We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.
tagline-image
The Arma developers have confirmed that an external team is working on the Linux version, and that it won’t be native.

For me, I don’t really care what a game uses anymore, as long as it is stable and performs well on reasonable hardware. If it does that, then fab!

For some developers it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of time and money into porting something, when the income gained from it may not come close to their expenses, and we should be okay with that. As I’ve stated before, many times, we are still a tiny platform.

For a game as heavy as Arma 3, it may not even be possible to do it non-native, and they realise this.

The news comes from their latest blog post:
QuoteInsights into our Steam configuration have fueled some speculation that we'd like to clarify here and now. We are indeed experimenting with 2 ports of Arma 3. An external team has been investigating whether it would be possible to create (non-native) client ports to Linux and MacOS. Being external, this does not affect the core development team while it focuses on the Expansion. We should make it really clear that at this stage there are still very many uncertainties. We do not yet know when we'd release these, what their update cycle would be like, or any other specifics. In fact, it's still possible these ports will never see the light of day. There are several technical and licensing challenges to overcome. But, the chances of such ports have gone up from 0% for Arma 3. We'll be sharing more when we can!


How do you feel about this? No word on who it will be, but we have a good idea. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, FPS, Steam
0 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
35 comments
Page: 1/4»
  Go to:

1mHfoksd1Z Apr 29, 2015
I too don't care if it's native or not. I just want it to have a decent performance. I don't know if I'm going to buy this one however, my hardware is pretty outdated and I don't think it can handle such as game even natively on Windows.
serjor Apr 29, 2015
Well, may be is not the best of the news, but at least is something. Being considered for a port is by it self a very good new, so it's OK for me, because somehow I tend to think that in future games portability will be something built from the ground up, and out of any kind of argument, not something to take into consideration just if it fills up.
nifker Apr 29, 2015
What is meant with native in this case? That it is not supported by BI or what?
Avehicle7887 Apr 29, 2015
As I suspected, VP might indeed be behind this, I don't have much of a problem with this anyway, it's better than nothing after all.
BTRE Apr 29, 2015
View PC info
  • Contributing Editor
How unfortunate. I would prefer that devs at least try to mess around with Linux instead of outsourcing, doubly so if it's a non-native port we're talking about. At the very least, it builds experience in-house which can then be applied to future games and content. Techland's presentation on porting clearly showed that things would have been easier if the porters (and Linux) had been part of the main development process instead of having to deal with whatever changes the rest of the programmers thrust upon them and playing catch up. I can only imagine how much harder the work of the external studio will be in keeping the game updated and running well. Given the generally resource-heavy nature of ArmA I can't say I have much hope for this experiment of theirs.

As liam points out, we're a tiny fraction of the market but it's still a very chicken and egg sort of situation despite the good things Valve has done for us. Market share is a great motivator in getting developers to port to us but I think that so is experience with the OS in general. The Techland guys seemed to be happy with their overall experience on Linux and I think that they'll push for their bosses/colleagues to integrate Linux into their workflow because of that experience. If more developers were familiarized with the environment things would definitely be easier for us Linux gamers.

But, ah, maybe I'm showing too much wishful thinking on that last point.
edo Apr 29, 2015
So an windows unoptimized game will come to linux inside a wrapper than will make it to loose performance, to run on unoptimized graphic drivers on an OS where it was never optimized to run.
Looks interesting.
FutureSuture Apr 29, 2015
I have enough native games in my library and over 30 more native games on my wishlist that I will purchase and play at some point. I don't have the time or the money for games that aren't native.
Vissy Apr 29, 2015
This makes me excited because maybe DayZ will make it over.
Disharmonic Apr 29, 2015
View PC info
  • Supporter
Very honest and clear reply. i wish more devs were as forthcoming about their future plans. Hopefully it pans out and well get to play it on Linux.
sonic Apr 29, 2015
Well, I prefer native version, but I will give it a chance. Maybe if we throw some money at them, they will make Arma 4 native :)
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.