Slime Rancher updated, hits 300K sales and I asked the developer about their Linux support

Slime Rancher is a damn cute game, it's high on my list to play hours of when it has some fleshed out content to it. It has hit over 300K sales so I caught up with the developer on the Linux side of it.

I spoke to Nick, the main developer behind Slime Rancher with two simple, but interesting questions I wanted to know.

GOL: How easy was it for you to support Linux with Slime Rancher?

Nick: "Since we’re using Unity, supporting linux basically ‘just works,’ or at least it works enough for us to get a great start on it. Had we built our own 3d engine (and as a two person team, this would have been insane) it would have been far more difficult. With Unity, it has mostly been a matter of resolving graphical issues. Fortunately the linux audience seems to expect these things and they’ve been very patient and helpful when these issues arise."

GOL: Have the sales for the Linux version been enough for you to be happy with it?

Nick: "This is where we’re a bit more conflicted. Linux sales represent a tiny fraction of Slime Rancher sales, less than 0.5% overall (for reference, Mac sales are about 10%). So it’s difficult to say if it has been worth the trouble. Given that Slime Rancher has been very successful for us, 0.5% of all the revenue we’ve generated is a nice figure, but had we instead spent those resources improving the game as a whole; would we have made more revenue as a result? It’s a tough call."

You can find Slime Rancher on GOG, Steam or buy it directly.

I think it's a very cool game, you can see my previous failure in it here.

The Mac->Linux difference is sales is probably one of the biggest differences I've ever seen from talking to developers. I wonder why that is?

Thanks for speaking to me Nick!