I prefer to look at it as Proton being a slower approach to taking down walls, and as soft encouragement to developers and publishers -- they may not have proper linux builds, but they may also actively choose supporting libraries and technologies that "don't not" support Proton/Linux. It honestly seems to me most compatibility problems tend to fall under those 3rd party gotchas, some 3rd party library or anti-cheat technology not part of the base game engine that ultimately breaks their Linux compatibility. First baby steps that imply consideration for Linux, it'll help developer opinions of Linux if they can "support" it with simple early consideration like that; and it'll help adoption if the games "play" while on Linux without any googling or fixes first. As that userbase grows, well, so does people that would want a Linux build!

And lets be honest, half the problem with linux adoption is "Windows people who tried it 10 years ago w/ their energy-drink inspired keyboard and unsupported wireless drivers who googled an incorrect blog entry before writing their own incorrect blog entry about how to support something and now take every chance they get to rag on Linux in some unrelated social media post comment thread" mindset.

The good news is every time Microsoft or Apple force an unpleasant change people tend to re-evaluate their options, which I can imagine only helps. Even my wife, who absolutely loathes change in her technology, asked me about putting Linux on her laptop after she was first introduced to Windows 10.

Will that idea work out in the end? Maybe, maybe not. I certainly know some of my friends/peers have had renewed or initial interest in Linux lately.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I would love to win a copy!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Honestly this has always felt liked flawed logic to me. I'll grant that one point of view for how the data is used is in worth for what platforms publishers or developers want to target, and they might not otherwise care about preferences versus where they can simply make a sale. However, many times the data isn't presented or wrote about in that context and instead used as a proof of what people's preferences are.

With that in mind, many of us run multiple computers or dual-boot, and there's no mistake that at least one of them will probably be Windows if they play desktop games. Take myself for instance, my primary workstation that I spend most of my day at is linux, but my HTPC is windows as it doubles as a gaming PC. I play games on both, but I play more often on my gaming PC without a doubt. Linux gaming has come a long way and I've no doubt most of the games I actually play would run just fine on linux, but there's always one or two or some other reason that the (HT|Gaming)PC is going to be in Windows; There's physical separation and since the purpose differs so does the hardware, as such even games that would run fine in linux don't make sense to jump computers in my personal use case. I've no doubt all of my gaming purchases end up counting as sales for Windows save for maybe the rare one that actually does get more playtime on my workstation. Plenty of us sitting on the fence that they decide to count one way or the other.

Now, the reason I say the logic is flawed is in counting majority-playtime as the sale at all is problematic. Really, logging any time on other platforms should flag as Multiplatform. Of course Windows will continue to hog the glory, it's too much of a bother to split gaming installs against OS preference for most people. Yes, some people dual-boot and share partitions; But that's problematic too. And I would wager rather a-typical because of it. The overall point being "this is a linux user using windows to play your stupid game."

Really, Valve already does occasional hardware surveys in the client. They could easily just ask a question or a survey to non-windows users about what they do versus what their actual preferences are. Really, just add a slice for Multiplatform and maybe details (Windows, Linux, Mac).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'll probably pick this month up since I don't have most of the key titles in the lineup. But man was that first month a downer, I can't imagine too many people out there didn't have most of the interesting games from that lineup already.

I paused last month as I imagine many people did to hold on to their pricing, but save this month, I can't see me hanging around too long before actually-cancelling and never looking at HumbleChoice again. I wish they'd just stuck with the old format.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

[quote=Guest]

Quoting: denyasisNoooo! Why am I poor?!?
On a side note, how is slime rancher for young kids? In particular, ones that can't read yet. I'd like to introduce them to the world of Linux gaming, but finding games for kids that young (and not so stupidly annoying to an adult) is a lot harder than I thought.

Kids too young to read would probably find that kind of game too difficult. My kids used to really enjoy any of the Humongous Games adventures, and games similar to those such as the Brøderbund adventure games for kids (Little Monster/Little Critter, etc). The thing with games outside of those age ranges is while they don't mind watching them and spending time with you/the parent/etc, they bore quickly since the content is usually too advanced for them to follow or interact with.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Hopefully they also consider whatever 3rd party libs/deps the game uses. So many ports get permanently shelved due to <pick a component> lib that has no linux version, graphics api is only part of the equation after all. It's kind of amazing how often that appears to be a late-in-the-game problem devs notice when they don't prioritize other platforms from the start.

"Oh we can't actually support that platform without reworking X that could've easily been avoided if we considered all targets from the start, yeah, that ain't happening just for that sliver of customers"

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: 14Has anyone else been having trouble paying via PayPal at GOG? I have been trying to buy a game there for a couple days now.

I don't buy games terribly often at GOG but for what it's worth, I've only ever paid with Paypal with no issue (so far!). Must've gotten flagged for some reason?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: XpanderRelease the GOG Galaxy client for linux


not gonna buy anything from them before we are getting treated equally to other platforms

More bees with honey and all that. I can't imagine linux is a major player for GoG or any gaming storefront really, I would think being the vocal minority in this case is more likely to get them to officially drop support for linux as opposed to increase their support for it. Be vocal AND supportive imho, that's what gives opinions weight.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: EikeCould this be done with AGS to run e. g. Wadjet Eye Games' games?

I don't see why not, but it might not be very clean. I've used native AGS for this myself, and I can tell you the particular build of AGS matters a great deal with those games. Wadget Eye in particular tends to make special builds for their games to either fix bugs or roll in particular effects, things like that, though usually a newer-then version or version matching is enough. More "basic" AGS games like several popular freeware releases have much better luck with native AGS (the kings quest/qfg/sq fan remakes); In particular I found the linux build of AGS from "Quest for Infamy" tends to be drop-in for those remakes.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'd be surprised if this was released non-janky, it'd almost have to be the same as this article mentions with the core updater being disabled. To anyone that doesn't know, RetroArch is actually just a frontend that implements the download, management and use of "libretro" cores, along with configuring and loading roms etc. The cores are the actual emulators and are not technically part of RetroArch.

Personally I find RetroArch to be usually fairly nice -- albeit sometimes confusing if something isn't working properly -- except when using it for a core with a "not modern" amount of controller buttons. IE any console that uses a 6 button controller (Sega Saturn) is incredibly confusing to set up properly, especially if using an actual 6 button controller along with it. I'm far from new in games, technical challenges, and tinkering with games/emulators/hardware, and I just gave up and used a different emulator.

Thinking maybe I just didn't understand what I wanted I looked it up and found a feature request over the same thing. Turns out I'm not alone and there are no intentions to make "non-modern conforming layouts" (Things that don't fit to a 360 or dualshock pad's layout) less confusing, unfortunately.

Then after a few months I decided to try again, and gave up again.

View this comment - View article - View full comments