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The Witcher 3 is something Linux users have been practically begging to have, but the problem is that it seems it will likely never come to Linux. An ex-Virtual Programming developer has taken to reddit explaining why this may have happened.
I should stress, for our own record here that this is not the official word from Virtual Programming or CD Projekt RED. This is the personal opinion of an ex-VP developer.
Here's the issue: The Linux version of The Witcher 2 was released in a poor state, it had poor performance and just didn't really work well at all. It was later fixed-up and last time I tried it, the performance was absolutely fine for me. The real problem, is the amount of hate that was sent towards the porters Virtual Programming and directly to CD Projekt RED as well. Even I personally saw some of the hate that was sent their way and it was downright idiotic and absolutely uncalled for.
I will absolutely hold my hands up as well, I made mistakes around it since I simply didn't know enough at the time, and to be honest three years ago I was still learning a lot about everything. I later corrected what I said, as I always aim to.
Writing on reddit, this developer said (source):
It seems we may have also seen a port of The Witcher 1 as well, as the developer also said (source):
There's also this post from another user, who said at the time The Witcher 2 released for Linux, CDProjekt apparently lost a fair amount on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Apparently due to such a big backlash from the community about the initial release quality. I haven't verified that myself, but if true it would certainly make CDProjekt rather against doing another Linux port with anyone.
This is sad, really sad. I hope this makes a few people reconsider their attitude when talking to developer about the performance of ports. Performance can be worked on and fixed, burnt bridges are harder (and sometimes impossible) to fix.
This reminds me of the time the Blizzard President responded to a small petition asking for Linux ports of their games. The response to the petition was really nice to see from such a big company and truthfully the response I fully expected, but the original statement in reply to it from the petition author (now deleted by the author, but captured in my article) was downright childish and idiotic.
Yes problems are annoying, but throwing insults around helps no one and yes it does make us look bad. I get where people are coming from, to an extent, since some games do end up getting left in a terribly broken state for a long time and sometimes forever. However, in this case VP did good and continued working and now, as stated previously, The Witcher 2 seems fine. Their others ports are generally pretty decent too.
I just hope in future that this developer who got a massive amount of hate and CD Projekt RED can look past it somehow, for all the fans of their franchise on Linux.
Note: I personally spoke to this developer about publishing this with their approval, in the hopes that it might get a few people to re-think their initial attitude towards problems in games. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I should stress, for our own record here that this is not the official word from Virtual Programming or CD Projekt RED. This is the personal opinion of an ex-VP developer.
Here's the issue: The Linux version of The Witcher 2 was released in a poor state, it had poor performance and just didn't really work well at all. It was later fixed-up and last time I tried it, the performance was absolutely fine for me. The real problem, is the amount of hate that was sent towards the porters Virtual Programming and directly to CD Projekt RED as well. Even I personally saw some of the hate that was sent their way and it was downright idiotic and absolutely uncalled for.
I will absolutely hold my hands up as well, I made mistakes around it since I simply didn't know enough at the time, and to be honest three years ago I was still learning a lot about everything. I later corrected what I said, as I always aim to.
Writing on reddit, this developer said (source):
QuoteI agree, things were not right on release... but the vocality of people went way beyond that. It was an all out hate campaign against VP, against CDPR for "lying about the port being native". I attempted to help people out in my own time and got absolutely roasted and abused for it.
The community needs to realise it simply cannot justify this sort of behaviour if they want to convince devs and publishers to support them. There is no excuse.
It seems we may have also seen a port of The Witcher 1 as well, as the developer also said (source):
QuoteThe vitriol was unbelievable. Yes we messed up the performance on release but we put it right. However a huge hate campaign ensued. Both VP and CDPR got lots of vengeful hate mail sent to them. I cannot help but feel this damaged CDPR's view of the Linux platform irrevocably.
They certainly didnt blame us, because they had us work on a Mac port of Witcher 1 to replace the non-functioning Wineskin version. The same port would have ran on Linux too with very little extra work, but they were not interested in releasing it.
There's also this post from another user, who said at the time The Witcher 2 released for Linux, CDProjekt apparently lost a fair amount on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Apparently due to such a big backlash from the community about the initial release quality. I haven't verified that myself, but if true it would certainly make CDProjekt rather against doing another Linux port with anyone.
This is sad, really sad. I hope this makes a few people reconsider their attitude when talking to developer about the performance of ports. Performance can be worked on and fixed, burnt bridges are harder (and sometimes impossible) to fix.
This reminds me of the time the Blizzard President responded to a small petition asking for Linux ports of their games. The response to the petition was really nice to see from such a big company and truthfully the response I fully expected, but the original statement in reply to it from the petition author (now deleted by the author, but captured in my article) was downright childish and idiotic.
Yes problems are annoying, but throwing insults around helps no one and yes it does make us look bad. I get where people are coming from, to an extent, since some games do end up getting left in a terribly broken state for a long time and sometimes forever. However, in this case VP did good and continued working and now, as stated previously, The Witcher 2 seems fine. Their others ports are generally pretty decent too.
I just hope in future that this developer who got a massive amount of hate and CD Projekt RED can look past it somehow, for all the fans of their franchise on Linux.
Note: I personally spoke to this developer about publishing this with their approval, in the hopes that it might get a few people to re-think their initial attitude towards problems in games. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: ShmerlAlso, a simple point: you can't really make a crowd to behave. There are always some individuals that would be displeased and would spread hate. That's how things work, everywhere. Bringing collective responsibility to the equation is unprofessional (if that's really true) to say at least, it only adds to hatred and malice. I'm sure it's easy to find examples of that in history. Collective responsibility is destructive, that's pretty obvious. We can't change everyone in the Linux community, it's not possible. But developers can change their attitude towards the community and control the damage (probably being) done. A dev studio is a single entity that can change but a crowd is always a crowd even if it calls itself "community". It's way too big already to play behavioral games.Quoting: wvstolzingIf CD Projekt thought there was a viable (given what THEY think of as viable) market for their product on Linux, they would have initiated the project, regardless whether the Linux community is made up of saints or demons sworn to eat the developers' babies.
Yes, that's why I don't buy this argument of "attacks from community cancelled the effort". They got many more times attacks from Windows users, and that clearly didn't stop their Windows release.
5 Likes, Who?
Quoting: EhvisThis is a pretty lame excuse. Are they now not going to make a new Windows game because of the backlash from the Windows users at release of TW3? That was orders of magnitude worse. It's the internet. If you can't stand foul language, better move into a cave.
They did react, and I think quite badly. They stopped all communication with the community. Remember what happened with that "downgrade"? During some early E3 presentations, they showed a great looking demo of TW3, and then the final version was changed quite a bit visually (lighting and aesthetics wise). A lot viewed that as a "downgrade" (even though it's somewhat moot), and lashed out angrily at developers.
In result, CDPR stopped communicating anything altogether. I.e. consider zero information they released about their work in progress on Cyberpunk 2077. I personally don't view it as a good strategy (better communicate early and explain reasons like crowdfunded projects do), but I can understand at least why the did that.
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 July 2017 at 10:28 pm UTC
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GustyGhost Jul 3, 2017
"Local discovers that animals, after suffering years of abuse, will bite when cornered."
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Quoting: LeopardProblem is ; when a port or a game is bad people will start to roast it. That is very normal in our era , for the recent example ; take a look at Mass Effect: Andromeda. People went hard on Andromeda , so what Bioware did? They didn't get hard feelings for gamers.
Are you sure they did not? Windows gamers are a big part of their customers. I think they just didn't show, cause they can't afford to act on it.
Let's fantasize what might have happened if a minority with 1% of only the Steam market would have flamed them for a Linux-port they were not so sure it was viable in the first place...
And yes, it might not be completely professional to act as CDPR did, but certainly understandable, for most of us 1% of the Steam market, and for the rest all the more!
4 Likes, Who?
OLucasZanella Jul 3, 2017
[childish]Mommy, mommy, some internet people are talking shit about me because I did a bad thing. But I am perfect, aren't I? Tell me I am, mommy, tell me NOW![/childish]
I get that name-calling is stupid and it shouldn't be done, but that's what happens when people are sold a lie. They where angry when they realised the port they payed for wasn't what they where promised. I too will get hate for saying this, but if complaining a company sold us a lie (even if they fixed it later [i still can't play, though]) is enough to make them not port anything else to the platform I think that's a good thing. Just because we are Linux users we shouldn't have to be oh so very grateful you thought of us, thank you, master game company*. In the long run companies will see Linux is getting bigger and they will see the hate, but they will not think "better not port it then" because there is money to be made there, so they'll think "better make sure it is good before releasing it then."
In some not much older article it was said a developer would stop with the Linux support of his game because of the lots of bug reports Linux users where sending. If we collectively stopped sending in bug reports he wouldn't have cancelled, but should we have done that? Of course no.
There is a nice way of doing it and there's a bad way of doing it, but doing it is the way.
*I'm not saying this is what the article suggests, just my opinion on the matter.
I get that name-calling is stupid and it shouldn't be done, but that's what happens when people are sold a lie. They where angry when they realised the port they payed for wasn't what they where promised. I too will get hate for saying this, but if complaining a company sold us a lie (even if they fixed it later [i still can't play, though]) is enough to make them not port anything else to the platform I think that's a good thing. Just because we are Linux users we shouldn't have to be oh so very grateful you thought of us, thank you, master game company*. In the long run companies will see Linux is getting bigger and they will see the hate, but they will not think "better not port it then" because there is money to be made there, so they'll think "better make sure it is good before releasing it then."
In some not much older article it was said a developer would stop with the Linux support of his game because of the lots of bug reports Linux users where sending. If we collectively stopped sending in bug reports he wouldn't have cancelled, but should we have done that? Of course no.
There is a nice way of doing it and there's a bad way of doing it, but doing it is the way.
*I'm not saying this is what the article suggests, just my opinion on the matter.
8 Likes, Who?
OLucasZanella Jul 3, 2017
Quoting: AnxiousInfusion"Local discovers that animals, after suffering years of abuse, will bite when cornered."Good Lord almighty. I thought of the exact same analogy but couldn't put it into words. Perfect!
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Quoting: OLucasZanellaIn some not much older article it was said a developer would stop with the Linux support of his game because of the lots of bug reports Linux users where sending. If we collectively stopped sending in bug reports he wouldn't have cancelled, but should we have done that? Of course no.
There is a difference between bug reports, and attacks on developers. The former help fixing issues, the later don't, and do quite the opposite.
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Quoting: OLucasZanellathey will not think "better not port it then" because there is money to be made there, so they'll think "better make sure it is good before releasing it then."Very this. Remember No Man's Sky, they also stopped any communication after that "release". Did it do them any good? You know the answer. Lack of communication is what kills any trust and respect, not bugs and other issues. Sadly, still many don't get it, they ignore people instead of at least saying them "we're aware of that/working on it/looking for a fix/getting better with your platform of choice/well, at least weather is nice and you're alive/oh come on gtfo already". Anything would do better than ignorance and silence. Literally anything.
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Quoting: GuestI wasn't lead on Witcher 2... can't take that credit :)
I provide a lot of in house Linux support, did some of the initial work to bring eON over from the Mac to Linux, established the tools used etc etc.
As was seen at the time, I offered my own time to help people who were having problems with the port, with every intention of feeding back help into patches at VP. Instead I was roasted alive and got sent (to my work and personal email accounts, and my personal Facebook account, Steam account etc) tons of very hateful mail, telling me/my family to go and die, and such like.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm sorry to hear that you got targeted by angry Linux users.
However I find that story about falling stock value from initially bad release of the TW2 Linux version quite weird. I doubt that was the reason behind CDPR's abandonment of their Linux efforts. Did they actually work with VP in regards to TW3? Or just considered it?
Last edited by Shmerl on 3 July 2017 at 10:36 pm UTC
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