Nightdive Studios confirm Linux and macOS ports of System Shock are cancelled

This is typical from them. DONT. EVER. SUPPORT. NIGHTDIVE. Horrible developer that somehow continues to exist despite lots of other good devs going under :(

What else have they done wrong?

The Remasters they've worked on have all been well received.

I get the meltdown over false promises (or to be honest, it's probably moreso just because Linux is involved, you probably wouldn't see the same backlash even if the aspect of false promises persists)

But to say Night Dive are bad or they "don't deserve support" who would you support then? They're the only Dev team in this infiltrated industry that make sensible and genuine ports/remasters, not for making quick buck over people's nostalgia, not recycling games that don't need the remaster investment, but purely out of passion. They just released a remastered for a very obscure weird game called PO'ed, go take a look at that game and tell me with a straight face an executive greenlit that project thinking It would bring in money.

I think we must understand that unless we become a not insignificant chunck of the market, expect the 2nd class treatment to continue, any other interpretation is just living a fantasy dream, a higher market share is the only thing that'd make Linux support a serious thing for companies to consider.


Last edited by Pyrate on 22 May 2024 at 3:54 pm UTC

Aaand from wishlist to not interested... Their lose.

Never go into Crowdfunding of any kind thinking you're money is related to being a customer. It's NOT, you're an investor that doesn't get any stake in the company or payout. Instead you get exclusive content and (usually for physical products) earlier access to the product than the rest of the public.

That's just practically quoting Kickstarter's entire cop-out line. And it would be fine if it was actually even vaguely structured like that. But it's not. It's "pledge at this level, get these rewards". Or "meet this goal, we make this promise". At that point, there needs to be accountability. But KS hide behind their "you're an investor" line and shirk all responsibility.

I mean, that is the definition of what Crowdfunding is, though. Lots of Investors never make their money back that they put into a company. You don't have to use it, but there are a ton of independent Board Games and Video Games that simply wouldn't exist without Early Access or Crowdfunding. Otherwise, you're generally looking at a big publisher, who are less trustworthy in most cases than most Crowdfunding sites are (Kickstarter isn't the only one out there).

You're not a "bad gamer" or anything for not wanting to support Crowdfunding, but also know that alternative is also something we complain about as well and it simply takes lots of money and/or time to make games, even small ones..... and that's with GameDevs making far less than their counterparts in traditional Tech.

I have removed the game from my wish list as will not support a studio who refuses to keep to their promises.

I have noticed a lot of publishers drop support for Linux and mac since the rise of Valves Proton (PDX as prime example). As much as I love what Proton has done for Linux gaming, I am now getting worried with the big decline in official Linux support through native builds.

I think the Linux gaming community needs to make a push for official support using Proton as an option. I don't like relying on Proton simply because the publisher can simply wash their hands and claim no support was guaranteed unless on windows. I have no problem using Proton but I want official support should a problem arise.

Native builds are currently really hard to support due to sub-par support in Game Engines for Linux + Vulkan. As it stands now (and as it seems to be going with parts of Proton like DXVK) Proton is a more performant and reliable "engine" or "target" than trying to build a "Linux Native" binary using Unreal/Unity/etc.

Also, Proton IS native. It is, for all intensive purposes, a gaming API for Linux. Not an emulator or "compatibility layer" really, but an API. It just allows Windows API calls to be mapped to Linux and/or Vulkan ones. If you've ever worked on connecting services together, this is exactly how we build things in code - connecting disparate systems together with a shared "language" - be that REST, GraphQL, gRPC, or something else.

They're the only Dev team in this infiltrated industry that make sensible and genuine ports/remasters, not for making quick buck over people's nostalgia

I was involved in several talks where they proposed contracting people for porting works... and naw, Nightdive is definitely in for the quick buck. The bottom line is what they care about, not the games.

I think the Linux gaming community needs to make a push for official support using Proton as an option. I don't like relying on Proton simply because the publisher can simply wash their hands and claim no support was guaranteed unless on windows. I have no problem using Proton but I want official support should a problem arise.

FWIW, although it's currently not that common, "official support and testing for the game in Proton" is the second-highest-paying tier of my "more Tux, more bucks" hierarchy. Quick précis of the tiers, since I've laid out the full reasoning here enough times that people are probably annoyed by it.
Full price: native games
Half price: games with official support for Proton
75% off: Deck Verified Windows-only games
90% off: game happens to work in Wine (for now)
Won't pay anything: game doesn't work on Linux at all.
The more a game dev supports me as a Linux gamer, the more financial support I'm willing to give them in exchange.

there are tons of open source projects that already deliver a lot of things...
and tons of kickstarter projects with broken promisses...

yet people only fund the second

Makes me think . . . there's nothing necessarily stopping open source projects from doing kickstarters to get a bit of funding. I mean sure, the open source thing already exists in some form, and you can probably already get it for free, but the point of the kickstarter is for the new features you're promising to come into existence, and just like with a normal kickstarter nobody will get them if someone doesn't pay for them (with either money or time). You could do the thing, have some feature goals, give people some nice exclusive things for different backer levels, all the usual schtick should work fine.

[quote=EagleDelta][quote=scaine]

Never go into Crowdfunding of any kind thinking you're money is related to being a customer. It's NOT, you're an investor that doesn't get any stake in the company or payout. Instead you get exclusive content and (usually for physical products) earlier access to the product than the rest of the public.

Okay, but I'm not arguing the definition of crowdfunding. I'm noting that KS doesn't look, or encourage a crowdfunding engagement mentality. KS encourages engagement through awards and promises. But they have no accountability when their platform is used to blatantly break those promises.

Makes me think . . . there's nothing necessarily stopping open source projects from doing kickstarters to get a bit of funding. I mean sure, the open source thing already exists in some form, and you can probably already get it for free, but the point of the kickstarter is for the new features you're promising to come into existence, and just like with a normal kickstarter nobody will get them if someone doesn't pay for them (with either money or time). You could do the thing, have some feature goals, give people some nice exclusive things for different backer levels, all the usual schtick should work fine.

Fish Folk did that, and succeeded in just a few days. I was happy to back it for a few quid after they revealed a Bomberman clone as part of the suite of multiplayer games that it offers.

!Lame.

Probably for the better. Any native UE4 port is very likely to lose to proton, to begin with. Would be wasted effort.

Luckily, I've not ever crowdfunded anything so far.

Disappointing.
I'm wondering if they've put in real effort to make it work, or if they knew they're not going to keep their stretch goal promise.
With no details at all I guess they didn't really try. Maybe one or two attempts to hit that magical "build for Linux" button, but as that rarely works ootb, they might not have investigated further. Really sad.
Here Rockfish Games was much more transparent: promising to give it a real shot. They tried, had hired an extra engineer for it, but with UE being crap it turned out performance is too bad, while with Proton it works almost flawless. And they officially support Proton.
Too bad Nightdive Studios has chosen to put it into a stretch goal...

This encompasses perfectly why I gave up on Kickstarter years ago. Particularly disappointing given how much I advocated for it in its early days. Absolutely zero accountability from KS.

Completely agree about the lack of shits given by Kickstarter. I've slowed down on backing myself, but there are still projects that follow through; a couple recent ones:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1751680/A_Twisted_Tale/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1159090/Zoria_Age_of_Shattering/

Thankfully I avoided the Kickstarter craze mostly.......
I only ever backed 1 project (Wasteland 2) and that was actually quite successful and everything was released...... Even if it was released a bit late...... But thats almost par of the cause for KS projects........

Sadly nothing is ever guaranteed..... And you have to keep your fingers crossed and pray that the stretch goals dont get dropped......

It could be worse though..... Even a game that doesnt work is still better than a OUYA.......

But yeah....... I wont be buying this game anywhere near full price now.......

Given that the ONLY linux native version of any game to never give me problems that I can remember has been Stellaris..... this might be for the best.

This. I mean, the only bad part about this is that it was a goal, or a promise or whatever, that they're now throwing away or "giving up" on. Which is still pretty bad, don't get me wrong, not downplaying that part, especially for MacOS users, I don't think they have a Proton equivalent to play the game there? MacOS backers should get refunded.

But on Linux, I booted the game up yesterday, and it just works.... like, who the hell cares beyond this point? I asked the other day on this website what could the actual, real world disadvantages of playing through Proton vs Native, bearing in mind that Proton is slowly becoming the defacto Linux-supported method from game developers side, and other than large prefix folders potentially eating up space over time, it's pretty much nothing to bring up.

They do have Wine(nowadays even as a default app under the name Rosetta), but most of them nowadays also need an x86_64 emulator, which really slows it down to nearly useless.

Given that the ONLY linux native version of any game to never give me problems that I can remember has been Stellaris..... this might be for the best.

This. I mean, the only bad part about this is that it was a goal, or a promise or whatever, that they're now throwing away or "giving up" on. Which is still pretty bad, don't get me wrong, not downplaying that part, especially for MacOS users, I don't think they have a Proton equivalent to play the game there? MacOS backers should get refunded.

But on Linux, I booted the game up yesterday, and it just works.... like, who the hell cares beyond this point? I asked the other day on this website what could the actual, real world disadvantages of playing through Proton vs Native, bearing in mind that Proton is slowly becoming the defacto Linux-supported method from game developers side, and other than large prefix folders potentially eating up space over time, it's pretty much nothing to bring up.

They do have Wine(nowadays even as a default app under the name Rosetta), but most of them nowadays also need an x86_64 emulator, which really slows it down to nearly useless.

Most macOS users are using CrossOver or Whisky, I gather.

[quote=scaine][quote=EagleDelta]

Never go into Crowdfunding of any kind thinking you're money is related to being a customer. It's NOT, you're an investor that doesn't get any stake in the company or payout. Instead you get exclusive content and (usually for physical products) earlier access to the product than the rest of the public.

Okay, but I'm not arguing the definition of crowdfunding. I'm noting that KS doesn't look, or encourage a crowdfunding engagement mentality. KS encourages engagement through awards and promises. But they have no accountability when their platform is used to blatantly break those promises.

the issue is that every investiment is a risk.
when someone decide to open an company , the person has no way to tell if the money they are investing, the time, the effort will be enough to make the product they want to make, and they will be able to recoup the investment.
kickstarter was an way to try to transfer the risks to the end user.

we can do that, we promisse, just trust us bro!
then the company have the guarantee they have the money to invest, but we have no guarantee they will actually try to develop such product, even when they try we dont know how much they invest and even if they are honest and put every single cent into the promissed features, there is no guarantee they didnt under estimated the problem and charged too litle.
hell some people promissed impossible things all the time.

kickstarter changed their policies and now you need to show at least an prototype, indiegogo? not even that.

another big issue is that some companies promissed things under an impossible low budget, because their real goals was to attract investors that would put more money into it, and as an result, even when they did delivred the procut as promissed, they did more harm than good, they proved to the public that its possible to develop such an product under such an low budget and the public started to belive even more in impossible promisses and to think that everyone else was over charging then.


honestly i can understand that some companies arent able to fulfil their promisses, but at least we should gain something.
couldnt finish the game? open source it, distribute every asset and stuff you made under copyleft/creative commons or public domain, give the fans something and let then decide what to do with it.


Last edited by elmapul on 23 May 2024 at 11:55 am UTC

Most macOS users are using CrossOver or Whisky, I gather.

I suppose if I were a MacOS user I, too, might be driven to Whisky.

tive ports are still better if they are well-maintained and tested, and built in an engine that cares about high performance on Linux. Factorio comes to mind.

the issue is that dont benefit anyone.
an linux version will earn about 4% of the income for the game, and they either will spend more than that, or have to quit supporting windows sooner to keep their promisse of treating every platform equally.

only platform owners care about an specific platform ecosystem, nintendo do with their consoles, microsoft with windows and xbox, and now valve with linux, the main difference is that valve isnt the only linux provider but they have nothing to lose with it growing even if its not their distro, they have everything to lose with microsoft gaining ground on the other hand.