I for one value honest opinion and straight talk above overt political correctness. As long as Liam's writing about developers' sloppy work, and not just being snarky or preferential, it's all good. I'd go as far as call this rather good journalism compared to all the shameless marketing your average gaming site puts out.

And of course it is entirely justified to treat open source community projects and commercial stuff differently. As paying customers we are entitled to exactly the same quality of support as any other platform. Otherwise we should be paying less for the games.

Snarky is a good word, that's pretty fitting to what I thought about the Techland headline. "Oh look, this developer is so unable to program for Linux, it's hilarious". Like in some bad stand-up comedy. But I wouldn't want to move towards political correctness either. I guess the USA was much more haunted by that particular ghost than we were over here in Europe, but I still feel it wouldn't solve anything.

I like the idea that we could pay less for less quality control. There would be a direct connection between the services rendered and the price paid -- you hire more QA for Windows, so they pay more for the effects of that service. If we had that, would new Steam OS users or Steam Machine owners understand it, though?

Anyhow, couldn't a headline be written in a style that drives the point home unabashedly without belittling the developer? "Bugs in latest Dying Light update had hilarious consequences. Now fixed." to me sounds better than what I read (hyperbolically) as "lol techland u gotz no qa u sux why u still code 4 lnx if u dont hav skillz?".

Or maybe in different wording, attacking a flaw in your peer (you don't have Linux QA, you're too stupid to do Linux QA, you chose not to invest enough in Linux QA) puts you at a more adversarial stance than laughing at the consequences (there is a funny issue in the game that affects the Linux build but not any of the others).

Could be that I'm too sensitive and the gaming market likes it just fine rough.

It seems like people expect slightly different things from this site. For me GOL is something between a (non-commercial) blog, a community forum and a gaming news outlet. For you it might be closer to the latter, and less of the former two.

Maybe Liam should put more thought into his wording choices, but that's only if he wants his site to come off more as a neutral and impersonal news outlet. Not a bad thing, but possibly not what he wants. Although being a Brit he might be used to a rather edgy and controversy-seeking style of journalism. As a European you should know that we've got as many different varieties of media culture as we've got actual cultures.

Quoting: psy-qCould be that I'm too sensitive and the gaming market likes it just fine rough.

The thing is, GOL does not seem to be doing what it does to please the gaming market or any such nebulous entity. To me it feels like the site exists solely us Linux gamers. You know, not as a liaison between the businesses and the consumer, but as a service by consumers for consumers. That's a difference that I for one appreciate. One of the reasons why this is also the only gaming related site I actually regularly follow and the only gaming community I enjoy being a part of.

1. GoL's owner and GoL's readers are human.
2. The tone should be different for FOSS developers.
3. Linux folks should stop "settling". "Wow, there are a lot of bugs to be worked out in future versions but we should just be happy they made/ported their game to Linux!" I get the opposite tone from GoL's owner and I think that's the way to go.

Honestly, my gut opinion is that Liam us usually pretty soft on Techland, but then I'm quite sour as one of the day one purchasers of Dying Light, which still suffers from poor performance, graphical bugs, and missing features nearly a year after release.

I would've honestly preferred them not to release at all in such a poor state. It creates a bad impression for new Linux gamers, it shows their apathy for our platform, and most importantly it's just a bad experience for a gamer, which is the opposite of why we'd put $60 down in the first place.

And that last sentence is why FOSS devs are treated with more care, most of the time they don't ask for anything whatsoever, they produce things for free so there's no way for them to screw the consumer.

It's always good to be civil and courteous, albeit honest, to those who who do right by us. However, to grant the same treatment to anyone encourages the idea that we're happy to spend money on a dev's pet project regardless of quality because we're just so lucky they gave us the time of day in the first place.

Lolwhut.

Let me make this clear, if you sell a game for quite a high price and state that game is supported on Linux, yet it's clear little to zero testing is involved: I will blast it.

FOSS projects are completely different: we aren't paying for them.

I'm not going to stop giving crap to developers who take Linux gamers money for a ride and run away into the sunset on their unicorns.

As for the Dying Light article, I was poking fun at them, I think you need to lighten up about this.

I don't want GOL to be a completely neutral website, that's no fun for the majority of our readers, and it would be boring as fuck for me. I have an opinion, so I state it, especially if it's about something I paid a premium for. Remember, I am speaking as a customer a lot of the time.

Yeah, I wasn't advocating for political correctness either. But OK, I did indeed slot the site into "Linux gaming news site" and not "mostly a blog with a forum", that does make a big difference. If companies know to think "that guy said this about us, also some people in the forums" it's not that same as "the Linux gaming community more or less officially thinks this of us".

Just don't take what I write too seriously. I write as I think and speak, it's how I do things. GOL is essentially a blog with a forum, rather than a serious news website.