The Witcher 3 is something Linux users have been practically begging to have, but the problem is that it seems it will likely never come to Linux. An ex-Virtual Programming developer has taken to reddit explaining why this may have happened.
I should stress, for our own record here that this is not the official word from Virtual Programming or CD Projekt RED. This is the personal opinion of an ex-VP developer.
Here's the issue: The Linux version of The Witcher 2 was released in a poor state, it had poor performance and just didn't really work well at all. It was later fixed-up and last time I tried it, the performance was absolutely fine for me. The real problem, is the amount of hate that was sent towards the porters Virtual Programming and directly to CD Projekt RED as well. Even I personally saw some of the hate that was sent their way and it was downright idiotic and absolutely uncalled for.
I will absolutely hold my hands up as well, I made mistakes around it since I simply didn't know enough at the time, and to be honest three years ago I was still learning a lot about everything. I later corrected what I said, as I always aim to.
Writing on reddit, this developer said (source):
It seems we may have also seen a port of The Witcher 1 as well, as the developer also said (source):
There's also this post from another user, who said at the time The Witcher 2 released for Linux, CDProjekt apparently lost a fair amount on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Apparently due to such a big backlash from the community about the initial release quality. I haven't verified that myself, but if true it would certainly make CDProjekt rather against doing another Linux port with anyone.
This is sad, really sad. I hope this makes a few people reconsider their attitude when talking to developer about the performance of ports. Performance can be worked on and fixed, burnt bridges are harder (and sometimes impossible) to fix.
This reminds me of the time the Blizzard President responded to a small petition asking for Linux ports of their games. The response to the petition was really nice to see from such a big company and truthfully the response I fully expected, but the original statement in reply to it from the petition author (now deleted by the author, but captured in my article) was downright childish and idiotic.
Yes problems are annoying, but throwing insults around helps no one and yes it does make us look bad. I get where people are coming from, to an extent, since some games do end up getting left in a terribly broken state for a long time and sometimes forever. However, in this case VP did good and continued working and now, as stated previously, The Witcher 2 seems fine. Their others ports are generally pretty decent too.
I just hope in future that this developer who got a massive amount of hate and CD Projekt RED can look past it somehow, for all the fans of their franchise on Linux.
Note: I personally spoke to this developer about publishing this with their approval, in the hopes that it might get a few people to re-think their initial attitude towards problems in games. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I should stress, for our own record here that this is not the official word from Virtual Programming or CD Projekt RED. This is the personal opinion of an ex-VP developer.
Here's the issue: The Linux version of The Witcher 2 was released in a poor state, it had poor performance and just didn't really work well at all. It was later fixed-up and last time I tried it, the performance was absolutely fine for me. The real problem, is the amount of hate that was sent towards the porters Virtual Programming and directly to CD Projekt RED as well. Even I personally saw some of the hate that was sent their way and it was downright idiotic and absolutely uncalled for.
I will absolutely hold my hands up as well, I made mistakes around it since I simply didn't know enough at the time, and to be honest three years ago I was still learning a lot about everything. I later corrected what I said, as I always aim to.
Writing on reddit, this developer said (source):
QuoteI agree, things were not right on release... but the vocality of people went way beyond that. It was an all out hate campaign against VP, against CDPR for "lying about the port being native". I attempted to help people out in my own time and got absolutely roasted and abused for it.
The community needs to realise it simply cannot justify this sort of behaviour if they want to convince devs and publishers to support them. There is no excuse.
It seems we may have also seen a port of The Witcher 1 as well, as the developer also said (source):
QuoteThe vitriol was unbelievable. Yes we messed up the performance on release but we put it right. However a huge hate campaign ensued. Both VP and CDPR got lots of vengeful hate mail sent to them. I cannot help but feel this damaged CDPR's view of the Linux platform irrevocably.
They certainly didnt blame us, because they had us work on a Mac port of Witcher 1 to replace the non-functioning Wineskin version. The same port would have ran on Linux too with very little extra work, but they were not interested in releasing it.
There's also this post from another user, who said at the time The Witcher 2 released for Linux, CDProjekt apparently lost a fair amount on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Apparently due to such a big backlash from the community about the initial release quality. I haven't verified that myself, but if true it would certainly make CDProjekt rather against doing another Linux port with anyone.
This is sad, really sad. I hope this makes a few people reconsider their attitude when talking to developer about the performance of ports. Performance can be worked on and fixed, burnt bridges are harder (and sometimes impossible) to fix.
This reminds me of the time the Blizzard President responded to a small petition asking for Linux ports of their games. The response to the petition was really nice to see from such a big company and truthfully the response I fully expected, but the original statement in reply to it from the petition author (now deleted by the author, but captured in my article) was downright childish and idiotic.
Yes problems are annoying, but throwing insults around helps no one and yes it does make us look bad. I get where people are coming from, to an extent, since some games do end up getting left in a terribly broken state for a long time and sometimes forever. However, in this case VP did good and continued working and now, as stated previously, The Witcher 2 seems fine. Their others ports are generally pretty decent too.
I just hope in future that this developer who got a massive amount of hate and CD Projekt RED can look past it somehow, for all the fans of their franchise on Linux.
Note: I personally spoke to this developer about publishing this with their approval, in the hopes that it might get a few people to re-think their initial attitude towards problems in games. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: webcreatureYes you're right of course! So let's say they might have decided to not contimue the experience...
I suppose someone on top there, cancelled it. But we don't really know the reason, and from the timeline, it's quite unlikely that it were bad reactions on TW2 Linux release.
Would still be good to know, what the reason is. I'm more inclined to guess, it was related to the failure of Steam Machines to gain wider adoption. After all, their early ads indicated connection to SteamOS release, and even in the interview Marcin Iwiński said, they'd release TW3 for Linux if "[Valve] will deliver a cool console".
Last edited by Shmerl on 4 July 2017 at 12:08 am UTC
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These are really sad news. After finishing The Witcher 2 I was waiting to play the sequel :'(
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The windows community is just as vitriolic. I saw this some time ago.
It talks about the 'Mass Effect 3' and the back lash from the community.
It caused valve to rethink HL3 development.
View video on youtube.com
It talks about the 'Mass Effect 3' and the back lash from the community.
It caused valve to rethink HL3 development.
View video on youtube.com
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TheRiddick Jul 4, 2017
Unfortunately these extreme haters won't ever leave the gaming community, developers must accept that they are the loudest ones and just ignore them. They are not representative of the community as a whole.
In saying that if they added in VulkanAPI support to their Witcher3 game then it would make for a rather smooth transition to Linux, and allowing for windows users to enjoy the benefits also. Trying to convert DX11 to OGL IMO never seems to yield very good results.
In saying that if they added in VulkanAPI support to their Witcher3 game then it would make for a rather smooth transition to Linux, and allowing for windows users to enjoy the benefits also. Trying to convert DX11 to OGL IMO never seems to yield very good results.
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Quoting: Guestedit: Even if the renderer was Vulkan and the middleware paid for, that does not equal a Linux port. You still have to have the expertise to deal with and support Linux. Look at all the smaller devs who have thought that all they need to do is ship a binary, and have gotten severely burned when they were unequipped to deal with the technical support.
CDPR have more than enough money to hire experts. They hired a lot of developers to work on CP2077. So that's not really an excuse. No one is stopping them from investing in their engine, and making it truly cross platform. I.e. no wrappers and etc. - native Linux development from day one.
Last edited by Shmerl on 4 July 2017 at 1:33 am UTC
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Quoting: GuestInstead I was roasted alive and got sent (to my work and personal email accounts, and my personal Facebook account, Steam account etc) tons of very hateful mail, telling me/my family to go and die, and such like.
Damn, that's messed up.
I wonder if there is something we could do to show we aren't all jerks. Maybe CDPR needs cookies.
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Quoting: bingusI wonder if there is something we could do to show we aren't all jerks. Maybe CDPR needs cookies.
Talk to them directly, they read comments, even if they don't reply.
Vote here and here.
Post a comment here.
Very few people ever posted in CDPR forums about interest for Linux versions. The impression is always, no one cares.
Last edited by Shmerl on 4 July 2017 at 1:54 am UTC
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Quoting: GuestIndeed they do. But now, justify the extra expenditure of doing this to the board of directors. That's a lot of investment, for 1% of the market.
They apparently already explained it. They planned to make REDengine a product on its own, i.e. they wanted to license it to other developers. Making it cross platform in that context already is about not falling behind competition. They even explicitly spelled out those plans in their past yearly reports.
But during their last public meeting with shareholders they suddenly announced that those plans to release REDengine were cancelled (no reasons given). That also spelled doom for release of their full blown modding tools for TW3, which upset quite a lot of people. I.e. those modding tools were supposed to be some version of their engine editor they were planning to release for others.
Last edited by Shmerl on 4 July 2017 at 2:05 am UTC
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