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Maybe they have learned other developers' lesson that a it takes much more than a push of a button to get a Unity game on Linux. QA takes time. Middleware may

by tadzik_ 11y ago

Maybe they have learned other developers' lesson that a it takes much more than a push of a button to get a Unity game on Linux. QA takes time. Middleware may or may not be available. Launchers may not be there (especially in the case of Hearthstone). A lost of indie/kickstarted projects are still considered "Linux Scams" because they assumed that it'd be that easy.

ekianjo 11y ago
Playonlinux makes it easy to launch Hearthstone and play it on any Linux distro. I have a hard time to believe that Blizzard does not have enough resources to do QA.
- tadzik_ 11y ago
  I'm sure it does, they just not consider it economically viable.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    I just wish they could try once at least.
    - jon-wood 11y ago
      What's to say they haven't, and decided the work involved would be too much for a commercial release. Blizzard are well known for their approach of not releasing things until they're ready, and they won't want to kill that reputation for a Linux port.
hitlin37 11y ago
it may not be easy, but with the progress made by other game engines in last few months, running your game on linux is now a reality and as easy as making it for PC (with little effort).
- tadzik_ 11y ago
  You mean "Windows PC"? :) It sure is, I'm a Linux-exclusive gamer ever since Steam on Linux came out, but I try to look realistically at reasoning of developers who never did this before.
  - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
    You / parent mean "Windows OS"? PC is just one platform Windows runs on.
    - klintwood 11y ago
      But then "Windows PC" would be the correct term. "Windows OS" would imply that it also runs on e.g. Windows Phone, which is usually treated separately.
jebblue 11y ago
Maybe there are other reasons not having to do with technical ones that encourages them to not push the button.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>are still considered "Linux Scams" This is the biggest concern. The linux community is crazy hostile. Heaven forbid your game doesn't work on some wonky setup that would be 100% unreasonable to support. We also see this in Android where reviews for games are sometimes, "Zero stars, doesn't work on $49 $obscure_chinatablet." Even if a company picked a reference Linux distro, like the current Ubuntu, it would be still displease a lot people, especially if the game only worked correctly on closed video drivers. There's really no winning in such a fragmented environment, unless you're willing to invest a serious amount of your budget here. Its not just "push a button."
- cwyers 11y ago
  What people seem to have a hard time understanding is that Linux is not an operating system, it's a family of operating systems. Someone running Gentoo with OpenRC and Xfce, someone running Debian with sysvinit and GNOME and someone running Arch with systemd and KDE are all "running Linux." This is more difficult than Windows or OS X, where you can rely on the low-level system plumbing staying the same from machine to machine (versions of OS X are all closer to each other than Linuxes are to each other and there's a lot fewer of them).
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    Valve are doing a lot to help here by distributing Steam with a known set of libraries that will be used by any games launched via Steam. There's still going to be some variation, but developers can at least know which version of key libraries they can rely on
    - mrec 11y ago
      I think their new refund policy will also help a lot. Being able to try a game to see if it works, and get your money back hassle-free if it doesn't, ought to take a lot of the anxiety out of the fragmented-target-OS issue.
      - drzaiusapelord 11y ago

by tadzik_ 11y ago

ekianjo 11y ago

Playonlinux makes it easy to launch Hearthstone and play it on any Linux distro. I have a hard time to believe that Blizzard does not have enough resources to do QA.

tadzik_ 11y ago
I'm sure it does, they just not consider it economically viable.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  I just wish they could try once at least.
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    What's to say they haven't, and decided the work involved would be too much for a commercial release. Blizzard are well known for their approach of not releasing things until they're ready, and they won't want to kill that reputation for a Linux port.

hitlin37 11y ago

it may not be easy, but with the progress made by other game engines in last few months, running your game on linux is now a reality and as easy as making it for PC (with little effort).

tadzik_ 11y ago
You mean "Windows PC"? :) It sure is, I'm a Linux-exclusive gamer ever since Steam on Linux came out, but I try to look realistically at reasoning of developers who never did this before.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  You / parent mean "Windows OS"? PC is just one platform Windows runs on.
  - klintwood 11y ago
    But then "Windows PC" would be the correct term. "Windows OS" would imply that it also runs on e.g. Windows Phone, which is usually treated separately.

jebblue 11y ago

Maybe there are other reasons not having to do with technical ones that encourages them to not push the button.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

>are still considered "Linux Scams" This is the biggest concern. The linux community is crazy hostile. Heaven forbid your game doesn't work on some wonky setup that would be 100% unreasonable to support. We also see this in Android where reviews for games are sometimes, "Zero stars, doesn't work on $49 $obscure_chinatablet." Even if a company picked a reference Linux distro, like the current Ubuntu, it would be still displease a lot people, especially if the game only worked correctly on closed video drivers. There's really no winning in such a fragmented environment, unless you're willing to invest a serious amount of your budget here. Its not just "push a button."

cwyers 11y ago
What people seem to have a hard time understanding is that Linux is not an operating system, it's a family of operating systems. Someone running Gentoo with OpenRC and Xfce, someone running Debian with sysvinit and GNOME and someone running Arch with systemd and KDE are all "running Linux." This is more difficult than Windows or OS X, where you can rely on the low-level system plumbing staying the same from machine to machine (versions of OS X are all closer to each other than Linuxes are to each other and there's a lot fewer of them).
- jon-wood 11y ago
  Valve are doing a lot to help here by distributing Steam with a known set of libraries that will be used by any games launched via Steam. There's still going to be some variation, but developers can at least know which version of key libraries they can rely on
  - mrec 11y ago
    I think their new refund policy will also help a lot. Being able to try a game to see if it works, and get your money back hassle-free if it doesn't, ought to take a lot of the anxiety out of the fragmented-target-OS issue.
    - drzaiusapelord 11y ago