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: liamdaweWell it's tagged as an Editorial...My mistake, it already was.
Quoting: liamdaweAlso, it's clearly stated right near the top of the article that it's the personal opinion of the ex-vp employee.Still not sure it's communicated well through the title itself. "Former Virtual Programming employee's opinion on the reasons for Witcher 3 port's difficulties" would be more conservative about what's fact and what's opinion...
I think it's clear enough, if people don't take notice, that's their issue :)
1 Likes, Who?
A lot of of good discussion has happened here and lots of very important points have indeed been raised. To me the important things to take away from this is that you should not be thankful for a product that does not work but you should also not go on a personal crusade because of one. If you get a product that has bugs or outright refuses to work correctly you should attempt to get the issues fixed through polite communication on the proper discussion channels, be it a bug tracker, a chat group or a forum of some sort. If that does not work and the issues do not get resolved you should seek a refund. I suppose that's easier to say now that we actually have a solid refund policy on Steam and we most definitely didn't have one a while back, but it's the sane approach and should leave everyone more or less happy.
Now, the personal attacks are indeed inexcusable and they have no place in the community here or on Steam. They do not contribute anything that a polite but firm message wouldn't and often their effect is pretty much opposite to what you might actually desire with such a message. The annoying and frustrating part of this is that there isn't actually that much we can do to prevent those kind of idiotic messages. If you are one of the people that goes out of their way to send threats and vitriol I probably can't convince you to stop doing that. What the rest of us can do is avoid obvious baits and report nasty behaviour when encountered and keep contributing in ways that can actually lead to a positive change. Bad products should naturally be pointed out and their issues highlighted but in a manner that doesn't attack the people making the product.
Now, the personal attacks are indeed inexcusable and they have no place in the community here or on Steam. They do not contribute anything that a polite but firm message wouldn't and often their effect is pretty much opposite to what you might actually desire with such a message. The annoying and frustrating part of this is that there isn't actually that much we can do to prevent those kind of idiotic messages. If you are one of the people that goes out of their way to send threats and vitriol I probably can't convince you to stop doing that. What the rest of us can do is avoid obvious baits and report nasty behaviour when encountered and keep contributing in ways that can actually lead to a positive change. Bad products should naturally be pointed out and their issues highlighted but in a manner that doesn't attack the people making the product.
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: ShmerlOnly recently their bug tracker was shut down, since as I've heard their lead TW2 developer (Peter Mulholland) left the company.
I 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.
If it's as many as you say clearly shows many Linux adopters buying or wanting the game... Positive side to everything mate.
Still, I thank you for your efforts, and since a minority of a community is indicative of all them, we all thank you...
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pentarctagon Jul 4, 2017
Oh for fucks sake... this is not complicated - in fact, it's very simple.
The question is: Is it okay to send death threats to developers that release a poor Linux port. Yes or no.
That's it. There are no shades of grey or wishy-washy "well it's the internet..." or "but I gave them money!" involved here.
Last edited by pentarctagon on 4 July 2017 at 5:54 pm UTC
The question is: Is it okay to send death threats to developers that release a poor Linux port. Yes or no.
That's it. There are no shades of grey or wishy-washy "well it's the internet..." or "but I gave them money!" involved here.
Last edited by pentarctagon on 4 July 2017 at 5:54 pm UTC
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Okay, that does it. I actually went and checked out the reddit thread. Wow, just wow...
That's quite the generalization. I hate the notion of using wrappers, does that mean I hate you, too? Yes, I'm criticising your software design decisions, and possibly even your talent and worth as a software developer, but that doesn't mean I'm one of the same people who is devaluing you as a person. Learning to recognize the difference between attacks on your ego and attacks on you as a human being is a fundamental skill in life that you would do well to learn. It will bring you peace and clarity.
Quoting: jaycee_1980[people who criticized us for using wrappers] also sent a lot of vicious vitriolic hate mail to both us at VP AND to people at CD Project RED.
That's quite the generalization. I hate the notion of using wrappers, does that mean I hate you, too? Yes, I'm criticising your software design decisions, and possibly even your talent and worth as a software developer, but that doesn't mean I'm one of the same people who is devaluing you as a person. Learning to recognize the difference between attacks on your ego and attacks on you as a human being is a fundamental skill in life that you would do well to learn. It will bring you peace and clarity.
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"We can change nothing with our voices, we can only change things by actually growing in marketshare and making them money. A lot of companies have proven that already."
we made an negative impact in their stock values
we made an negative impact in their stock values
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Quoting: pentarctagonThe question is: Is it okay to send death threats to developers that release a poor Linux port.The better question is: Do you believe that the volume of vitriol sent the developers' way during The Witcher 2's release played a significant role in a lack of a Witcher 3 port?
... I don't see people here saying more than that having horrendous comments/emails/tweets/posts thrown your way, when you have a publicly disclosed way of the public contacting you, may be inevitable, and to attempt to prepare or emotionally reconcile with that. That's all.
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I think it goes back to the large vocal group on linux that has a great deal of programming knowledge themselves. So as a group they are less willing to accept anything less than parity with windows version of a game. Look at the forums when VP was announced as the the studio chosen to port Micro Machines a large portion of comments were omg great its being handled by the cheapest and shitest outfit out there when it comes to ports.
I was not full time linux when Witcher 2 was released but i saw how brutal the port was the death threats and bile were certainly uncalled for and VP did eventually make Witcher 2 playable however they should not of released it until it was in that state at launch.
I was not full time linux when Witcher 2 was released but i saw how brutal the port was the death threats and bile were certainly uncalled for and VP did eventually make Witcher 2 playable however they should not of released it until it was in that state at launch.
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Quoting: liamdawe<snip>
I just want people to think a little more, but it's clear from people like "Nyamiou" that we have a lot of work to do. And yes, I know, you will never be able to make a community better than it is, but I will die trying ;)
Anyway...back to actual work for me
His posts were probably in bad taste, but the way you react to these things... Liam, I know this is your site, however the way you react to posts you don't like paints a pretty poor picture of your character. We can all encourage others to behave better but, as you yourself demonstrated by calling this guy out (in a VERY unprofessional way), you should probably work on yourself before trying to help others. However, that said, this last bit (excluding the user shaming), about thinking a bit more and that we have work to do, is probably the most poignant part of the argument you've been trying to make. This site, is a portal that us users come to for information so we can have something to either look forward to or other users so we know if games work. It's an invaluable tool to the community and I hope you realize the importance this site has for a good deal of us. You do some good work providing a link between community and developer so these incidents don't happen and hopefully going forward childish behavior (on all sides), is a thing of the past.
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