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1. Steam/valve take about 30% of a purchase as you know.
If valve would communicate to big companies that if they make a linux port, they would reduce their own % margin by a bit this could be an incentive to make the big companies make linux versions.
For example pubg or such games would think that a reduction of 30% to for example 29% (25% or whatever) would cover the cost of making their own linux port and even make them on their windows versions, more money because instead of 30% they must only give for example 29% or 25% to steam/valve.
Valve could make this offer to specific companies/for specific games "Valve's Linux Support Incentive" or something like that
When in the future by this incentiveprogram linuxgaming would grow Steam/valve could abandon the program because there would not be the need to have an incentive because their would be more and more linuxgamers and the companies themselves without extrafinancial incentive/subsidy would then port their AAA games to linux.
Valve and Steam could ask generally for 30% again as well and would have subsidized and grown linuxports this way.
Steam would give discount for windows versions as well in this way. Steam takes 30% of windows only version and in general 25 % for game which has linux port for example. The windows games would subsidize the linux ports. Just steam would make a little less money in the beginning but getting more linux ports of AAA Games.
Quality of the port would be a condition for the "Linux Port discount" as well so the game companies wouldnt make halfassed linux ports.
2. Another idea is a "kickstarter linux port coordination Homepage" to help feral interactive for example.
Japanese visual novels even use kickstarter to see if a game has support and when the campaign succeeds they translate the japanese game to english and release on steam without any company investment because of kickstarter funds. Examples are MuvLuv Alternate which made $1,255,444 in pledges. Other examples are Libra, Clannad etc. which got english ports because of kickstarter.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/muvluv/muv-luv-a-pretty-sweet-visual-novel-series
Many games like pillars of eternity got a linux port because of kickstarter "stretch goals" (much $ pledges) or else there wouldnt have been a linux port at all. So why dont make even more coordinated use of kickstarter help for linux ports in general and support for feral interactive for example.
I suppose you and liamdawe have perhaps the connections to communicate to Valve and Feral Interactive or the linux community to bring Valve's andn Feral Interactive's attention to this plan which would help linuxgaming or open a discussion on the matter. Liamdewe could make an article on the main site perhaps as well to open a main discussion there as well if he wants.
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Not ashamed to admit I've bought games I don't play simply to support the developers behind it. Hell it's a large reason why I even buy anything from Valve, but it gets tiresome to see their lack of responses on github or support requests. It's like a joke to them. Valve in particular is not exactly a small dev company.
As an end user I don't honestly know how to further the opensource cause. It's not like there's a list of companies one could hire to fix or add a specific feature. So you're left with quasi legal community ports that can be shut down overnight.
Point in a nutshell:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FORTnITE/comments/6rtlki/fortnite_on_linux_it_works/
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A 1% to 5% savings would likely not be enough incentive in most cases. Realistically, Valve would probably have to aim closer for 5% cut or nothing at all to truly incentivise ports. Maybe that cutback could increase or decrease on a scale depending on a few key factors including; how long after initial release a game gets ported, quality of the port (as you mentioned), type of port (translation layer vs "quasi"-wraps, Feral style vs full native etc), porting in house rather than relying on third parties.
I was going to say even to keep the cut and pass the savings on to end buyers but then that would only invite abuse where people would buy games on a Linux platform but then go and install them on a proprietary OS. So that's off the table.
As for #2 I can really only envision small to mid size studios engaging in this which would not be terribly helpful as you are wanting to incite high profile games studios to port.
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One wild approach might be for the community to start a not-for-profit org which acts as a crowdfunding liaison which gathers donations as well as votes by popular demand to independently negotiate and hire porting houses to tackle games whose developers either do not have the capitol or willingness to do so otherwise. Remarkably, imagine a GamingOnLinux community group which builds funds to offer porting jobs. Like that would ever happen :O
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I think it's the kind of idea that might work better from a different angle. Approach a game developer/publisher to see if they're interested in the idea of a port, ask what it would take to convince them to work with a given porting company, and potentially set up some sort of preorder or crowdfunding system to fund the porter's work if the studio needs to see some money upfront. This way people know exactly what they're pledging for and it's easier to keep track of who should get a key at release. Ultimately though, I feel this conversation is best initiated by the porters themselves. Essentially companies like Feral already go through all of those steps knowing which games make sense for them, except they don't take preorders and only bet on titles they are confident will sell.
Perhaps it's a system Feral (and others) themselves could set up instead of simply asking people for their wishlist once in a while; make a list of plausible porting targets from publishers who are willing to collaborate, with a pledging system that doesn't collect the funds until the funding target is met for a particular game. It would be safer for them, but I don't know if it would be any help in dealing with publishers, and I'm not sure how many people would trust and take part in a system like this.
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I'll agree, cutting Valves share down to 1-10 % instead of 30 for Linux sales could be a way to make ports more viable.
At the same time Valve should race some conditions to get that extra share. Things coming to my mind are e.g.:
- having patches being released the same day as they're for Windows and Mac
- having a time frame to solve bugs that are system specific and critical (like missing executables, segfaults and incompatibilities with a driver / Linux caused by an update)
- having a time frame to solve non critical bugs
- you tell me....
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Start with them taking their existing base 30%. Reduce that based on the individual game's cross platform support say -10% for supporting all Steam's currently supported platforms, and make this a criteria for getting the following reductions. Reduce it further, around-3%, for having generally more positive than site wide average* user reviews, but only if those reviews have close parity between supported platforms. Reduce it again, another -3%, for having lower returns per unit sold than site wide average*, also only if there is parity between supported platforms. Finally lower it again, maybe -2%, for games that generate higher than site wide average* user play time with, you guessed it, parity between supported platforms required. Recalculate all this on either a monthly or quarterly basis. These, taken as a whole, would incentivize developers and publishers, be they big AAAs, tiny two man indies, or anything in between, to support all platforms, including Linux, and further to provide a relative equality between the support they provide them while also incentivizing a general quality of product increasing Steam's relative value as a platform in the process.
Now to all that you simply add terms whereby anything falling into say the worst 40% of reviews and/or returns is not shown on the store except as search results. This helps to clean up the storefront in general allowing users to find all the quality stuff they'll actually want to spend money on and/or tell friends about, and won't be likely to return.
*Realistically this should be more like falling into the top 30% on the site to interest Valve as a business, but I feel like that would reduce the incentive value enough to more or less defang the idea.
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that is exactly my thought as something valve really should do.
Also the developers/publishers should know one thing about the linux sales. It is not just the linux sales. It is about giving better support for your game.
And something more. I use only linux and of course do not buy games that do not support. All my friends use windows and unfortunately they do not care :(. But they bought some games that I talked about. Would they buy these games if I was not playing them? No. Are these windows sales? Yes. Yet they happened because the games supported linux. And that has happened to me a few times and I do not have that many friends. In an other case a friend had Civ5 and we played that game together. Now he had this game anyway but being able to play with me gave more value to the game. So in many ways it is not just supporting a different platform like it is an other separate country.