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An editorial on this subject was requested by arnej who reminded me on GamingOnLinux's IRC channel that there is now another, perhaps even more important reason not to buy games in advance of their actual release on Linux.
Makes sense. With Feral and Aspyr having crossed over into the frontiers of Linux gaming with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Civilization 5 respectively, plus all their downloadable content and both massive titles in terms of gameplay, brand, budget, and so on, it stands to reason that such endeavours should be rewarded, especially when both titles aren't brand new and thus pose more of a risk for the both of them.
Here's what Aspyr_Blair said on the matter:
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icculus spoke about this subject as well in his usual, concise manner!
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Buying a game that does not yet have a Linux client doesn't make sense anyway since you cannot play the game. Apart from that, it is always wise to wait and see how good of a port it actually is. Don't spend your money blindly! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
arnejThe contracts of Feral and Aspyr will only get paid for purchases after a port happened. We now have another reason to only buy games when they are available for Linux: To support the porters.
Makes sense. With Feral and Aspyr having crossed over into the frontiers of Linux gaming with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Civilization 5 respectively, plus all their downloadable content and both massive titles in terms of gameplay, brand, budget, and so on, it stands to reason that such endeavours should be rewarded, especially when both titles aren't brand new and thus pose more of a risk for the both of them.
Here's what Aspyr_Blair said on the matter:
Aspyr_BlairAspyr gets paid on new or future purchases of the Linux and Mac versions of Civ V. If you purchases the game on Windows say...5 months ago...then the PC publisher/developer was paid for that transaction (as they should be). Essentially, Steam knows what platform you are on through the client and processes payment to the developer accordingly.
Lots of fans are worried that if they purchase through a browser or a PC at work for example, that we wont get compensated. As long as you play the game on your Linux or Mac in the first week or so and stay on that platform for your play, the payment will then shift over to us as the Linux publisher/developer.
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Aspyr_BlairDLC's are treated as separate transactions, so if you purchase BNW today on your Linux client, we will get the credit.
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Aspyr_BlairWe are paid only for Mac/Linux purchases.
The key is the target system should be played on in the first week or two, otherwise the sale defaults to the primary platform (in this case, PC). Still...Valve has some metrics on handling weird cases like that and we do get compensated. Example: mobile browser purchased but not launched on Linux until 5 weeks later...etc.
If you want to be SURE, launch the game on the target system relatively quickly, even if you dont play it much, that launch should help the metric.
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Aspyr_BlairAs long as you purchased the gift version through your Linux Steam client, we should be golden. Just also make sure that whomever you gift it to is playing on Linux or Mac ;)
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Aspyr_BlairIf you purchase on the Linux client, Aspyr would get credit for the sale immediately BUT Steam is smart, so once your buddy plays on Windows the system knows that user is really a PC customer and gives the credit back over to the fine folks at 2K. Sometimes there is a grey area where we split the revenue up but that is pretty rare. Its really a pretty smart system.
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icculus spoke about this subject as well in his usual, concise manner!
icculusInstall and play it on Linux for the first week after you buy it and they consider it a Linux sale.
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Buying a game that does not yet have a Linux client doesn't make sense anyway since you cannot play the game. Apart from that, it is always wise to wait and see how good of a port it actually is. Don't spend your money blindly! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Can you buy the game as a gift but later still install it yourself ("redeem" the gift from your inventory)? If so, I'll probably start doing it from now on. But I'm afraid that such purchases are still counted as Windows, because Steam can't hold the money until you activate the product, they have to give it to someone, so they default to the owner of the original (Windows) version.
[edit] And of course, this won't work when you buy the game on a third-party site, such as Humble Store.
Luckily I could still buy complete editions for my sister (who's also a Linux gamer) after the ports came out.
I activated Civ 5 a long time ago on my account to play through wine, ... so yeah: guilty.
If steam can see what platform you're using, why do they do the surveys? Why can't they just publish the actual numbers?
The part about the browser purchase is interesting too, because I ALWAYS bought the games from the Linux client to "guarantee" it would count as Linux purchase.
But even when its released I often try to save money :-/. Rust for example was a lot cheaper on ebay for me ....
In general ist easy for me to not buy before a linux version is released. Simply because I have no Windows. Wine might be a option sometimes, but you never know if things really work and how long they will work, so I stopped using this too.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/221910/discussions/0/630799997727674721/#c540741859668535643
-Don't buy hardware until the manufacturer release a Linux driver or a proper Linux driver is done by the community.
I still remember the Creative Labs promise of give a full featured hardware accelerated Linux driver of X-FI.
Full featured with hardware accelerated EAX 5 and OpenAL, 5.1, hardware mixing, hardware wavetable MIDI, and hardware MP3,AC3 encoding/decoding.
I gave credit to the words of Creative, so I bought an X-FI card.
Well, we know the rest of the history.
I have been 100% Linux since 2009, so never have the temptation to play a game before release. There are also so many games on Linux that I wouldn't see the point in playing on Windows even if I did have a dual boot available. I only make 2 exceptions in the "don't buy before its ported" rule: the first is if the game is on sale (but I don't do that anymore because I've realized that games always go on sale if they're ported) and the second is a few games I play through wine because I'm 100% sure that they will never be ported:
Skyrim
Final Fantasy 7
SimCity 4
Deponia Trilogy
My question though is whether playing through Wine counts as a Windows or Linux sale? Obviously the Steam client is Windows, but the OS is still Linux (using IE6 through Wine shows up as Linux on Google Analytics, for example). I remember seeing that Valve can distinguish between "pure" Windows and Wine running on Linux/OSX, but that might just be speculation. Still, its pretty funny imagining a guy at EA smoking a cigar and going through sales figures to discover that 1% are from "something called Linucks???". Still, I would never play something on Wine which I know will get a Linux port soon, I just wait (like with Tropico 5, which I'll buy the day its released).