It’s been a long time since I’ve done this, but here’s part 5 in the series of me talking to developers about how their games have been selling on Linux.
If you missed the previous articles: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
Beamdog
For those who don’t recognise the name, Beamdog are the people behind revamps of classic RPG titles like Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition and Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.
They gave some details about how Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition sold on Steam:
- 91.74% - Windows
- 6.22% - Mac
- 2.04% - Linux
Additionally, they also gave details about install numbers from their own Beamdog client:
- 91.13% - Windows
- 6.38% - Mac
- 2.49% - Linux
Here’s what Beamdog CTO, Scott Brooks had to say about Linux support:
QuoteWe really think the Infinity Engine games are something special and work hard to bring them to people that might not otherwise be able to play them. We've worked with professional and volunteer translators to help bring Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition to 14 languages, and we add things like Story Mode to help people who otherwise would have a hard time playing these great games. We've ported an engine that was originally built in the 16bit to 32bit transition to 64bit in order to let people continue enjoying these games. There are people on Linux that would love to play our games specifically on Linux, and we would love to let them.
Also, if you missed it I did an interview with Beamdog before, you can see that here.
MidBoss
MidBoss, the roguelike where you possess the bodies of your enemies released with Day-1 Linux support back in May. Here’s the figures their developer gave:
- 93.4 - Windows
- 4.7% - Mac
- 1.9% - Linux
Here’s what the developer of MidBoss had to say about supporting Linux now and in future:
QuoteI feel pretty good about supporting both platforms in MidBoss, particularly since Ethan Lee who made FNA did the ports and it wasn't too expensive. Without him they probably wouldn't have happened.
In the future I'll be using a new, completely custom framework that can create .NET executables as well as JavaScript/WebGL builds from a single C# codebase. We're planning to initially use the web builds with Electron to keep supporting Mac and Linux. This should perform just fine for smaller games such as Ultra Hat Dimension which is probably coming out on Steam in early 2018.
When we do wind up doing a bigger more demanding game again (MidBoss 2? Who knows!) I'll investigate getting the .NET versions working on Mac and Linux too. The .NET side uses OpenTK/OpenGL so it shouldn't be that difficult, hopefully, we just don't have the time/resources right now to go into it.
Milkstone Studios
To my surprise, Milkstone Studios were very open and sent over details about multiple titles!
White Noise 2
- 95.31% - Windows
- 4.06% - OSX
- 0.64% - Linux
Only Linux details given for these:
- Little Racers Street: 12.05%
- Pharaonic: 4.59%
- Ziggurat: 2.19%
- White Noise Online: 0.96%
It’s worth noting, that just before the release of Little Racers Street, I did an interview with Milkstone Studios about the title. That may have helped towards the rather high Linux percentage there.
Here’s what they said about continuing to support Linux:
Milkstone StudiosSeeing these numbers, look like Linux players are more used to single player experiences, so that might be the reason.
We support Linux on a pretty basic level (we're not Linux users ourselves, so we have limited experience with it). Linux support takes up lots of support time (I'd say around 20-25% of our support time is dedicated to addressing Linux issues), and it's hard to justify dedicating our time to this platform if sales for it are low. However, Unity allows for easy generation of Linux builds, and most of the work required for a proper port was done with Ziggurat, so for now we'll continue releasing games with Linux support, and trying to solve issues to the best of our knowledge.
While they weren’t able to give any specific details, I did speak to two of the bigger porters Feral Interactive and Aspyr Media.
Here’s what Feral Interactive had to say:
QuoteThe Linux market remains small in comparison to Mac, and tiny compared to Windows. Three years of bringing AAA games to Linux has taught us a lot about what works in sales terms, and what works less well. Although we had hoped that the Steam Machine would gain more traction, we have been pleasantly surprised by the Linux sales achieved on distros other than SteamOS, and continually encouraged by the passionate (and vocal!) audience of Linux gamers. However, we are disappointed by the promotion of piracy by some, which does disproportionate damage to the economics of bringing games to an already small platform.
Take a look at what Aspyr Media said:
QuoteOur Linux business continues to be an important part of our strategy going forward. We consider Linux a viable platform, and continue to make it a target goal of any deal we strike.
I did reach out to Virtual Programming, but they were extremely busy and didn't have time.
I would like to thank everyone who got back to me. Sadly some didn’t reply, but given how busy developers are actually making games, it’s all good!
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: Guestunfortunately i do not see this getting any better.i mean if we had a game that was linux only and it was a decent game where people would be dying to play it maybe just maybe it would get some interest.i don't want to be negative but i have been watching this the past 2 years and unless something drastic happens with windows 10 where people mass flood away from it we are just gonna be that small market.i so want linux to be huge but people are not giving it a chance or just too afraid to try it.
I agree but there in lies the problem, I came to linux because I tried it out and after time realised I was using it more than windows. Now for gaming I have taken a huge hit by staying on linux I have/had i guess over 300 + games on windows Steam 81 are playable on linux natively. The biggest problem I think still is the image linux has an image of being only for the super super hardcore geek.
I think Linux for the hardcore gamer is a tough sell. There is just not enough triple a support for them to ditch Windows and go 100 percent linux.
Last edited by Whitewolfe80 on 3 August 2017 at 6:03 pm UTC
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: slaapliedjeThis is the thing here. If Vulkan was a Linux Only API, then it'd probably very rarely get used. The fact that it was being worked on before Metal (it derives from AMD's Mantle), and Apple had stopped supplying newer OpenGL, they were specifically trying to be more anti-competitive to Linux/other BSDs.
No. I've heard this one SO many times. Mantle was only ever, an AMD project for AMD GPU's. AT NO POINT did AMD ever announce that they planned to donate or open it.
Meanwhile, other platform vendors sat and waited for Khronos to announce OpenGL Next... and waited.. and waited. Apple got fed up, and started developing Metal.
THEN Khronos finally announces Vulkan, and that it would be based on AMD's Mantle which AMD decided to donate. Too late. Apple's already committed to Metal. So they shipped Metal. And it works bloody well. Apple are not going to suddenly drop Metal for Vulkan "because".
If you want to blame someone for screwing this pooch, blame Khronos. It is also their indecisiveness and foot dragging that has kept OpenGL behind DirectX for years and years.
https://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Planning-Open-Source-GameWorks-Competitor-Mantle-Linux
you mean apart from in this interview where he gives the rough date of 2014 of mantle being an open source project
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Quoting: slaapliedjeLet's break that down;
CUPS: Open Source project bought by Apple. Still open sourced.
WebKit: Forked from KHTML, but is updated from various people. Still open sourced.
Swift: I'll give this one to Apple, cool.
Darwin: Open source kernel, but they don't keep it all that updated.
OpenCL: Already covered that it was kind of dropped. Not sure if they invented it or not.
Bonjour/Zeroconf: pretty sure that's a standard called mDNS, no?
USB-C/Thunderbolt: Intel created this.
FireWire: Same thing as above.
HTML5 vs Flash? everyone was behind this, even Adobe...
mDNS was based on an open paper which was adopted by Apple and Microsoft. mDNS/Bonjour is Apple's name for zeroconf, Linux called it Avahi, not sure what MS did.
CUPS was around for a while, Apple didn't buy it, but they did eventually head hunt the main dude behind the company that did.
Don't know much about the rest, but it does seem to me that Apple get credit for stuff that's been around for years. I wouldn't mind, if they actually offered anything (literally, nearly anything, even just "credit", jesus!) back to the projects they use. But since they won't hardly even give anything back to their own shareholders, it hardly surprises me that they don't give anything back to the giants upon whose shoulders they stand.
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Quoting: Whitewolfe80https://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Planning-Open-Source-GameWorks-Competitor-Mantle-Linux
you mean apart from in this interview where he gives the rough date of 2014 of mantle being an open source project
It was known even before that, but yeah, that's a good example. AMD started focusing on open sourcing stuff more, once Lisa Su became CEO.
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 August 2017 at 6:12 pm UTC
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Quoting: ShmerlAll that has a negative impact. Consider for example engine developers like Epic and their UE. Because they need to support multiple redundant backends (DX, Metal, GNM, and then OpenGL/Vulkan), what do you think they are focused on more? Bigger ones of course. That's why games like Everspace suffer from bugs on Linux that aren't fixed in a long time. All that is a direct consequence of lock-in jerks pushing their APIs, instead of using open ones which would allow engine developers to produce higher quality result for each OS. What other practical demonstration of that impact do you need?
What does it have to do with Apple? Desktop-Gamingwise Apple plays almost no role in the big scheme of things - who buys a Mac to play games anyway? Also 'Redundant backends'? If it brings money it's not, from programmers' perspective, redundant I guess. Another point: there are examples of developers successfully supporting multiple backends (e.g.Serious Sam/The Talos Priniciple off the top of my head) without all that much trouble it seems.
So: is that all, as you write, 'consequence of lock-in jerks pushing their APIs'? Or maybe some teams are not competent enough? Work on other projects?
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Quoting: manus76What does it have to do with Apple?
I just explained it above. What exactly you didn't understand? At least I see no point in repeating what I said, unless you have a specific misunderstanding of how pushing lock-in taxes developers.
To summarize. Any lock-in of some major participant in the industry creates a tax, or if you want a barrier of entry, which can deter some, or simply cause them spend more time on development or reduce quality of less prioritized options.
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 August 2017 at 6:38 pm UTC
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: manus76What does it have to do with Apple?
I just explained it above. What exactly you didn't understand? At least I see no point in repeating what I said, unless you have a specific misunderstanding of how pushing lock-in taxes developers.
To summarize. Any lock-in of some major participant in the industry creates a tax, or if you want a barrier of entry, which can deter some, or simply cause them spend more time on development or reduce quality of less prioritized options.
You did not explain, you gave an example (Epic and their UE) to which i gave a counterexample (Croteam Talos Principle/SS). And there are dozens of other examples of games released on multiple platforms/backends which somehow work and are profitable.
Anyway my original question was why this thread turned into Apple bashing, and what does Apple have to do with the state of linux gaming. Does Apple force anyone to release their games (or software in general) on MacOS?
Do programmers know beforehand they will need to support another backend? If they do know and still release on MacOS is this Apple's fault or the programmers'?
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Quoting: manus76You did not explain, you gave an example (Epic and their UE) to which i gave a counterexample (Croteam Talos Principle/SS). And there are dozens of other examples of games released on multiple platforms/backends which somehow work and are profitable.
No work comes for free. Work of supporting additional APIs costs money and effort. I.e. it's a tax. Sure, some can afford it, but you are very mistaken if you think it's free (either in time, money, people and so on). Some can afford this tax more than others, but it's still a tax. It creates a barrier of entry, and in general, has a chilling effect on competing platforms of those who create this tax with lock-in. That's the while idea behind it. If you still don't understand, read some general articles about the damage of vendor lock-in.
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: manus76You did not explain, you gave an example (Epic and their UE) to which i gave a counterexample (Croteam Talos Principle/SS). And there are dozens of other examples of games released on multiple platforms/backends which somehow work and are profitable.
No work comes for free. Work of supporting additional APIs costs money and effort. I.e. it's a tax. Sure, some can afford it, but you are very mistaken if you think it's free (either in time, money, people and so on). Some can afford this tax more than others, but it's still a tax. It creates a barrier of entry, and in general, has a chilling effect on competing platforms of those who create this tax with lock-in. That's the while idea behind it. If you still don't understand, read some general articles about the damage of vendor lock-in.
I do understand that but again: Does Apple force anyone to release their games (or software in general) on MacOS? Do programmers know beforehand they will need to support another backend? If they do know and still release on MacOS is this Apple's fault or the programmers'?
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Quoting: manus76I do understand that but again: Does Apple force anyone to release their games (or software in general) on MacOS? Do programmers know beforehand they will need to support another backend? If they do know and still release on MacOS is this Apple's fault or the programmers'?
Forcing is the wrong word here. Developers target bigger markets first naturally. So if they need to support N graphics APIs instead of 1, they'll spend N times more effort / money / time on doing it, instead of focusing on improving other things. And out of those N, they'll focus on bigger ones first. And it is lock-in jerks' fault, that instead of collaborating on the common standard, they created their lock-ins, to make the above effort much harder. HTML history can demonstrate you the benefits of the common open standard, and the damage lock-in can cause.
The bottom line, you got the point of lock-in being a tax. So I don't see what you are even arguing about.
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 August 2017 at 7:11 pm UTC
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