Comment by bayindirh
3 years ago
I don't buy the cumbersomeness argument for Linux games. A lot of games in the past and today has been distributed as Linux binaries. Most famously Quake and Unreal Tournament series had native Linux binaries on disks and they worked well until I migrated to 64 bit distributions. I'm sure they'll work equally fine if I multi-arch my installations.
Many of the games bundled by HumbleBundle as downloadable setups have Linux binaries. Some are re-built as 64 bit binaries and updated long after the bundle has closed.
I still play Darwinia on my 64 bit Linux system occasionally.
Most of these games are distributed as .tar.gz archives, too.
I can accept and respect not creating Linux builds as engineering (using Windows only APIs, libraries, etc.) and business (not enough market) decisions, but cumbersomeness is not an excuse, it's a result of the other related choices.
In my book, if a company doesn't want to support Linux, they can tell it bluntly, but telling "we want to, but it's hard, and this is Linux's problem" doesn't sound sincere even remotely.
> have Linux binaries
In January, HumlbeBundle removed Linux support from their Trove [1].
HumbleBundle support points out that it's not simple [2]:
> While it is entirely possible to install and run games and programs from the Linux GUI, implementation across distros can be wildly different. For this reason, this guide will explain how to install and launch games using the Terminal.
And, usually, only a small list of distributions are supported, like Ubuntu or Mint. For example, Bundle 9 [3].
All of the above seems to supports the "cumbersomeness argument for Linux games".
1. https://kotaku.com/latest-humble-bundle-change-leaves-mac-li...
2. https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en-us/articles/219377857...
3. https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011722...
Humbe Bundle has been focusing on profit only and ignoring their original values ever since it has been sold to IGN. It's not surprising that they would cut support for something only a small percentage of their users use (remember, they are primarily a Steam key reseller now). That has nothing to do with Linux support being cumbersome just with any OS support benefiting from economies of scale that makes minority platforms less lucrative.
The irony is, Linux users Were the highest paying customers before the transfer to IGN.
Their contribution easily made up to half of all sales money wise.
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> In January, HumlbeBundle removed Linux support from their Trove [1].
Yet, I have downloaded all new builds for a couple of games for amd64 from one of their oldest bundles.
It's not as clear cut as it seems.
> I can accept and respect not creating Linux builds as engineering (using Windows only APIs, libraries, etc.) and business (not enough market) decisions..
Yep, and if somebody made your game work under Wine/Proton or Bottles/Heroic, just pay them to support it or create an AppImage/Flatpak and that's the easiest way to get compatibility.
Basically game developers never once booted linux.
They'd need to do some learning and don't want to. They might have superficially read something about distributions and think that a software cannot run on two different distributions.
I've read this excuse time and time again. And saying it tells me that the person never actually tried to compile anything on linux.
On the contrary, they are more that used to POSIX stacks on macOS, iOS, PlayStation, Nintendo, Android, ChromeOS....
Yet porting to GNU/Linux is not worthwhile.
I kindly disagree with you. Most of the platform provided by a console is nicely abstracted with SDKs. The code they touch is the SDK which provides direct, and tailored access to utilities and capabilities provided by the platform itself.
Even the Linux binaries of then AAA titles are ported by some talented developers, sometimes out of the studio.
I remember porting of Unreal Tournament to Linux was an official effort, but a work of a single guy.
So, I don't expect studio-wide POSIX knowledge on game studios.
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macos? The same OS which decided no more 32bit binaries because of reasons? The same OS which decided no more opengl because of reasons? That OS?
No gamer uses that OS. If you think it's hard on linux, it's much harder on osx.
android is not posix, that is completely hidden from the developer.
chromeos is just linux + google tracking.
consoles are a complete separate world.
Please let's try to have a serious conversation. Game developers that use frameworks such as unreal are often unaware of how the underlying system works.
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