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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Quoting: etonbearsIn normal circumstances, I would also expect CDPR to require their updated engine to always produce a working build of previous games as a regression test; it would certainly represent their most rigorous QA option.
From what I've heard from engine developers, way more often engines are thrown away (for the most part) with each new major version. Which would mean they won't be able to use CP2077 engine for TW3 without some huge effort.
But again, we have no info.
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Quoting: ShmerlWhich would mean they won't be able to use CP2077 engine for TW3 without some huge effort.
Having worked in game dev in the past I can confirm this. Often the in-house engine forms the basis for the game, but then gets tweaked to suit the game in question. Once development is over for that game, certain parts of the modified engine are cherry picked and added to the base engine repo, and then a new game is built from that. So yeah, probably not possible.
Last edited by drmoth on 7 July 2017 at 12:32 am UTC
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Quoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: CSharpbut I think that most developers would recognize that we're the better bunch overall.I will disagree here. I don't think we're better than any community. Just like all other gaming communities, we have a bunch of trolls, bile spewers and so on. Part of the problem is that we're smaller, all of our communities are smaller and so the hate ends up cutting through and gets seen more than it would in a larger community.
We aren't better than others, that's just not looking outside the circle there.
Still, that's my opinion, as your post is yours and opinions are welcome here :)
So I'm not crazy about the haterade linux zealots can foist on game devs and their ports, but there's also the very real chance that Windows game devs could, in future scenarios, just "spin" crappy linux ports out with no regard to whether they're buggy or not. Later, they will fall back on poor linux adoption metrics and statistics, and falsely claim the linux market is sh*te and not make any effort to produce a good game experience.
Just because they ported a popular game to a technical standard doesn't mean they used the same QA standards they used to chase that sweet, sweet windows market share.
I *am* personally grateful when a gaming house ports a AAA title but porting a trash, unplayable version of that title is not something we should just accept.
We paid $ for the same title, and we should get the same quality. I bought witcher 2 and kept attempting to reload and replay for almost 14 months off and on, and it was just horrible, even as I progressively bought better video cards. Other games got better with the better video cards, Witcher still sucked. Period.
Takeaways:
We SHOULD report bugs with technical data and not flamewars.
We should try to be productive in our criticisms, and not complete gits.
We should expect better QA if other platforms have high QA standards.
We are a small market, but if we are sold a product for our platform, we should expect it to work for the $ we paid for it.
We're consumers FIRST, the devs benefited from our $. We should have something usable for our investment.
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Quoting: corqSo I'm not crazy about the haterade linux zealots can foist on game devs and their ports, but there's also the very real chance that Windows game devs could, in future scenarios, just "spin" crappy linux ports out with no regard to whether they're buggy or not. Later, they will fall back on poor linux adoption metrics and statistics, and falsely claim the linux market is sh*te and not make any effort to produce a good game experience.
Just because they ported a popular game to a technical standard doesn't mean they used the same QA standards they used to chase that sweet, sweet windows market share.
On which note whenever I post a review on Steam or GOG, I specify that I've played it on Linux and I share any issues which I've had with it. If the game has played perfectly (e.g. Rocket League) I state that as well. Not only does this draw attention to Linux from the developers, but it also gives confidence to prospective Linux buyers.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: ShmerlI'd call it perceived lack of demand. Disprove them by flooding them with requests for Linux versions.
The problem is that it's not just perceived. We really need bigger market share. Man, the Linux desktop is really pretty damned good (I remember when it wasn't, but those days are gone) . . . I know there's a monopolist busily trying to keep it sidelined, I know nobody has figured a way to milk it for concentrated money, but there's a side of me that really can't understand why we're not growing much.
From the supply side, it's the same reason x86 dominates micro hardware and ARM dominates hand-held hardware; some monopolies ( Windows in this case ) are self-reinforcing, because the alternatives are too much of a financial risk for the big boys, and small vendors can't really shift the market.
From the demand side, most people that use any form of computer actively resist any notion of "technical superiority", because they are not technically-minded or interested. Linux does not suffer from as many problems as it used to, but, out of the box, it is generally pretty ugly and lacks the singular focus on visual and behavioral "experience" that Microsoft and Apple apply, and which the great mass of consumer and business customers respond to.
Linux DOES have some advantages, to be sure, but generally not in the areas that matter to most potential users. Without the financial backing of a major interested party to sort out the "experience" problem, and to put significant marketing and advertising dollars into selling the result, it is difficult to see attitudes shifting.
There have been several attempts at a worthwhile desktop Linux, of course, but it is like herding cats to try to corral open source development in a single consistent direction. And when a single entity tries to do it alone, the either lack the money ( Canonical ) or vision ( Valve ) to produce a game-changing result.
I wouldn't count on natural ( word-of-mouth ) drift on getting to more than a few percent share, which leaves the most likely route to desktop Linux achieving significance being some sort of negative "event" in the Windows world that persuades consumers, businesses, or both, to look for alternatives.
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Quoting: etonbearsLinux DOES have some advantages, to be sure, but generally not in the areas that matter to most potential users. Without the financial backing of a major interested party to sort out the "experience" problem, and to put significant marketing and advertising dollars into selling the result, it is difficult to see attitudes shifting.
You make numerous noteworthy comments, but one thing I'd say about it is this - All those non-technical people who buy Windows and Mac computers: They are useless at setting up an operating system for themselves. I have had a much more convenient installation running Linux, and then maintaining that same Linux computer with updates, than if it had been a bare computer with no Windows on it and needing to put Windows on.
But the vast majority of machines are pre-configured with Windows or Mac by the vendors. The non-technical user just needs to switch it on. If that same non-technical user was given a Windows install dvd and an empty PC, they would probably fail at the "please provide a driver for the network card" stage.
Recently I set up an empty PC with Mint Linux and it was a dream of an install. It did all the hard work, and at the end, a machine set up with default software, and package manager for installing additional software. The non-technical end user (with a bit of guidance) could install Steam client via Package Manager and then access all their Linux games. ;)
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Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: etonbearsIn normal circumstances, I would also expect CDPR to require their updated engine to always produce a working build of previous games as a regression test; it would certainly represent their most rigorous QA option.
From what I've heard from engine developers, way more often engines are thrown away (for the most part) with each new major version. Which would mean they won't be able to use CP2077 engine for TW3 without some huge effort.
But again, we have no info.
It probably varies from company to company, depending on what their development processes and history have been. Older games were often one-shot code, particularly where they included a lot of special-purpose techniques and use of assembler. Newer games tend towards modular reuse of code libraries where possible.
Sometimes I think the notion of an "engine" can get in the way, as often the "game engine" and "game executable" are synonymous. In that sense of a game being the engine, you clearly do discard it because it contains code that was only of importance to that game. But unless you drastically change your data structures, all your old library code still works, and it wouldn't make any sense to write it again ( although you will probably enhance it over time).
CDPR themselves describe REDengine as continuous-update, which implies to me that enhancements are not allowed to break existing code paths, meaning old games would continue to compile. But, as you say, who knows.
I did find the ( rather sparse, as they admit themselves ) 2016-2021 strategy document for the CDPR holding company to be quite an interesting read. For GOG.com they position Galaxy as an integral part of their strategy for releasing future CDPR games, while also having a goal of releasing multiple non-CDPR Galaxy-enabled games each year. Part of me can't help wondering if, as the owner of a digital distributor, they will go the direction of EA and only sell future CDPR games on their own platform. One might also speculate they pulled Witcher 3 on Linux and MacOS until they can release a galaxy-enabled version on GOG, and not have to pay Valve 30% of a rather small profit. Long-term, it would certainly be a little strange for a company to try to attract distribution business to GOG without their own games being available on all distribution platforms.
Also interesting is that in the 2017-2021 period CDPR plan to double their development headcount, release 2 new RPG IPs ( CP2077 and one other ) and begin 2 other new RPG projects.
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Quoting: etonbearsFor GOG.com they position Galaxy as an integral part of their strategy for releasing future CDPR games, while also having a goal of releasing multiple non-CDPR Galaxy-enabled games each year. Part of me can't help wondering if, as the owner of a digital distributor, they will go the direction of EA and only sell future CDPR games on their own platform. One might also speculate they pulled Witcher 3 on Linux and MacOS until they can release a galaxy-enabled version on GOG, and not have to pay Valve 30% of a rather small profit.
There is no point for them to limit reach of their games by selling them through GOG only - it will only reduce their profits.
And I don't think lack of Galaxy for Linux affected their TW3 Linux efforts. That's just a very minor question in comparison.
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slaapliedje Jul 7, 2017
This is so true. I've been using Linux since you could install Debian via a floppy drive, and it had zero hardware detection to now it detects all of the hardware, and can even read firmware blobs off the install disk (if you downloaded the non-free one) or off a USB stick for any hardware that needs it.
Compare this to Windows. Now since Windows 8 it has gotten a lot better, but a lot of times they are generic drivers that don't have all the features the ones from the vendor have. In the case of Linux, it IS the vendor in 99% of cases, and they keep support for older hardware where Windows tends to drop it.
The main difference though in the install of each OS. With most Linux distributions you can install anything via command line or graphical package manager easily. With a fresh install of Windows you have to install everything by hand to make it usable.
Compare this to Windows. Now since Windows 8 it has gotten a lot better, but a lot of times they are generic drivers that don't have all the features the ones from the vendor have. In the case of Linux, it IS the vendor in 99% of cases, and they keep support for older hardware where Windows tends to drop it.
The main difference though in the install of each OS. With most Linux distributions you can install anything via command line or graphical package manager easily. With a fresh install of Windows you have to install everything by hand to make it usable.
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Quoting: g000hQuoting: etonbearsLinux DOES have some advantages, to be sure, but generally not in the areas that matter to most potential users. Without the financial backing of a major interested party to sort out the "experience" problem, and to put significant marketing and advertising dollars into selling the result, it is difficult to see attitudes shifting.
You make numerous noteworthy comments, but one thing I'd say about it is this - All those non-technical people who buy Windows and Mac computers: They are useless at setting up an operating system for themselves. I have had a much more convenient installation running Linux, and then maintaining that same Linux computer with updates, than if it had been a bare computer with no Windows on it and needing to put Windows on.
But the vast majority of machines are pre-configured with Windows or Mac by the vendors. The non-technical user just needs to switch it on. If that same non-technical user was given a Windows install dvd and an empty PC, they would probably fail at the "please provide a driver for the network card" stage.
Recently I set up an empty PC with Mint Linux and it was a dream of an install. It did all the hard work, and at the end, a machine set up with default software, and package manager for installing additional software. The non-technical end user (with a bit of guidance) could install Steam client via Package Manager and then access all their Linux games. ;)
Yes, I completely agree. Particularly in the realm of updates, it is a much preferable experience; there is no reason not to use Linux now except that it is what it is; a collaboratively created OS that is as good as the one you have ALREADY got.
But, when was the last time you saw a flashy ad on TV ( or anywhere else ) for Linux? "Ordinary" people are much more attuned to wanting things that are advertised to them as aspirational than as a matter of good sense.
Similarly, most people don't even consider the data they hand out to Google, Apple, Microsoft, and worst of all, Facebook, because everything is marketed to them as aspirational and "in their own interest". It is astonishing to me that anyone would put so much information about themselves on-line that it would be trivial for a BAD person to know exactly where they live, and exactly when that address is empty; but they do!
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