows counter parts work without problems or patches on proton. And no, they don't work on windows 11 either.

Well, I could hardly believe the situation with native Linux games is that bad, so I tried it on my side. I redownloaded and started the first 10 games I got for Linux on Steam, from late 2012 to mid 2013.(*) Every single one of them is running without problems and without any tinkering on my 2023 system.

(*) My PAYDAY: I got some new collectible cards. :D


Last edited by Eike on 9 Jun 2023 at 10:59 am UTC

It's mainly older titles, 2000s and earlier. But for a Linux game from Steam that doesn't work: Monaco.
I booted it up sometime last year, and it instantly crashed.
As it turns out, it's a known issue since launch, that they never fixed. The entire issue is solved by modifying a shader file.

I did meet a handful of games that didn't work correctly when I bought and played them, but I returned those. Sometimes it was somewhat subtle, like Born Punk, where everything worked except displaying the lore.

I think the idea is

there is no idea, the average joe knows jack shit about computers, he probably dont know what an source code is, or open source and call game modifications "mods" even if the mod was done with full source code access.
we dont call that mods, its "forks".

i own a few physical media games, and let me tell you, i dont know how to rip their content to save my life.

So any of tge open source wngines that need data are useless to you? I still have my Quake 1 CD somewhere... totally easy to download one of the updated engines and copy tge files off the disk. Hell, I install Doom on my Amigas and Atari Falcon this way.

I don't talk to enough normal people these days, but pretty sure most don't mod their games that much, except maybe Skyrim, which is a meh experience without them.