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Football Manager 2019 announced and sadly it's not coming to Linux

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We will start the day with a bit of sad news, as the latest version of the popular Football Manager series Football Manager 2019 is not coming to Linux.

Announced today, Football Manager 2019 is only listing Windows and Mac on Steam. A user on Twitter reached out about the missing Linux version, to which the director of Football Manager simply replied that it was correct.

We followed up to ask why that is and the reply was this:

cost/benefit analysis. It unfortunately wasn't selling enough on Linux to cover the QA costs, let alone the dev cost. :(

Sports Interactive first put the game on Linux back in November 2013, which was considered a really good thing for Linux gamers considering how popular the title is. Looking at the 2018 edition, right now it has over thirty thousand people playing it (the peak today being nearly double that), so to have a game as popular as that no longer support Linux is a bit of a loss.

If it's not selling enough as they say to cover the costs, then you can't really argue against that. It sadly doesn't make sense for all games, even if they're popular on one platform they won't always be on another.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Sports, Steam
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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.
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55 comments
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Cmdr_Iras Aug 6, 2018
Quoting: LeopardThings is , we need another push in some way. Otherwise i'm afraid we will see many more series like that fading away. According to last response of Paradox ( covered here as an article ) they're the possible next publisher can do that.

Didnt the Paradox thing turn out to be a mistake by their PR person, as in the internally developed game announced was going to be Linux, as for the other one they would explore but its a 3rd party dev, they are only publishing.
orochi_kyo Aug 6, 2018
Quoting: Leopard
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: LeopardPeople on Linux don't buy games

Why do you bother stating such obviously wrong claims? Why are you even here, on a site with pretty much only Linux gamers buying games (with the possibly single exception being you).

I'm here because i'm a gamer on Linux. That's it.

But problem is that ; Football Manager is a PC exclusive game. Means consoles are out. So that is very niche and Linux gamers can/ could mean so much more to them than Linux gamers did to say Rockstar , Epic Games , CDPR and so on.

That is a warning bell.

There is an obvious statement about strategy genre on Linux: it is maybe most represented genre on Linux. Reason is simple. Strategy games are not on consoles because of their nature.

If that also spread to strategy , you can say pretty much Linux gaming took a devastating blow.

SEGA is one of the most Linux friendly publishers , i hope they continue to support.

Next time explain yourself as you did here from the start, because as you see some people took you point personal, including Liam.
Then I see people using their personal experience to try to elaborate an argument. "I bought 17 games this year", thats cool, but it doesnt mean everyone else is doing it.
Despite this game being a yearly scam release, with some stuff added but basically being the same since 2013, Im agree this is a warning bell, so everyone should take this more seriously instead of pretending that nothing happened.


Last edited by orochi_kyo on 6 August 2018 at 9:41 pm UTC
g000h Aug 6, 2018
As much as there are good and bad things happening in the world of Linux native ports, it hasn't stopped me from buying plenty of Linux games. At least 100 Linux games added onto my Steam account since 1st Jan 2018 (Now it is early August). Not including duplicate copies which I haven't installed (e.g. Humble Bundles), or my Linux games on GOG and itch.io which have also grown in number.

Mostly I buy Linux games because I intend to play them one day, on Linux. Some titles are AAA, some are very basic one-person indie studio. I don't buy Linux games which are unappealing to me (e.g. shovelware). I avoid buying Windows-only titles which are appealing to me, unless the game is particularly great and it is sufficiently discounted and maybe other appealing factors, such as it has a DRM-Free download (which I'd prefer for WINE gaming). Mostly though, if the game is Windows-only, I'd be very unlikely to pick it up at all. Sure, some of my Windows games have resulted from buying a Bundle with Linux titles that I did want.

Even if I was playing games regularly on Windows (which I am absolutely not doing), I'd still make purchase decisions based on whether the title was available on my preferred platform, Linux, as well. Also, a title without full Linux support (e.g. Arma III) is more appealing (for me to purchase) than a Windows-only title. i.e. Might work is better than Can't work.
omer666 Aug 7, 2018
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: MVinhasI bought a Windows Phone smartphone back in 2015. I really liked that OS and didn't care about being developed by Microsoft. Windows Phone was at his peak, with a good set of apps (nothing like Android or iOS, but still) and a decent performance. Then, the company A stated that they will not release the next version of their app on WP. Ok. Some weeks later, Company B anounced the same. And the downfall of WP started, IIRC on late 2015.

I hope this isn't happening on Linux Gaming world, Rust abandoning Linux was a huge letdown, now Football Manager...two AAA games and I really like both. Thing is, since 2012 until this date we didn't had news like this, the number of AAA games was always increasing. I'm kinda worried because I've seen this before.
Rust, according to one of the developers, is only a temporary situation due to Unity issues and driver bugs. Their situation can't really be compared with this, since they didn't directly remove support due to sales.

This isn't the first time we've had news like this and it hasn't really changed anything when it happened before. There's The Witcher 3, Darksiders 1 & 2, Carmageddon, Street Fighter, Project Cars and plenty of others. So yeah, it's happened before, will happen again and nothing's really changed overall in my opinion.
...and there is also a much older iteration with id software that proves Leopard's point wrong. Everything was operational on Linux, yet they said "it doesn't generate enough money" and didn't release Rage on Linux, even if every single game before got released on our system since 1993. John Carmack even stated that if we want games we should rely on Wine.

It was way before Steam on Linux, and yet, Linux gaming got bigger anyway. It just got bigger without them.

PS: Yes I do write a lot about this story but it really felt like a betrayal to me. They even ended Linux support for Quake Live, which drew all players from Quake 3, so I can't play that game online anymore. And I've been consistently playing Quake since the first game got released on Mac OS. That is pretty sh*tty.
slaapliedje Aug 7, 2018
Quoting: omer666
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: MVinhasI bought a Windows Phone smartphone back in 2015. I really liked that OS and didn't care about being developed by Microsoft. Windows Phone was at his peak, with a good set of apps (nothing like Android or iOS, but still) and a decent performance. Then, the company A stated that they will not release the next version of their app on WP. Ok. Some weeks later, Company B anounced the same. And the downfall of WP started, IIRC on late 2015.

I hope this isn't happening on Linux Gaming world, Rust abandoning Linux was a huge letdown, now Football Manager...two AAA games and I really like both. Thing is, since 2012 until this date we didn't had news like this, the number of AAA games was always increasing. I'm kinda worried because I've seen this before.
Rust, according to one of the developers, is only a temporary situation due to Unity issues and driver bugs. Their situation can't really be compared with this, since they didn't directly remove support due to sales.

This isn't the first time we've had news like this and it hasn't really changed anything when it happened before. There's The Witcher 3, Darksiders 1 & 2, Carmageddon, Street Fighter, Project Cars and plenty of others. So yeah, it's happened before, will happen again and nothing's really changed overall in my opinion.
...and there is also a much older iteration with id software that proves Leopard's point wrong. Everything was operational on Linux, yet they said "it doesn't generate enough money" and didn't release Rage on Linux, even if every single game before got released on our system since 1993. John Carmack even stated that if we want games we should rely on Wine.

It was way before Steam on Linux, and yet, Linux gaming got bigger anyway. It just got bigger without them.

PS: Yes I do write a lot about this story but it really felt like a betrayal to me. They even ended Linux support for Quake Live, which drew all players from Quake 3, so I can't play that game online anymore. And I've been consistently playing Quake since the first game got released on Mac OS. That is pretty sh*tty.

That is because ZeniMax is not friendly to anything that won't rake in tons of cash. Linux is still one of those things that companies think are impossible to support, and yet even the minimal amount of support is still going to be needed for a port. Bethesda's stuff for example is known to be horrendously buggy upon release and even after years of patching. Imagine them trying to debug that under Linux. If they had some knowledgeable people, then it could be done better than other platforms for sure.

For what its worth, I have over 1000 games on Steam that are listed for Linux. So yeah, there are people who buy lots of games that use Linux.
Windousico Aug 7, 2018
I haven't bought any Football Manager. In my opinion, It's a bit overpriced but... I'm going to buy their last Linux game next month. They deserve at least one purchase.
joaojotta Aug 7, 2018
Publicly, the iPhone came to life because Apple "couldn't afford to stay out of 1% of a billion dollar market" or something like that.
Now, I don't know how much is Linux gaming worth these days but Linux users DO BUY games and the company that makes games available will have a bigger cut on that and the more games they bring to the platform the bigger that cut will get.

I'm glad to hear that some companies don't need a cut of that because when Linux users come to open their wallets they will not to it for a Windows only game, don't matter what game it is, what franchise it is - they will do it for those regular Linux releases.

SI/Sega/Whatever just closed a door on Linux users and I think it's pretty safe to say that if FM does come back to Linux, sales will be worst than in any other previous version.

But hey, I'm not the business guy. I'm just a guy.
dhellion Aug 20, 2018
I think our Linux gaming community cant yet absorb an annual franchise delivery.

I'm from South America but i dont like football videogames, surprisingly. I could buy them to support Linux videogame effort. But, if i bought FM18, why will i buy FM19? Nop. Too much.

There should be small communities of Linux gamers around franchises, as there may be in Windows, to absorb that frecuency. How could we achieve that? Simple math, more gamers.

I personally know that there are many people who dont know that (or dont know how to) Linux could be use for gaming.

What could we do? I supose that one or more of these things: Be supportive and nicer with devs that release linux games. Popularize this site and the like. Think viral, viralize, viracum, all with vira*. Be nicer with linux noobs in general. Other things included...
slaapliedje Aug 20, 2018
I don't know if Trine meets your croteria for a franchise, but all 3 of the trilogy is for Linux. Damn fun I might add.
dhellion Aug 21, 2018
Quoting: slaapliedjeI don't know if Trine meets your croteria for a franchise, but all 3 of the trilogy is for Linux. Damn fun I might add.

I have Trine 2. Its good. If Trine 4 then 5 and so on are released, it could be the kind of franchise that I'm referring to.
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