11 ms·

Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because th

by simias 8y ago

Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. The fact that "technically" it's not Linux's fault doesn't really matter, unless you're more interested in the moral concept of guilt rather that the practicalities of making a Linux port of a game. Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? So that they'd get kudo "clean code" points from people on HN? Most for-profit software cares very little about that, and for good reasons. Gaming on Linux sucks because Linux is not popular for gaming. Linux is not popular for gaming because gaming on Linux sucks. That's the root of the issue.

jimmy1 8y ago
> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countless tech related subreddits, twitter hacker-verse would take off. The “maker culture” would adopt it as its son or daughter. Sounds like a tremendous opportunity. We are not representative of the culture but we are hackers and developers and eventually one spark is all you need to start a fire. I have the perception that gamers are dying to get off of Windows, but I could be wrong, I certainly was when I was a gamer.
- tcd 8y ago
  > would buy tremendous free publicity. That would not buy food on the table. Most money comes from Windows and what games should be optimized for. See r/choosingbeggars for more entertaining stories on the "value" of "publicity".
  - JAlexoid 8y ago
    Choosing beggars literally think that publicity is payment enough. Linux gamers PAY. Really a big difference.
- dtech 8y ago
  > Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity It does not. Take a look at the Steam games supporting Linux. There's thousands of them, it's not special.
- mscasts 8y ago
  I have seen this claim many times, but wonder about it's validity. It's easy to think that a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would make a lot of stir. But I used to play Heroes of Newerth years ago when Linux support were way worse than today. I also read HN then. I never saw any special treatment for that even tho I loved the game and it worked really, really good on linux. Searching on algolia just proves my point: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=heroes%20of%20newerth&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=heroes%20of%20newerth&sort=byP... I simply do not buy the story that just because you release it on Linux, have good linux support etc it will spread like wildfire. S2Games, which made HoN, made a superior MOBA imo but none of my friends play it anymore. They play Dota2 tho. I think the reality of the situation is that no one cares about if a game run on linux or not except extreme nerds that would never use Windows and go through the daily struggle that is desktop Linux. I used to be one of them, nowadays I only use Windows.
  - WAthrowaway 8y ago
    >daily struggle that is desktop Linux lol what year is this? 1999? but I agree with the rest of your points
    - taway_1212 8y ago
      Tried installing Linux on MBP last month. Ran away screaming after 30+ hours of dealing with drivers issues. I do this every couple of years, hoping that finally THIS time I can get off Windows. Next attempt will be circa about 2021 probably.
      - rconti 8y ago
        Why not use OS X on an MBP, or Linux on a generic x86 machine? I'm not clear on why this is the only route to get you off of Windows.
        TheDauthi 8y ago
        Macs have good hardware. Or you might also want to dual boot. Sad to say, but some Macbook models work great, and others are fucking terrible. I have two models - my older model where the only thing that has ever consistently worked is bluetooth, and a slightly newer one where nothing has ever broken.
- bengarney 8y ago
  I've been in games and game middleware (including in many cases with Linux support) for fifteen years and I have never once seen this happen. Generally there is a tremendous amount of commentary like this from Linux folks and the port neither gets meaningful (or profitable) publicity nor sales that outstrip support. This comment is the stereotypical Linux game post. When supporting a platform can mean debugging and submitting patches for a users graphics drivers in exchange for a shockingly low conversion rate, it's an easy no for me. PS I built and maintain an Enterprise AWS GPU app on Ubuntu and the platform is great. But it was very non trivial to get working. PPS if you spend less than $150/yr combined on all software purchases (including mobile/console) please don't make a case for Linux gaming. TuxRacer is your apotheosis.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    > This comment is the stereotypical Linux game post. I have absolutely no affinity for linux. My times spent twiddling with settings, packages, and getting drivers to work are long behind me. I have been exclusively Mac for almost a decade now, so I am in no way shape or form a "linux gaming homer" I could care less, but I am an opportunist, and I do see an opportunity now (and not 15 years ago) > I've been in games and game middleware (including in many cases with Linux support) for fifteen years and I have never once seen this happen. Yes, 15 years ago, Windows 10, with all it's privacy intrusions basically being a spyware OS didn't exist. A Steve Job-less Apple, doubling down on it's disdain for OpenGL and gaming in general at Apple didn't exist (see relevant John Carmack posts). And forgive me, but I would be willing to bet we didn't hear about it your game because I was specific when saying "first class citizen" meaning the game worked just as well on Linux as it did Windows. If you achieved that and still got no publicity I would be shocked. All you would need is one popular twitch streamer streaming Fornite (which also didn't exist 15 years ago, and wasn't pervasive until recently) on Linux or some similar big title and you would have a spark.
- y4mi 8y ago
  You're either underestimating revenue from Windows purchases or overvaluing that publicity bonus. There are already a lot of indie games with Linux support, and triple A developments already sell millions of copies. If that added publicity made another 1000 people buy the game, it still won't be a financially sounds decision. Heck, I'm mostly on Linux but boot into Windows for gaming... I'd probably continue to do so, even if the games were released for Linux just for that extra performance and significantly less chance too run into an obscure issue with my setup.
- astrodust 8y ago
  Literally nobody cares about Linux gaming. It's not even press-worthy because of SteamOS. Anyone who games on Linux does it for the adventure of the process, not because it's convenient. If you ported your game to the Atari ST or the Amiga you'd get more press and probably more sales.
  - taeric 8y ago
    Rhetoric like this is less than effective. Some of us do game in Linux because we don't want a Windows box. So, literally is demonstrably false. Now, statistically, I realize we don't exist. But at absolute levels, we do.
    - astrodust 8y ago
      You've got to recognize you're an outlier. In practical terms nobody plays games on Linux unless they're using something like SteamOS or, technically, Android. Given how ridiculously hard it is to get a simple application to run across all the various distributions of Linux that exist, expecting something as complicated as a game to run at all is asking way too much. Windows is ridiculously hard to support, but at least it has sales volume to justify the work necessary to get a game launched. Linux doesn't.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    I used to reboot into Windows to run games. Thanks to Proton I don't bother anymore. In fact I dread booting into Windows now because I know it's going to spend 30 minutes patching itself and then reboot on me.
  - isugimpy 8y ago
    There's nothing adventurous about using your preferred operating system and enjoying being able to have a working game experience. I've spent significant time in all 3 major OS options over the last few decades, and came to the conclusion that Linux is the one I prefer. A few years ago, I resigned myself to either rebooting to Windows or running Windows in a VM when I wanted to do any modern gaming. The significant advancements over the last year in terms of video driver functionality (both on Nvidia and AMD sides), binary compatibility (WINE/Proton), and more developers releasing native games have been a huge boon and very welcomed. I use Linux full time because it's what I enjoy and feel comfortable with as a primary OS, and I absolutely care about the gaming landscape improving. I'm only one person, but many others won't speak up.
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago
  > Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. This particular game (Planetary Annihilation) was designed with Linux support in mind from the very beginning; as the person who wrote the tweets notes, he and numerous others within the company were huge proponents of supporting Linux. As events proved, it didn't work out for them.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    They later admitted they overstated this issue and that their problems were self caused.
- flagbait 8y ago
  win10 really messed things up with the SAAS and telemetry, and integrated update rollups. the thing is microsoft really painted themselves into a corner. ya see windows was made for all sorts of skullduggery to occur , this was supposed to be a boon for MS but they punched so many holes in W32 that it was secure as a sieve, I know this first hand as i have spent a major amount of time decompiling and snooping through the binaries. the file structures in a windows OS has big voids of zeros for padding, leaves lots of room to insert malcode and fix the file headers, Thread Local Storage is neat, a thread can move data packets through its kernel objects to other objects or static files on swap. And the alternate data paging that win executable files may have is just mindblowing. a file {any W32/W64 file} that every one expects to do one thing can be trojaned by the system as a feature using alternate data streams in a file! IT GOES ON AND ON this and win10 is why i left windows and gave linux a serious try and never looked back. Linux runs games and keeps getting better at it with no cat and mouse game of you modding system files so things work and having MS updates demodd them and then prevent you from making thing workable without major klugeing around.
DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
> Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though I think the details matter because they're relevant to how we as a developer / customer community move forward. If the GP is correct, then the pain felt by these particular devs might not be a sign that targeting Linux is in general a bad idea. For example, we might help future projects be successful simply by spreading awareness of techniques known to make it easier to target Linux / SteamOS. Regarding the 0.1% of sales issue, perhaps some of that number's smallness comes from a bootstrapping problem. I.e., there's a vicious cycle of: (bad drivers) --> (game is crashy) --> (poor sales) --> (gfx card vendors not motivated to improve drivers) --> (bad drivers) --> ... I don't think there's much an individual game dev shop can do to break that cycle, but perhaps it's still useful to understand the problem.
ajvs 8y ago
Have you not seen Steam Play these last few months? Because of Proton the majority of the top 250 highest rated games now run fine on Linux. I've been playing Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, Castle Crashers, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, etc all of which are Windows-only but now WINE is so good it runs like it's native. Linux gaming doesn't suck anymore and it's coming to eat Windows lunch. Check out ProtonDB to see compatibility with your favourite games and the Linux gaming subreddit for more news.
- selectodude 8y ago
  Why should I get excited about decent compatibility when I can stick with perfect compatibility? Linux gaming doesn't suck compared to linux gaming 5 years ago. It's still crap compared to Windows.
  - derefr 8y ago
    You’re coming at this from the perspective of someone who wants to set up a PC primarily in order to play games, and probably wants to try out every game under the sun. Of course, you’ll install Windows. Try instead coming at the question from the perspective of someone who already has a Linux workstation (e.g. for work) and wants to do as little as possible in order to play a few games—maybe the ones their friends are trying to get them to play as a member of a team. Windows isn’t worth it here: you wouldn’t use it for anything else (so every time you boot into it, you probably have to spend two hours installing updates), and booting into Windows would also prevent you from multitasking to the Linux apps you rely on. Compatibility shims, if decent, are far more interesting to this audience.
    - zmw 8y ago
      People who own a Linux workstation at home and just want to play a few games is vastly outnumbered by people who own a Windows desktop at hone and just want to play a few games. Probably at least 100 to 1. And the former group, with the “almost works” compatibility, will be a much bigger maintenance burden per customer. Heck, I’d bet money that the Linux casual gaming crowd you described is also heavily outnumbered by people who have a dedicated Windows gaming PC (e.g. me, Mac user otherwise).
iforgotpassword 8y ago
> Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. Yes but then the question is, why did they even bother? If GP is right that they picked a middleware that is known to only work properly on Windows, that pretty much means they decided to fuck themselves right from the start. I agree that generally, properly targeting Linux is harder for multiple reasons, but if you want to go multiplatform, make sure you build on a solid foundation.
admax88q 8y ago
> In practice it doesn't really matter though It does matter unless you just want linux to perfectly emulate windows APIs you will always have to do work to port to a different platform. Choosing the wrong tools for the job and then blaming the platform is just bad engineering. I don't bitch about how hard it is to assembly my desk because it requires a socket wrench when my last piece of furniture only required a screwdriver and that's all I own.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Counterpoint: There's a reason IKEA packs Allen wrenches into everything it sells.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    Shipping games as live DVDs is an elegant...ish... solution:)
michaelmrose 8y ago
The moral concept of guilt is uninteresting here. Developing for any platform requires a degree of competence and research. The fact that lots of engines are themselves cross platform doesn't in fact mean that linux support is a box you can tick with no further effort it means that it is a lot less effort. I think the take away is that their life sucked because they were ill prepared and not just ill prepared to develop for Linux by all accounts. We could do well to maintain comprehensive and evolving info on the current best practices of developing on this platform and importantly pro mote them so as many as possible are educated. Incidentally honestly I don't think gaming on linux sucks. There are an absolute ton of games available. I tend to buy humble bundles and steam sales and I presently have about 10 I haven't even played yet. Maybe I would feel differently if games were the primary use of my computer. I don't need every possible game to be ported to gave a good gaming experience on Linux. I just need there to be more games than I can possibly play.
reitanqild 8y ago
FWIW I've been doing all my pc gaming from Linux the last few months. (Before that there was a bit back and forth - sometimes CSGO on my machine was best on Linux, other times on Windows bit now I haven't booted Windows for gaming since lste summer or something. And for me the convenience of KDE makes me stay for work as well.)
brann0 8y ago
But it's very relevant. Steam provides a runtime so developers have a stable foundation across several distros. If you fail to use their runtime properly, you're doomed to suffer from Linux fragmentation problems.
lwhi 8y ago
> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Your last paragraph provides the most important reason. By changing the way they develop, they will increase their customer base.
nvarsj 8y ago
Any multimedia on Linux sucks these days. I honestly think it's regressed from the days of running mplayer in a terminal. I can't watch a video in a browser without horrible screen tearing or general performance issues. It seems the poor quality of graphic drivers and X interaction are the underlying problem.
jerguismi 8y ago
It is relevent in this context, because other developers know they can avoid the said issues if they do things a little bit differently.

by simias 8y ago

jimmy1 8y ago

> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countless tech related subreddits, twitter hacker-verse would take off. The “maker culture” would adopt it as its son or daughter. Sounds like a tremendous opportunity. We are not representative of the culture but we are hackers and developers and eventually one spark is all you need to start a fire. I have the perception that gamers are dying to get off of Windows, but I could be wrong, I certainly was when I was a gamer.

tcd 8y ago
> would buy tremendous free publicity. That would not buy food on the table. Most money comes from Windows and what games should be optimized for. See r/choosingbeggars for more entertaining stories on the "value" of "publicity".
- JAlexoid 8y ago
  Choosing beggars literally think that publicity is payment enough. Linux gamers PAY. Really a big difference.
dtech 8y ago
> Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity It does not. Take a look at the Steam games supporting Linux. There's thousands of them, it's not special.
mscasts 8y ago
I have seen this claim many times, but wonder about it's validity. It's easy to think that a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would make a lot of stir. But I used to play Heroes of Newerth years ago when Linux support were way worse than today. I also read HN then. I never saw any special treatment for that even tho I loved the game and it worked really, really good on linux. Searching on algolia just proves my point: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=heroes%20of%20newerth&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=heroes%20of%20newerth&sort=byP... I simply do not buy the story that just because you release it on Linux, have good linux support etc it will spread like wildfire. S2Games, which made HoN, made a superior MOBA imo but none of my friends play it anymore. They play Dota2 tho. I think the reality of the situation is that no one cares about if a game run on linux or not except extreme nerds that would never use Windows and go through the daily struggle that is desktop Linux. I used to be one of them, nowadays I only use Windows.
- WAthrowaway 8y ago
  >daily struggle that is desktop Linux lol what year is this? 1999? but I agree with the rest of your points
  - taway_1212 8y ago
    Tried installing Linux on MBP last month. Ran away screaming after 30+ hours of dealing with drivers issues. I do this every couple of years, hoping that finally THIS time I can get off Windows. Next attempt will be circa about 2021 probably.
    - rconti 8y ago
      Why not use OS X on an MBP, or Linux on a generic x86 machine? I'm not clear on why this is the only route to get you off of Windows.
      - TheDauthi 8y ago
        Macs have good hardware. Or you might also want to dual boot. Sad to say, but some Macbook models work great, and others are fucking terrible. I have two models - my older model where the only thing that has ever consistently worked is bluetooth, and a slightly newer one where nothing has ever broken.
bengarney 8y ago
I've been in games and game middleware (including in many cases with Linux support) for fifteen years and I have never once seen this happen. Generally there is a tremendous amount of commentary like this from Linux folks and the port neither gets meaningful (or profitable) publicity nor sales that outstrip support. This comment is the stereotypical Linux game post. When supporting a platform can mean debugging and submitting patches for a users graphics drivers in exchange for a shockingly low conversion rate, it's an easy no for me. PS I built and maintain an Enterprise AWS GPU app on Ubuntu and the platform is great. But it was very non trivial to get working. PPS if you spend less than $150/yr combined on all software purchases (including mobile/console) please don't make a case for Linux gaming. TuxRacer is your apotheosis.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  > This comment is the stereotypical Linux game post. I have absolutely no affinity for linux. My times spent twiddling with settings, packages, and getting drivers to work are long behind me. I have been exclusively Mac for almost a decade now, so I am in no way shape or form a "linux gaming homer" I could care less, but I am an opportunist, and I do see an opportunity now (and not 15 years ago) > I've been in games and game middleware (including in many cases with Linux support) for fifteen years and I have never once seen this happen. Yes, 15 years ago, Windows 10, with all it's privacy intrusions basically being a spyware OS didn't exist. A Steve Job-less Apple, doubling down on it's disdain for OpenGL and gaming in general at Apple didn't exist (see relevant John Carmack posts). And forgive me, but I would be willing to bet we didn't hear about it your game because I was specific when saying "first class citizen" meaning the game worked just as well on Linux as it did Windows. If you achieved that and still got no publicity I would be shocked. All you would need is one popular twitch streamer streaming Fornite (which also didn't exist 15 years ago, and wasn't pervasive until recently) on Linux or some similar big title and you would have a spark.
y4mi 8y ago
You're either underestimating revenue from Windows purchases or overvaluing that publicity bonus. There are already a lot of indie games with Linux support, and triple A developments already sell millions of copies. If that added publicity made another 1000 people buy the game, it still won't be a financially sounds decision. Heck, I'm mostly on Linux but boot into Windows for gaming... I'd probably continue to do so, even if the games were released for Linux just for that extra performance and significantly less chance too run into an obscure issue with my setup.
astrodust 8y ago
Literally nobody cares about Linux gaming. It's not even press-worthy because of SteamOS. Anyone who games on Linux does it for the adventure of the process, not because it's convenient. If you ported your game to the Atari ST or the Amiga you'd get more press and probably more sales.
- taeric 8y ago
  Rhetoric like this is less than effective. Some of us do game in Linux because we don't want a Windows box. So, literally is demonstrably false. Now, statistically, I realize we don't exist. But at absolute levels, we do.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    You've got to recognize you're an outlier. In practical terms nobody plays games on Linux unless they're using something like SteamOS or, technically, Android. Given how ridiculously hard it is to get a simple application to run across all the various distributions of Linux that exist, expecting something as complicated as a game to run at all is asking way too much. Windows is ridiculously hard to support, but at least it has sales volume to justify the work necessary to get a game launched. Linux doesn't.
- jandrese 8y ago
  I used to reboot into Windows to run games. Thanks to Proton I don't bother anymore. In fact I dread booting into Windows now because I know it's going to spend 30 minutes patching itself and then reboot on me.
- isugimpy 8y ago
  There's nothing adventurous about using your preferred operating system and enjoying being able to have a working game experience. I've spent significant time in all 3 major OS options over the last few decades, and came to the conclusion that Linux is the one I prefer. A few years ago, I resigned myself to either rebooting to Windows or running Windows in a VM when I wanted to do any modern gaming. The significant advancements over the last year in terms of video driver functionality (both on Nvidia and AMD sides), binary compatibility (WINE/Proton), and more developers releasing native games have been a huge boon and very welcomed. I use Linux full time because it's what I enjoy and feel comfortable with as a primary OS, and I absolutely care about the gaming landscape improving. I'm only one person, but many others won't speak up.
ThrowawayR2 8y ago
> Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. This particular game (Planetary Annihilation) was designed with Linux support in mind from the very beginning; as the person who wrote the tweets notes, he and numerous others within the company were huge proponents of supporting Linux. As events proved, it didn't work out for them.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  They later admitted they overstated this issue and that their problems were self caused.
flagbait 8y ago
win10 really messed things up with the SAAS and telemetry, and integrated update rollups. the thing is microsoft really painted themselves into a corner. ya see windows was made for all sorts of skullduggery to occur , this was supposed to be a boon for MS but they punched so many holes in W32 that it was secure as a sieve, I know this first hand as i have spent a major amount of time decompiling and snooping through the binaries. the file structures in a windows OS has big voids of zeros for padding, leaves lots of room to insert malcode and fix the file headers, Thread Local Storage is neat, a thread can move data packets through its kernel objects to other objects or static files on swap. And the alternate data paging that win executable files may have is just mindblowing. a file {any W32/W64 file} that every one expects to do one thing can be trojaned by the system as a feature using alternate data streams in a file! IT GOES ON AND ON this and win10 is why i left windows and gave linux a serious try and never looked back. Linux runs games and keeps getting better at it with no cat and mouse game of you modding system files so things work and having MS updates demodd them and then prevent you from making thing workable without major klugeing around.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago

> Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though I think the details matter because they're relevant to how we as a developer / customer community move forward. If the GP is correct, then the pain felt by these particular devs might not be a sign that targeting Linux is in general a bad idea. For example, we might help future projects be successful simply by spreading awareness of techniques known to make it easier to target Linux / SteamOS. Regarding the 0.1% of sales issue, perhaps some of that number's smallness comes from a bootstrapping problem. I.e., there's a vicious cycle of: (bad drivers) --> (game is crashy) --> (poor sales) --> (gfx card vendors not motivated to improve drivers) --> (bad drivers) --> ... I don't think there's much an individual game dev shop can do to break that cycle, but perhaps it's still useful to understand the problem.

ajvs 8y ago

Have you not seen Steam Play these last few months? Because of Proton the majority of the top 250 highest rated games now run fine on Linux. I've been playing Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, Castle Crashers, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, etc all of which are Windows-only but now WINE is so good it runs like it's native. Linux gaming doesn't suck anymore and it's coming to eat Windows lunch. Check out ProtonDB to see compatibility with your favourite games and the Linux gaming subreddit for more news.

selectodude 8y ago
Why should I get excited about decent compatibility when I can stick with perfect compatibility? Linux gaming doesn't suck compared to linux gaming 5 years ago. It's still crap compared to Windows.
- derefr 8y ago
  You’re coming at this from the perspective of someone who wants to set up a PC primarily in order to play games, and probably wants to try out every game under the sun. Of course, you’ll install Windows. Try instead coming at the question from the perspective of someone who already has a Linux workstation (e.g. for work) and wants to do as little as possible in order to play a few games—maybe the ones their friends are trying to get them to play as a member of a team. Windows isn’t worth it here: you wouldn’t use it for anything else (so every time you boot into it, you probably have to spend two hours installing updates), and booting into Windows would also prevent you from multitasking to the Linux apps you rely on. Compatibility shims, if decent, are far more interesting to this audience.
  - zmw 8y ago
    People who own a Linux workstation at home and just want to play a few games is vastly outnumbered by people who own a Windows desktop at hone and just want to play a few games. Probably at least 100 to 1. And the former group, with the “almost works” compatibility, will be a much bigger maintenance burden per customer. Heck, I’d bet money that the Linux casual gaming crowd you described is also heavily outnumbered by people who have a dedicated Windows gaming PC (e.g. me, Mac user otherwise).

iforgotpassword 8y ago

> Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. Yes but then the question is, why did they even bother? If GP is right that they picked a middleware that is known to only work properly on Windows, that pretty much means they decided to fuck themselves right from the start. I agree that generally, properly targeting Linux is harder for multiple reasons, but if you want to go multiplatform, make sure you build on a solid foundation.

admax88q 8y ago

> In practice it doesn't really matter though It does matter unless you just want linux to perfectly emulate windows APIs you will always have to do work to port to a different platform. Choosing the wrong tools for the job and then blaming the platform is just bad engineering. I don't bitch about how hard it is to assembly my desk because it requires a socket wrench when my last piece of furniture only required a screwdriver and that's all I own.

fixermark 8y ago
Counterpoint: There's a reason IKEA packs Allen wrenches into everything it sells.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Shipping games as live DVDs is an elegant...ish... solution:)

michaelmrose 8y ago

The moral concept of guilt is uninteresting here. Developing for any platform requires a degree of competence and research. The fact that lots of engines are themselves cross platform doesn't in fact mean that linux support is a box you can tick with no further effort it means that it is a lot less effort. I think the take away is that their life sucked because they were ill prepared and not just ill prepared to develop for Linux by all accounts. We could do well to maintain comprehensive and evolving info on the current best practices of developing on this platform and importantly pro mote them so as many as possible are educated. Incidentally honestly I don't think gaming on linux sucks. There are an absolute ton of games available. I tend to buy humble bundles and steam sales and I presently have about 10 I haven't even played yet. Maybe I would feel differently if games were the primary use of my computer. I don't need every possible game to be ported to gave a good gaming experience on Linux. I just need there to be more games than I can possibly play.

reitanqild 8y ago

FWIW I've been doing all my pc gaming from Linux the last few months. (Before that there was a bit back and forth - sometimes CSGO on my machine was best on Linux, other times on Windows bit now I haven't booted Windows for gaming since lste summer or something. And for me the convenience of KDE makes me stay for work as well.)

brann0 8y ago

But it's very relevant. Steam provides a runtime so developers have a stable foundation across several distros. If you fail to use their runtime properly, you're doomed to suffer from Linux fragmentation problems.

lwhi 8y ago

> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Your last paragraph provides the most important reason. By changing the way they develop, they will increase their customer base.

nvarsj 8y ago

Any multimedia on Linux sucks these days. I honestly think it's regressed from the days of running mplayer in a terminal. I can't watch a video in a browser without horrible screen tearing or general performance issues. It seems the poor quality of graphic drivers and X interaction are the underlying problem.

jerguismi 8y ago

It is relevent in this context, because other developers know they can avoid the said issues if they do things a little bit differently.