Some news that I'm not particularly happy about. Snapshot Games, which includes X-COM creator Julian Gollop, have announced they've cancelled the Linux version of Phoenix Point.
As a reminder: After having a succesful Fig campaign last year, where they raised well over $750K which went up to over $780K after it finished, Snapshot Games also gained over $1.2 million in pre-orders from their own store. Linux was a platform advertised during their crowdfunding campaign along with it being clearly listed as a platform on their official website's FAQ. They went on to release two backer builds, both of which had Linux support and ran quite well. After spending quite a number of hours in their second backer beta, I was extremely keen for the third build which was expanding the feature-set quite a lot.
I ended up speaking to Snapshot Games, who gave me the news ahead of time so I've had a little time to think about this. Even so, I'm really not happy with the situation.
They put up a dedicated page to talk briefly about it, after I told them not to leave the reasons why up to people's imaginations. Citing reasons like Linux requiring "specialised graphics programming" as it uses OpenGL and not DirectX, they also mentioned that Linux drivers are "not as comprehensive as for Windows and Mac" requiring them to make "adaptations to graphical shaders" to get them working. Additionally, they mentioned the issue of Linux having many distributions, Linux-specific Unity bugs like "not being able to correctly render the video player" and input issues. I won't comment much on those points, since I am not a game developer and so I've no idea how Unity handles different APIs and everything else Unity does. It's clear Unity has had plenty of Linux issues in the past year though.
I consider myself a big fan of Gollop's work, after discovering UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense when I was younger on the Amiga. So when Phoenix Point was announced, I was incredibly excited. I actually put my own money down for their "Luxury Digital Edition" without using their discount code (not exactly cheap) as I wanted to support them. So for me, this stings quite badly.
Hopefully they will properly reconsider this in time. In the grand scheme of things, it's only one game. We do have a lot of strategy games as well, so it's not like it was serving Linux gamers something we have a complete lack of. A very unfinished game too, but it's still not great to have news like this. Disappointing is a wild understatement.
Anyone who backed it for a Linux build, should contact them to seek an immediate refund. I already have and that's not me being malicious, but if they're not currently doing what you paid for, that money should be put to better use. If they do support Linux properly in future, I will likely be the first in line to pick up a copy.
Obviously, it's a reminder that during development anything can happen. When you support crowdfunding, Early Access and so on developers priorities can and very often do change. Although, that can happen after you release a game too like with Human: Fall Flat so it's not something that happens only here. It's also a reminder about being realistic. Sadly, with our current market share developers find it all too easy at times to leave Linux in the dust. There's not a whole lot that actually treat Linux as a first-class citizen outside of dedicated porting studios and individuals. This has happened around 8 times this year now, hopefully next year things will improve. I could argue that 8 games out of well over 1,100 released for Linux this year isn't a lot, but it's still 8 too many for my liking.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Nevertheless Nov 10, 2018
Quoting: PJSad news - as an Xcom fan I've been looking forward to this one.
Quoting: ScooptaI think the real solution to this problem is making steam behave more like flatpak.
+1 . Atm I'm using Steam through Flatpak and all the issues I've had because of Steam runtime / different libraries etc are gone. Smoothest Steam experience I've had. IMO if Steam would back it up officially and embraced this form of packaging we would be in far better shape (not only in terms of gaming).
Except for the ones who'd try to implant their native libraries into the Flatpak version... :D
I don't mind developers pulling out of Linux releases when they have good excuses, but this is absolutely lame.
Quoting: Maweki I think we have the culprit. The Facebook page states an Xbox-Release. So additional Microsoft money is quite a possibility.
And there it is...
The only logical reason the Linux support was dropped. imho
Quoting: PatolaOf course some people will complain, but how many people does a minority of users from an alternative distro represent anyway? Nothing their QA staff can't handle, if you ask me.Quoting: omer666(...)
Two overlooked facts about using other distros than Ubuntu:
- users running into trouble with these distros are willing to troubleshoot things themselves because they know they aren't supported (...)
In the end, that factor does not matter. Because not all users of other distros will stay quiet or troubleshoot themselves; at least some will ask for support which the vendor won't be able to give. And that still counts as the perception that all distros must be supported.
Compare this to the massive refunding requests they will get soon, and you will understand why this excuse is pretty weak.
a.) Why opengl and not vulkan ? Advantages:
-> shaders are in SPIR-V which should enable them to direct compile their dx shaders to SPIR-V (see https://www.khronos.org/spir/)
-> that also invalidates the argument of the huge difference in quality of the opengl implementation cause the vulkan implementation on linux is highly tested on all gfx card vendors by dxvk.
b.) I think one part of the different distribution problem are we users. Steamruntime is ok but as long as we don't use it but use steam native , we run into more problems than we should. Sidenote the same is for solus and all the special fixes for different distributions. Our goal should be to make it that steam runtime really works on all distributions either by changing stuff inside of the distribution or by reporting to valve. One of the best examples i have is denuvo on proton. steam runtime + proton let me start DQ11 while steam native + proton doesn't.
c.) With the current situation of how linux is treated i decided for myself too to stay away from crowdfounding. @Liam i would like to see an article adressing the dev's how they burn trust and therefor cut themself from sales (how big these might be). Also i would like to add something very easy and which is a keypoint for me as a linux user being more upset than a windows user. I am as a linux user dedicated to fix problems even it takes time. If now a dev's explination sounds like he pressed a button to export the game and it doesn't run as expected and give up right after i feel like the dedication they promised in the kickstarter / fig whatever is missing. I expect them to at least give an excuse that they underestimated the work and ask for an explination why they underestimated their work. I don't want to hear for the xx times things which are "bs" cause they have been fixed already multiple hundreds times according to the games i can play on linux and are sitting in my steam library. And there we are again ... i am upset because of the way dev's currently argue for the "third class" treatment and yes i agree with the people saying that this dev is counting on proton cause hey much less work but is afraid to step up for it and say it out loud.
Last edited by Glog78 on 10 November 2018 at 12:05 pm UTC
Nevertheless Nov 10, 2018
Quoting: GuestThey should have planned for this from the moment they launched their kickstarter campaign, in other words they just promised linux suport as a PR stunt to sucker money out of us lot because they know we pay well on average, and then they go back on their word with a bunch of bs excuses later on? This is not ok, this should not be tolerated.
If that were the reason, then why releasing two backer builds for Linux?
For all we know they might just want to save work load, and we just might not be important to them, because of our small numbers. Therefore we might have lost importance because of the XBox version, even without any ominous anti-Linux payment from Microsoft.
It's not nice behaviour, I don't like it, so I'll take the refund and go.
Quoting: NeverthelessQuoting: GuestThey should have planned for this from the moment they launched their kickstarter campaign, in other words they just promised linux suport as a PR stunt to sucker money out of us lot because they know we pay well on average, and then they go back on their word with a bunch of bs excuses later on? This is not ok, this should not be tolerated.
If that were the reason, then why releasing two backer builds for Linux?
For all we know they might just want to save work load, and we just might not be important to them, because of our small numbers. Therefore we might have lost importance because of the XBox version, even without any ominous anti-Linux payment from Microsoft.
It's not nice behaviour, I don't like it, so I'll take the refund and go.
That's quite likely the reason, but since a Linux version was part of what they promised in their campaign that just doesn't work as an excuse at all. A part of the money they received was supposed to be earmarked for Linux support and doing the research to make sure they wouldn't get themselves in trouble, by for example depending too much on Direct3D features.
I've also requested a refund and I too find the behaviour despicable.
I feel a bit like I have to sit down with Snapshot Games and explain them that the money was for food, not drugs/alcohol (harsh comparison, I know, but that's how it feels to me).
I was burned a long time ago with Kickstarting but learnt my lesson and will never be suckered again. Good luck with refunds, I hope you get them. I didn't.
Last edited by pb on 10 November 2018 at 3:12 pm UTC
slaapliedje Nov 10, 2018
Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: GuestQuoting: PlayXQuoting: Patola..or SteamOS which is essentially a customized Ubuntu.
SteamOS has nothing to do with Ubuntu
They are both Debian based. And SteamOS is based on exactly the same versions UbuntuLTS is based on. I am pretty sure SteamOS is more or less Ubuntu for all intends and purposes... Well it does not have the same desktop theme, i give you that...
Someone else probably already said this, but Ubuntu being based on Debian and SteamOS being based on Debian does not equate to SteamOS being based upon Ubuntu LTS. Steam is currently (if I recall) based on Debian Jessie and is in beta for the Stretch base. There are a LOT of differences between Debian and Ubuntu. Ubuntu tends to compile experimental drivers into their kernel for one.
Ubuntu's procedure is every 6 months they pull a bunch of packages from Debian Testing, build them up and test them for a month of that then release. But because of that, there are certainly a lot more bugs that creep into Ubuntu.
Valve rebasing on Debian was a good move, since it gives them a much more stable platform to develop upon, and they do some kernel tweaks and pull in newer drivers.
I think most of the confusion comes from that SteamOS and the Steam Runtime are two different things. The thing that matters for the games are the runtime and the Steam Runtime is from Ubuntu (the folders are even named ubuntu12_32 and ubuntu12_64 since they where taken from Ubuntu 12.04).
That is a perfectly good point. Ha, makes one wonder if they will or have updated those libraries, since 12.04 has been EoL'd for quite some time.
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