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I don't understand the whole thing. Instead of working on getting game developers releasing their game to run natively on Linux, people are doing brokenly tryin

I don't understand the whole thing. Instead of working on getting game developers releasing their game to run natively on Linux, people are doing brokenly trying to get things run on Linux with a pile of crap.

TheRealPomax 5y ago
Except that it's (1) not a pile of crap (it actually works unreasonably well, and keeps improving) and (2) building for one platform and having third party tooling make that work on other platforms means you are not spending five, ten, or even more times as much on purely supporting additional build targets. No sane PM would go "hey let's take a huge chunk of our budget and spend it on native builds and QA for at least five different-enough-to-all-have-their-own-bugs linux platforms in addition to Windows, rather than spending it on actual game development for a single platform".
NavinF 5y ago
You realize that Linux has <2% market share across all distros and versions, each of which needs a different binary, right? “We shipped Planetary Annihilation on Win, Mac, and Linux. Linux uses we're a big vocal part of the Kickstarter and forums. In the end they accounted for <0.1% of sales but >20% of auto reported crashes and support tickets (most gfx driver related). Would totally skip Linux.” “By the end of my time at Uber I believe very nearly 100% of both crashes and support tickets actually for the game were still Linux related, even after significantly engineering time. Way more Linux specific time put into that project than any other platform. And again, that was for a tiny fraction of the users. Adding Linux support ended up likely costing Uber hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few hundred dollars in sales revenue.” https://mobile.twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760...
- TeddyDD 5y ago
  Counterpoint: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav... > all distros and versions, each of which needs a different binary You only need to support Steam runtime.
meibo 5y ago
Have you ever worked in the games industry? Anything that has to be done costs money and needs to be very well justified. Making working Linux builds and testing them is not just switching a compiler flag. It's a multi-week project that needs to be funded and takes away developer resources from actually making the game good, for an absolutely miniscule userbase that could play your game just fine without any drawbacks in Proton, for free. Valve pays for it because developers can't/won't. Even if you fund a Linux port, it basically ends up abandoned because there is no money to maintain it - updates will only go to Windows. There's even games that don't have working DLC in their Linux-native versions.

TheRealPomax 5y ago

Except that it's (1) not a pile of crap (it actually works unreasonably well, and keeps improving) and (2) building for one platform and having third party tooling make that work on other platforms means you are not spending five, ten, or even more times as much on purely supporting additional build targets. No sane PM would go "hey let's take a huge chunk of our budget and spend it on native builds and QA for at least five different-enough-to-all-have-their-own-bugs linux platforms in addition to Windows, rather than spending it on actual game development for a single platform".

NavinF 5y ago

You realize that Linux has <2% market share across all distros and versions, each of which needs a different binary, right? “We shipped Planetary Annihilation on Win, Mac, and Linux. Linux uses we're a big vocal part of the Kickstarter and forums. In the end they accounted for <0.1% of sales but >20% of auto reported crashes and support tickets (most gfx driver related). Would totally skip Linux.” “By the end of my time at Uber I believe very nearly 100% of both crashes and support tickets actually for the game were still Linux related, even after significantly engineering time. Way more Linux specific time put into that project than any other platform. And again, that was for a tiny fraction of the users. Adding Linux support ended up likely costing Uber hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few hundred dollars in sales revenue.” https://mobile.twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760...

TeddyDD 5y ago
Counterpoint: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav... > all distros and versions, each of which needs a different binary You only need to support Steam runtime.

meibo 5y ago

Have you ever worked in the games industry? Anything that has to be done costs money and needs to be very well justified. Making working Linux builds and testing them is not just switching a compiler flag. It's a multi-week project that needs to be funded and takes away developer resources from actually making the game good, for an absolutely miniscule userbase that could play your game just fine without any drawbacks in Proton, for free. Valve pays for it because developers can't/won't. Even if you fund a Linux port, it basically ends up abandoned because there is no money to maintain it - updates will only go to Windows. There's even games that don't have working DLC in their Linux-native versions.