Without any warning, Eleventh Hour Games have completely dropped support for and completely removed the Native Linux version of Last Epoch.
Initially, the patch notes didn't even mention Linux at all, but were later updated with the Steam Deck section expanded to include the notice. In the changelog they state "We’re no longer building a native Linux client and recommend Linux players use Proton on Linux which provides a much better experience".
For people who purchased specifically because it was advertised and sold on having a Native Linux version, it's not great and their communication after the fact is not a good look either. That said, Valve's Proton often really does offer a better experience. A lot of the time because of various game engine issues and/or just not a lot of time spent improving the Linux version. So Linux desktop and Steam Deck players can thankfully still play the game. From what I've seen, many players were already using Proton for it due to various problems.
The game currently has a Steam Deck Playable rating with Proton 9.
As for their promised Steam Deck improvements, they have now added UI scaling options with the latest update. However, a recent announcement noted they've pushed back some other changes as they "feel it’s important that when we say we are Steam Deck verified, players can trust that the experience they will receive on the Steam Deck is up to snuff with our expectations for player experience". So more to come there in future.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: EagleDeltaThe idea that they were being either stupid or dishonest in promising a Linux version for a small funding goal does not imply that them failing to live up to their promise is optimal behaviour.Quoting: RuohtasThis is especially egregious for those of us that backed the KS specifically due to the native Linux client. They only met their funding goal by about $45K, and that could have been due to the Linux version availability.
And I can tell you now as I've spent a LOT of time on developing to improve margins. 45K isn't enough to fund a Linux version itself.
Until Linux can further mitigate breakage, we need something *like* Wine and Proton for stability and reliability's sake.
Last edited by Desum on 21 September 2024 at 4:32 am UTC
As a backer of the campaign I'm "mad", but that's just the end of it at least, now I can forget this game.
Don't forget:
GOG support? dropped
macOS version? dropped
Linux version? dropped
What a mess...
EagleDelta about 16 hours ago
Quoting: DesumNative Linux can be a hassle to support at the best of times. And it isn't exactly all roses for users either. Who here hasn't had to perform dependency surgery on a GOG or Humble Bundle native Linux game fat some point? That is MUCH less of an issue with Proton.
Until Linux can further mitigate breakage, we need something *like* Wine and Proton for stability and reliability's sake.
This can't be stressed enough. One of the biggest reasons gamedev is so much easier on Windows is because of Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility.... something a lot of Linux distros don't do well. Which usually means gamedevs have to package their external libs with the game (which many Linux diehards seem to dislike), use the Steam Runtime (which requires Steam).
Both options which are royal pains as I've had to do this myself for non-game related packaging where the libraries needed in the application I built were not available on some/most server distros because the system packages were far too old (in most cases actually End Of Life from the upstream maintainers of the programming language AND libraries) leading to either having to build for the least common denominator or building the entire thing into the package myself............ I'm forever scarred from that experience.
Quoting: EagleDeltaWhich usually means gamedevs have to package their external libs with the game (which many Linux diehards seem to dislike)I've been around Linux for many years and I've never heard of anyone objecting to games doing this.
It's not optimal for open source software that's part of the general Linux software ecosystem; the expectation is that that stuff will keep on getting updated more or less forever and if it keeps upgrading to the latest libraries you'll get the best function, security and so on, and you avoid duplication by using system libraries. It's all kind of messy but has a lot of advantages, and it's pretty clear from the history of Linux that it can be made to work.
But clearly closed source, commercial games are different and I think everyone knows that. Have you really seen "many Linux diehards" complain about games including libraries?
Works on:
Windows (7, 8, 10, 11), Linux (Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04)
Release date:
August 31, 1999
I thought for sure this is not going to work. I'm running Ubuntu 24.04. But everything worked. I was shocked and disappointed, haha. The last update according to the change log in GOG is from 2018. Seems like they have something figured out.
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