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Sad news, Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of their survival game Rust [Official Site] after removing mentions of Linux support yesterday from their Steam page.
Linux support has been available in Rust since 2013, along with continued support during Early Access and after the official release earlier this year. It was a bit of a surprise that we got an email from a reader, to mention that the Steam store page for Rust was no longer showing the SteamOS/Linux icon or listing it in the system requirements.
Thinking it was a mistake, since nothing was announced, I reached to Facepunch to which they replied with:
Hey dude - yeah we stopped selling Rust for Linux.
I did request more information as to why and will update this article if I receive any further information. To be fair, they haven't had a lot of time to respond again yet, but I feel it's important to get the word out.
It's possible it's due to issues with the Unity game engine, which has suffered some nuisance problems with their Linux support lately. We've gone through black screens, no input in fullscreen and the latest being double-input issues—all issues that have plagued a number of games that use Unity. All of which have been solved in updated versions of Unity though. Still, it has become more of a hassle for developers to support us due to issues like this repeatedly coming up.
To be clear on something though, it might only mean that they're not actively advertising it as a Linux supported game, while still allowing Linux users to buy it and play it—something a few other developers do as well. I highly doubt they would actually remove the Linux version, after it being around for so long.
Really sad about this, we have an active community-run server with plenty of people enjoying themselves on it. Sin has livestreamed plenty of it on our Twitch Channel, purchased skins and all. With all the additions to the game, it was really becoming quite interesting. Even I was also going to be jumping back in soon, so this has me a little down as I did quite enjoy the game as well.
As always, please remain respectful in the comments. Issues like this can become quite heated, but let's not go throwing any insults around. Now is a time to show your support, not have a war of words.
Updates
Garry responded on Twitter and said this:
We stopped selling Rust on Linux because we won't/don't give it the QA support it needs. There are situations where there's a Unity Linux bug that pops up, and we ship with it - because it's the right decision for 99.99% of our players.
And while 60% of Linux users are fine with this, they understand their position in this world, it's probably not the right thing to act like it's fine. So while we're still going to ship Linux updates and keep it up to date.. we're not going to sell it anymore.
Also Linux Community - being abusive, demanding, rude to the few developers actually shipping games to your favourite OS isn't the way to go. It makes me regret ever shipping Linux versions.
I've said it before and I will say it again: Developers are human, people do need to understand that and not resort to throwing insults around right away. Even so, if you sell a game on any platform you should be doing QA on it—there's no excuse for not doing it.
Update #2 - Here's what another developer said on Reddit:
Linux is and will still be supported but the decision to remove Linux from purchase was mainly based on multiple issues in the current Unity version (2018.1.4).
We're currently unable to downgrade to a Unity version which corrects these Linux issues and we're unable to upgrade Unity to 2018.2 due to a number of new issues.
Linux is in a state of limbo in which we're unable to resolve, instead of selling a broken platform we decided to remove it from purchase but still offer it to existing players.
Once Linux is in a working state we'll review the decision.
Hat tip to Basiani for letting us know.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: noxQuoting: x_wingWe should take in account their sales, from my point of view it should not matter the global statistics as they may be poisoned with multi-account and free to play.
We have had other publisher with way less people and they were quite supportive with our community. I cannot justify an statements as "we don't do QA because you're not enough for me". As I said before, there are other solutions, more than three years of nill QA sounds like he never care about us (and he really stated that in his tweets). I don't say he hates our platform, but this guys are definitely the type of devs I don't want to give my money.
Here you can see the number of total sessions from all platforms: https://rust.facepunch.com/stats
Based on that, plus the fact that Unity + Nvidia has fucked shit up the last 3+months for them makes the decision understandable.
They can't pour enough resources into it to officially support it, and they are admitting that.
The fact that they'll keep building and shipping a linux version after all those issues, the outrage from the community and the tiny number of sessions is interesting and it makes me happy. It shows that they don't just want to drop linux, they just can't officially support it.
I said sales and they should know the number (but we don't). Also, I was talking about the poor QA (to not say null) it the last years. Sorry, you may find it understandable (maybe I would if I see sales numbers), but it's not justifiable to not have QA on a OS you support. Game Engines and drivers fuck games in any OS, that's something that usually happens, and having QA is what lets you workaround or announce to your community this problems.
Mblackwell Jul 27, 2018
QuoteI am personally disappointed in Liam Dawe for his statements against those that have been victimized by Garry over a number of years.No one has been "victimized", do you even understand the meaning of that word? No one has been singled out and Facepunch aren't being cruel.
QuoteLiam, you as a journalist have a responsibility to the reader, and those that have been victimized, to be fair, and this is lacking.No, as a journalist I have a responsibility to not be biased, to think outside our small box and think about all angles. Which I am doing.
Not even sure what you issue is with what I've said exactly. I'm sad about it, but I won't throw hate around like some do.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 27 July 2018 at 8:35 pm UTC
And, he can go stuff his remarks about being "abusive" and the like in my case. I'm one of his peers in the industry. This calls for a bit of a Torvalds-like RANT.
Not enough QA and won't? F'ing MORON. Seriously.
From the many decades of doing coding of all sorts for all the primary platforms (this being OSX, UNIX (inc. *BSD), Linux, Windows, and Android) he's full of sh*t. If there's a bug in NVidia or AMD support, the odds are REALLY strong your code has a bug in it, not the drivers or the engine. In 80-90% of the cases the devs in question either didn't look at the API spec carefully enough and the drivers and/or OS cut them slack.
There's craploads of *BAD* practices out there in Windows that VS gleefully lets you get away with.
Not so on other platforms. The studios I've helped get games going for had serious lurker type issues in 32-bit->64-bit cleanliness and the like. LOTS of assumptions. Some of them honest mistakes. Some of them not so. Building for Linux pretty much ensures you get caught out on fails like that.
ANYONE making remarks like this aren't as much of a bigshot or major dev of anything as they're puffing themselves up to be.
Folks, you can rest assured that I will be making a Linux version of the games I'm responsible for if the funding comes through for things. It doesn't matter about QA- QA is the whole budget for all platforms. If you don't have enough QA resources, your product is crappier than you're willing to own or you're understaffed and chintzing. And...I am working on something right now. Seriously. Just can't disclose what or how now. :-D
Quoting: liamdaweQuoteI am personally disappointed in Liam Dawe for his statements against those that have been victimized by Garry over a number of years.No one has been "victimized", do you even understand the meaning of that word? No one has been singled out and Facepunch aren't being cruel.
QuoteLiam, you as a journalist have a responsibility to the reader, and those that have been victimized, to be fair, and this is lacking.No, as a journalist I have a responsibility to not be biased, to think outside our small box and think about all angles. Which I am doing.
Lol , with that pov ; we should never ask support for any game. Right?
Since we are minority?
Quoting: LeopardTalking junk as usual I see. Not what I am saying, not even hinting at that at all.Quoting: liamdaweQuoteI am personally disappointed in Liam Dawe for his statements against those that have been victimized by Garry over a number of years.No one has been "victimized", do you even understand the meaning of that word? No one has been singled out and Facepunch aren't being cruel.
QuoteLiam, you as a journalist have a responsibility to the reader, and those that have been victimized, to be fair, and this is lacking.No, as a journalist I have a responsibility to not be biased, to think outside our small box and think about all angles. Which I am doing.
Lol , with that pov ; we should never ask support for any game. Right?
Since we are minority?
Quoting: liamdaweNo one has been "victimized", do you even understand the meaning of that word? No one has been singled out and Facepunch aren't being cruel.
I'd hesitate to say not been "victimized"... It doesn't require being singled out. Though, if you think about it with Garry's response, yeah, we all got singled out there. I was silent before...not anymore as indicated above.
You can't and SHOULDN'T go where he did. And this was all an excuse. In all honesty, you paid for rights to the engine...but that doesn't let you off the hook for your game. In most cases, you got SOURCE CODE to the damned thing (I know I will be for the stuff I'm working on...) and you should be able to debug it because if it's an "Unity" or "NVidia" so-called "bug"- the likelihood of it being a shader fail, a vertex fail, or the like goes up quite a bit. There's all sorts of stories I could tell you all about my stint as an AMD employee at Marlborough before they closed down the offices there. Omitted shader constants that NVidia compensated for at the cost of actual performance. Idiot things in a AAA title where the 'tards didn't read the OpenGL spec closely (Always read a "may" as a "shall" unless you're targetting a single known accelerator brand and line within the same... You'll get better results. The mentioned was a bug in a VERY popular AAA title whose franchise has changed hands a few years back. Game went from +100 fps in a scene to 10 seconds per frame. Wasn't the driver, though you COULD fix it with that.)
If they're not fixing it, it's a cop-out because if it's "broken" on other targets, the odds are fairly stiff it's broken and you just don't know it on Windows. Pure and simple, QA shouldn't CARE about targets and the excuse he fobbed off is...embarrassing and disappointing from someone who IS in this industry. Happens all the time, yes- bit that hardly excuses it. I'm just as pissed with Bungie, all things considered, about Destiny 2 for similar reasons, really.
Last edited by svartalf on 27 July 2018 at 8:45 pm UTC
Quoting: svartalfI'm just deciding not to take it as personally as some are. Nothing more, nothing less.Quoting: liamdaweNo one has been "victimized", do you even understand the meaning of that word? No one has been singled out and Facepunch aren't being cruel.
I'd hesitate to say not been "victimized"... It doesn't require being singled out. Though, if you think about it with Garry's response, yeah, we all got singled out there. I was silent before...not anymore as indicated above.
You can't and SHOULDN'T go where he did. And this was all an excuse. In all honesty, you paid for rights to the engine...but that doesn't let you off the hook for your game. If they're not fixing it, it's a cop-out because if it's "broken" on other targets, the odds are fairly stiff it's broken and you just don't know it on Windows. Pure and simple, QA shouldn't CARE about targets and the excuse he fobbed off is...embarrassing and disappointing from someone who IS in this industry. Happens all the time, yes- bit that hardly excuses it. I'm just as pissed with Bungie, all things considered, about Destiny 2 for similar reasons, really.
I've always been realistic about Linux gaming and some people choose to be the opposite.
Totally understand things can get emotional, but I won't have people call out my integrity for not sending abuse to a developer.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: LeopardTalking junk as usual I see. Not what I am saying, not even hinting at that at all.Quoting: liamdaweQuoteI am personally disappointed in Liam Dawe for his statements against those that have been victimized by Garry over a number of years.No one has been "victimized", do you even understand the meaning of that word? No one has been singled out and Facepunch aren't being cruel.
QuoteLiam, you as a journalist have a responsibility to the reader, and those that have been victimized, to be fair, and this is lacking.No, as a journalist I have a responsibility to not be biased, to think outside our small box and think about all angles. Which I am doing.
Lol , with that pov ; we should never ask support for any game. Right?
Since we are minority?
Not talking junk actually but you're always doing this. At least be honest this time and beside with us , not with devs.
Facepunch dev clearly states he won't / he wasn't doing a QA regarding Linux builds. And you're saying that is understandable due to low market share.
Than it must be also true for all devs too , since market share is not specific to Rust. It is on nearly every game.
So TL DR ; you said that is understandable due to low market share. So that is also understandable for all other games too?
Correct me if i'm wrong to think like that.
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