We already knew that the second and third parts of The Banner Saga wouldn't be coming to Linux, but now the original The Banner Saga is no longer supported on Linux.
Speaking about it on the Steam forum, one of their moderators said this:
Linux and SteamOS are no longer officially supported. You can probably still play the game with in an outdated/obsolete BETAS branch, but most players have problems ("game won't start").
No plans to update/support Linux at this time, sorry
As it turns out, one of the developers actually posted about it on Reddit last year (the same moderator as quoted above pointed this out in a later post) where they explained it a bit more thoroughly:
The problem is, the external developer that did our linux porting went out of business right after it launched, and before we could fix all its issue, tidy it up, and update its supporting technology. There's no way to get a refund or a financial remedy because, well, they ran out of cash. To extend the linux build to GOG, we'd have to be able to make a new build (Steam builds won't run on GOG), and we don't have the developer or budget available to do that.
Financially speaking, the total amount of income we've made from our Linux port on Steam after 2 years on the market is about 1/4 the cost of porting it.
Why is it so expensive and difficult? Because of the underlying technology we chose as a framework. The game rests on Adobe AIR, which provides platform level abstractions like low level graphics, file IO, networking, etc... At the time we started development, Adobe was strongly supporting Linux. Adobe then abandoned Linux and left both the developers and the players flapping in the breeze. Our linux port takes essentially the same approach as our console ports, removing Adobe AIR completely from the equation.
Hope that sheds some light on it.
It's always a shame when this happens. I know a number of developers who were stung by Adobe AIR dropping Linux support back in 2011. Most of them have moved onto using different tools by now, thankfully.
This is a sad case of multiple issues coming together. Luckily, it's not something that happens all that often.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Last edited by Pinguino on 14 August 2018 at 1:56 pm UTC
Quoting: ArehandoroOn the other hand, about the 1/4 of gains from the cost... well, it's ta vicious circle. If there isn't a proper supported port, there aren't sells. If they don't sell, the port isn't profiterol* and so on.A lot of linux gamers likely also didn't buy the game because part 2 and 3 are not on linux.
What would be the point, really?
Doc Angelo Aug 14, 2018
Quoting: TheSHEEEPWhat safety? If the maintainers of some project decide to drop linux, there's nothing you can do about that, either.
Of course you can.
Situation A: You are using closed source and proprietary software. The dev of this software is stopping support for it or is removing features you depend on. You can't do anything about it, nor would it be allowed.
Situation B: You are using FOSS. The devs of this software are stopping support for it or are removing features you depend on. You are now allowed to take the source code and maintain your own fork of it that doesn't remove what you need.
That a FOSS project removes functionality people are using is already less likely to happen. But even if it happens, you are not without options. That is a really, if not the biggest, argument for FOSS in businesses.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPdo you truly want to place your products in the hand of some hobbyist who might just drop the whole thing again due to lack of interest or free time?
If people wouldn't do exactly that, we wouldn't have gaming on Linux.
Mountain Man Aug 14, 2018
When the banner saga first came out on linux, it worked well. I was disappointed with gameplay, but didn't have any technical issues. I haven't touched it since the end of my first playthrough when it came out though, so I have no idea how it works today.
Quoting: AkienI played this game on Linux and loved it, but indeed there were quite a few issues. You had to use a beta branch to get things to work kinda, and the performance was quite bad, with strong memory leaks that would bring my laptop to a crawl after an hour or two.
It's a shame that they couldn't continue working on that port, and I'm sad that I can't play the follow-up games, but I understand their reasons. Adobe is definitely not Linux's friend.
I sometimes think Adobe has been a bigger bane to Linux's existence than Microsoft. Consider all the troubles with (ritual spit over shoulder) Flash. Linux office software has always been a better substitute for MS Office than our .pdf wrangling software has been for Acrobat, or, hate to say it, the GIMP for Photoshop. If Adobe had decided they liked Linux a few years back and had ported their stuff solidly over, I bet our market share would have been way, way higher now than it is.
Mountain Man Aug 14, 2018
Quoting: Purple Library Guy...or, hate to say it, the GIMP for Photoshop.I actually prefer the GIMP to Photoshop, although admittedly I am not a graphic design professional. When it comes to post-processing my photos, I find that it produces results just as good as anything I've done with Photoshop. Plus, you can't beat the price, especially when you consider Adobe's onerous subscription model that effectively locks your intellectual property behind a paywall.
Quoting: Mountain ManI don't doubt that the GIMP is really good. But at the professional level it seems image fiddling is dominated by various proprietary schemes which the GIMP can't pay to use--or at least, that's how it was for a number of crucial years in the early evolution of Linux. And certain famous features of its UI (which, again, have changed rather these days) were very much of an acquired taste by all accounts. Between those things and a few others, the GIMP was just not as workable a substitute for Photoshop (to a lot of Photoshop users), as OpenOffice was for Office.Quoting: Purple Library Guy...or, hate to say it, the GIMP for Photoshop.I actually prefer the GIMP to Photoshop, although admittedly I am not a graphic design professional. When it comes to post-processing my photos, I find that it produces results just as good as anything I've done with Photoshop. Plus, you can't beat the price, especially when you consider Adobe's onerous subscription model that effectively locks your intellectual property behind a paywall.
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