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PayPalThe developer of the game 'Steam Marines' [Official Site, Steam] has been talking about sales of the game, and Linux represented 2% of the total.
Here's a reminder on what the game is:
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It's worth noting that Mac only hit 3%, considering their marketshare on Steam is a lot higher than ours, that's surprising.
Steam Marines 1 lifetime sales are (approximately) 3% Mac and 2% Linux.
— Steamed Buns Bums (@Worthless_Bums) November 8, 2016
So. It's generally not profitable for me to support them.
The developer did say that they will continue to support us, even if it's not financially sound for them to do so. That alone should be applauded.
The developer also noted that Linux users didn't generally need much help:
Linux users almost never contact me for tech support. And the 95% of Windows users represent less than 50% of my tech support issues.
— Steamed Buns Bums (@Worthless_Bums) November 8, 2016
One Tweet in particular caught my attention:
95% of the sales came from Windows users. This was despite Linux users arguing that lots would buy if a Linux version was made available.
— Steamed Buns Bums (@Worthless_Bums) November 8, 2016
I've said it before, and I will say it again, don't bug developers for a Linux version if you aren't personally interested and plan to buy it. It can create situations like this, but it's also worth noting that the developer may have overestimated how much they would make from Linux.
Linux only represents currently 0.89% of the Steam user-base, so 2% of your overall sales to have come from Linux is actually quite healthy. To me, that says the developer expected a little too much. That 2% figure is more than other developers have seen.
It's also worth noting that Steam Marines came to Linux around a year after the original Windows release. Games that don't get a day-1 Linux release often tend to see lower Linux sales as a result of many factors. The first being that Windows obviously had around a year extra to bring in sales, Linux as mentioned above is a smaller market, dual-booters often become impatient and buy a Windows copy, some people use Wine and so on. A day-1 Linux release is generally a must-do if you want to see good sales and support from Linux gamers.
Still, it's great to see developers speaking about this in the open and if you like the look of Steam Marines go pick up a copy and support an indie developer.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Hmm... how about people buying it on Windows, still wishing for a Linux version, and when made available play it on Linux then?
Those aren't counted as Linux, right?
As Windows having over 90% market share, this isn't unlikely. Valve should make available stats, which show how the percentages are where people are playing their games. This would be a much more accurate number for the devs, than only on which platform a game is bought.
Also there might be a significant percentage of players waiting for having enough games on Linux before they stop dualbooting. Those people might also buy their games primarily on Windows instead of Linux.
Of course this is just a guess, as there aren't any official numbers, and devs can only see on which platform their games are bought.
Those aren't counted as Linux, right?
As Windows having over 90% market share, this isn't unlikely. Valve should make available stats, which show how the percentages are where people are playing their games. This would be a much more accurate number for the devs, than only on which platform a game is bought.
Also there might be a significant percentage of players waiting for having enough games on Linux before they stop dualbooting. Those people might also buy their games primarily on Windows instead of Linux.
Of course this is just a guess, as there aren't any official numbers, and devs can only see on which platform their games are bought.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: EikeQuoting: LeopardQuoting: EikeDeveleopers need to buy bread, too.
I didn't say anything like he should give the game free or anything like that.Game is not free.
He needed to work to make the game run under Linux. He invested his time. There needs to be a fair return for him. He, says, the sales did not amount to a fair return - but that he still wants to support Linux. That's great and not to be blamed.
If you or me like the game is something completely different. I wouldn't buy it. But I don't debase people.
We're a small community.In all platforms,%3 Linux sale is not a bad thing.
What is he expecting?
%50 or something much higher?If we were achieved these amounts,we would not arguing about these devs.We would cursing Activision for space Cod,playing BF1,modding Skyrim and so much more
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Quoting: WorthlessBumsIs 2% good or bad? If it's bad then there's presumably things I could do to get more Linux users. If it's good, what most people here seem to be saying, then that's actually really bad because that's a strong argument against supporting Linux in my games; they'd simply never even break even.
Mathematically, there's 4 times the number of games for Windows compared to Linux, so you might expect 4 times the sales compared to the OS percentage. On the other hand, other effects will come into place. Maybe Linux users tend to certain genres. Who knows?
Quoting: WorthlessBumsWhat did I expect? I didn't really have a round number in mind, truth be told. Steam Marines 1 sold quite a bit better than I expected overall and this was my first time porting any piece of software to Linux. If I had to do something similar in the future I expect that it would take me less time.
This sounds good and is to be expected. What doesn't sound good is the mentioned bug list for linux. I don't know how you are handling this, but restricting the official support to only one or two versions (Ubuntu & SteamOS) and strictly defined requiremnts might help.
Thanks for your open words!
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: LeopardWe're a small community.In all platforms,%3 Linux sale is not a bad thing.
What is he expecting?
He expected less than 6%, it seems:
https://twitter.com/Worthless_Bums/status/485238498124124161
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@WorthlessBums
I see that you've taken the correct approach this time by developing a new game in Unity :) There you can literally just push compile and the game has a great chance of already working on all platforms, just avoid using platform specific middlewares and you should have no time or cost loss there :)
Secondly, the testing. Trust me when I say that www.gamingonlinux.com is one of the best and nicest communities in general, sure there are exceptions, but make this community your friend, all in all it is great and trust me that a lot of users would love to do majority of the testing for you as well and report the bugs for the linux platform so early access or beta could be a great Idea regarding Linux. Even some Linux youtubers would probably love to do a review of your games if you let them know about them and promoting it!
Not really sure about how Mac stands, a lot of devs say that it is much more profitable to support Mac eventhough I honestly think that this is just because of the commercialism, Majority of Apple's hardware cannot even run the newest AAA games and those that can cost so much money that only small portion of people can afford it... so percentage of marketshare for Mac can be really misleading as long as AAA gaming is concerned.
Best of luck on your new game and let us know when you finish it!
I see that you've taken the correct approach this time by developing a new game in Unity :) There you can literally just push compile and the game has a great chance of already working on all platforms, just avoid using platform specific middlewares and you should have no time or cost loss there :)
Secondly, the testing. Trust me when I say that www.gamingonlinux.com is one of the best and nicest communities in general, sure there are exceptions, but make this community your friend, all in all it is great and trust me that a lot of users would love to do majority of the testing for you as well and report the bugs for the linux platform so early access or beta could be a great Idea regarding Linux. Even some Linux youtubers would probably love to do a review of your games if you let them know about them and promoting it!
Not really sure about how Mac stands, a lot of devs say that it is much more profitable to support Mac eventhough I honestly think that this is just because of the commercialism, Majority of Apple's hardware cannot even run the newest AAA games and those that can cost so much money that only small portion of people can afford it... so percentage of marketshare for Mac can be really misleading as long as AAA gaming is concerned.
Best of luck on your new game and let us know when you finish it!
2 Likes, Who?
I didn't read what all wrote, but this is my opinion,
general video games news spoke few month ago about a CRASH from business:
There are so many indies and the market is saturated by games.
So linux buyers supported a lot independants studios, and I think this was a part of their popularity.
I add that: crowfunding system follow the donations to support, which came with linux, and open source mentality.
But now what we need on linux are AAA games, I'm sure about it.
Vulkan and wayland are very good news the future of linux gaming.
I have 170 games on my steam account and 90 support linux, I bought them especially since a year.
But I have no TIME to play them.
And I still buy some, mostly to support developers work.
I look indies with distance. I have so many arcade games which are waiting on my library.
It sounds familiar that linux gamer ask for indies about a linux version.
Me again ;), I don't buy indies which are not on linux, it's buying criteria, but I won't ask dev about it.
I think that should be in their process, like the subtitles for example.
2% of games sales can be a lot of money if they sold a lot.
No one is to blame
Long time I didn't wrote here, thx for your work guys
Last edited by Voltage on 8 November 2016 at 8:07 pm UTC
general video games news spoke few month ago about a CRASH from business:
There are so many indies and the market is saturated by games.
So linux buyers supported a lot independants studios, and I think this was a part of their popularity.
I add that: crowfunding system follow the donations to support, which came with linux, and open source mentality.
But now what we need on linux are AAA games, I'm sure about it.
Vulkan and wayland are very good news the future of linux gaming.
I have 170 games on my steam account and 90 support linux, I bought them especially since a year.
But I have no TIME to play them.
And I still buy some, mostly to support developers work.
I look indies with distance. I have so many arcade games which are waiting on my library.
It sounds familiar that linux gamer ask for indies about a linux version.
Me again ;), I don't buy indies which are not on linux, it's buying criteria, but I won't ask dev about it.
I think that should be in their process, like the subtitles for example.
2% of games sales can be a lot of money if they sold a lot.
No one is to blame
Long time I didn't wrote here, thx for your work guys
Last edited by Voltage on 8 November 2016 at 8:07 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Is 2% good or bad? If it's bad then there's presumably things I could do to get more Linux users. If it's good, what most people here seem to be saying, then that's actually really bad because that's a strong argument against supporting Linux in my games; they'd simply never even break even.
Look at that answer...Wow.Just wow.
Come on sunshines.Enligten me up.
Come on,don't be shy.
We all know if Valve is not interested to develop SteamOS we wouldn't see so much game on Linux.Valve is simply pushing big developers and studios,because they want to compete with consoles with SteamMachines.And of course they're want to take precautions to Ms Uwp and Ms Store.
So don't waste your breath on devs like this.When Valve is succeded Linux succeded,when Valve is not Linux is not.
Look at that answer...Wow.Just wow.
Come on sunshines.Enligten me up.
Come on,don't be shy.
We all know if Valve is not interested to develop SteamOS we wouldn't see so much game on Linux.Valve is simply pushing big developers and studios,because they want to compete with consoles with SteamMachines.And of course they're want to take precautions to Ms Uwp and Ms Store.
So don't waste your breath on devs like this.When Valve is succeded Linux succeded,when Valve is not Linux is not.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: WorthlessBumsDeveloper here ;)
First, thanks to everyone who said some kind things! Second, I'd like to clarify a few things.
...
Someone tried to run the revenue numbers from Linux sales of Steam Marines 1, but it was both inaccurate and incomplete. I am under NDA as a Steam developer, but I can cast a bit of light on the whole issue.
I recently blogged that the game's entire development cost was $97,913.88 USD over a 30 month period. That comes out to an average of $3,263.90 a month of development cost. About 70% of that cost was spent paying myself to work on my game (i.e. not contracting for art, audio, et cetera). That brings the monthly cost down to about $2,284.73.
It took me about a 3 month span to port the game over to Linux, but part of that was not full time dev, so let's just say it took about 2 months. That's a total cost of $4,569.46 to get the first Linux build up and running. The person who tried to run the revenue numbers came up with a gross figure of €4,440 - so you can already see the problem.
.....
Is 2% good or bad? If it's bad then there's presumably things I could do to get more Linux users. If it's good, what most people here seem to be saying, then that's actually really bad because that's a strong argument against supporting Linux in my games; they'd simply never even break even.
.....
I'm currently working [Steam Marines 2](http://www.steammarines2.com/), and the subject of Mac and Linux has already come up. This time there's no significant cost for porting because I'm making the game in Unity instead of Torque2D. That said I've already been performance testing on Mac and there are issues, and I have Linux-specific bugs a mile long. To support both those platforms is likely to result in yet another loss on the long run although not a foregone conclusion.
Thanks for the additional detail and for supporting Linux! I honestly probably haven't and won't buy any of your games but I still appreciate your work. It's unfortunate to hear so many bugs on steam marines 2 using Unity, does this appear to be more work than it was with 1/no Unity? What version of Unity? Is it actually Unity or plugins/middleware that are the problem? Do you plan on releasing Mac/Linux day 1 with Windows? Comparing 3 years of Windows sales to 1 year of Linux sales doesn't seem very helpful. Would be interesting to see if the numbers are the same with simultaneous releases.
1 Likes, Who?
inlinuxdude Nov 8, 2016
1) I'd like to thank the dev for supporting Linux and also for his thoughtful post here on GoL..
2) Is there a way to ignore people like Leopard in the comment sections. His comments really make me sick.. They are singularly unhelpful in attaining our end goals of game parity with other platforms, as well as unappreciative and ungrateful.. :(
2) Is there a way to ignore people like Leopard in the comment sections. His comments really make me sick.. They are singularly unhelpful in attaining our end goals of game parity with other platforms, as well as unappreciative and ungrateful.. :(
4 Likes, Who?
Quoting: WorthlessBumsDeveloper here ;)
[cut to keep the thread readable]
Thank you a lot for your feedback. I hope this will clear a few misconceptions.
As for your game, I am sorry to say that I didn't buy it until the Humble Bundle (I wasn't even sure it was in my library to begin with).
I however remember looking at it quite a lot of times and wondering wether to buy it, but it didn't appeal too much for me... Tastes, you know :) I guess it's the same about every game, platform or thing ever made. Some people don't like chocolate cakes, hey.
So, while I feel a bit guilty about not really purchasing your game (even though I put non-linux games at 0 in my humble bundle purchase), I think those figures are pretty accurate, expected, and, most of all, interesting. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on it, too.
I must say that given those figures, I was expecting a bit more hostility (à la Garry Newman :) ) towards this market. I however still have some hope that it will grow even more in the following years. Plus, being multi-platform is "future proofing", and has quite a lot of advantages that don't need to be detailed here. But that's very true that it's different from actually supporting a game. I guess that continuous integration with unit test would help, here, but that could be said of any project, and requires testing anyway.
I don't have any magic bullet for solving those issues, but now I have something to chew on for the next couple of days :)
P.S: On the plus side, you could now probably provide a Steam Marines build for the Raspberry [would be cool to see a steam-like store there], Smart TVs, car infotainment systems, the steam controller, and maybe some toaster out there. How cool is that? :D (and how useless, btw).
Last edited by MayeulC on 8 November 2016 at 8:47 pm UTC
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