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.
qptain Nemo Jul 8, 2017
etonbears makes some excellent points. I'd like to add that I think it's very important to view Steam Machines in the long term. Some important points:
1. Valve succeeded in getting vendors to produce them. And people in buying them. Small or not small, it's real. It's happened. It can happen. They got developers interested too, I feel like we wouldn't get Rocket League for example in a million years without Valve.
2. Valve are still working on the ecosystem and very actively (improving the AMD drivers, VR, their own distro and so on).
3. Most Valve's successes have been long term ones. (you could argue their games were pretty great one-offs, but for example as awesome as Left 4 Dead is you wouldn't argue that it had more impact on gaming and brought more money and renown to Valve than their platform and its features. Also when I say Left 4 Dead I mean the series :V ). Point is, it's their style, they're good at this.
4. Valve are far from exhausting their leverage. They could e.g. simply say "everybody who ports their game to SteamOS now gets reduced royalties". 15% instead of 30%. Or even 0%. Or whatever, you get the idea. That would obviously be a massive incentive, have significant effect and they didn't do anything like that. Combined with previous points I'm inclined to believe they don't see their position as desperate at all and will come back in style. Very likely several times. Their approach and platform aren't built on shallow hype the same way other consoles are, so they don't have to rely on it.
1. Valve succeeded in getting vendors to produce them. And people in buying them. Small or not small, it's real. It's happened. It can happen. They got developers interested too, I feel like we wouldn't get Rocket League for example in a million years without Valve.
2. Valve are still working on the ecosystem and very actively (improving the AMD drivers, VR, their own distro and so on).
3. Most Valve's successes have been long term ones. (you could argue their games were pretty great one-offs, but for example as awesome as Left 4 Dead is you wouldn't argue that it had more impact on gaming and brought more money and renown to Valve than their platform and its features. Also when I say Left 4 Dead I mean the series :V ). Point is, it's their style, they're good at this.
4. Valve are far from exhausting their leverage. They could e.g. simply say "everybody who ports their game to SteamOS now gets reduced royalties". 15% instead of 30%. Or even 0%. Or whatever, you get the idea. That would obviously be a massive incentive, have significant effect and they didn't do anything like that. Combined with previous points I'm inclined to believe they don't see their position as desperate at all and will come back in style. Very likely several times. Their approach and platform aren't built on shallow hype the same way other consoles are, so they don't have to rely on it.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: liamdaweNote: 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.
I think they should reconsider their release policies. Blaming the angry mob for getting angry for spending money for a buggy game... it's rather cheeky - professionally speaking. Sure there are trolls and nasty people out there - they're everywhere, especially in the Windows gaming ecosystem, where most of the action is going on.
It boils down to this: if it's not ready, don't ship it. If you can't make it happen, don't make empty promises. Be responsible.
Now taking the idealist hat off, there should still be some mutual understanding between the developers/publishers and the consumers. Bugs are not the end of the world. But it's always the developers' hands that can save a game from an initial failure. And the best way to prevent failure is to test responsibly. Is the project too big to test with in-house people? Then do alpha/beta testing with a limited number of players who are willing to spend some time exposing themselves to a zoo full of bugs of all shapes and sizes.
Frankly, I dislike their attitude. Had they released a good game in the first place, this article wouldn't be here. There's nothing we can do about haters, except for avoiding to trigger them. But then they should also respect the customers who buy their games and suck it up until a fix comes. And not all the games get their happy ending, so people get more and more angry when games keep being released in a buggy state on day 1.
1 Likes, Who?
Sure, some games are worse, but the gaming industry is probably the crappiest and the most irresponsible.
Is it bad? Well, as you said, label it BETA and even if you make it available to everyone for testing, at least you can say it's not the finished product. But when so many companies release games labeled as "final", that's a recipe for hatred for people who pre-ordered or bought the games soon after they were released.
It's much easier to understand overwhelmed servers that can't handle the flood of players in the first days after a release (like Diablo 3), and much harder to understand unplayable games.
Is it bad? Well, as you said, label it BETA and even if you make it available to everyone for testing, at least you can say it's not the finished product. But when so many companies release games labeled as "final", that's a recipe for hatred for people who pre-ordered or bought the games soon after they were released.
It's much easier to understand overwhelmed servers that can't handle the flood of players in the first days after a release (like Diablo 3), and much harder to understand unplayable games.
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Quoting: GuestWhile performance could have been better at release, to the best of my knowledge the game actually did work ok on supported systems when it was released, and I don't think there were that many issues (if you could run the game). Only nvidia blob drivers were supported of course, and it was tested in house quite a bit as far as I know - but of course, releasing into the wild showed a lot more problems that they simply hadn't encountered during testing.
I do think they should have released it with a beta tag first, but hindsight is wonderful like that, and quite frankly I've seen a lot of games with a lot more problems that have had a more favourable reception at full launch.
And while I did buy the game, I did not have a supported platform (fglrx drivers at the time, on an underpowered system). The game ran. Not fast (unplayable to be honest), but it ran without any graphical glitches, crashes, or anything like that. Couldn't even start the game via wine. So from that perspective, the port was, for me, a lot better than many others.
Similarly, I bought this ( and many other ) Linux games knowing that AMD might not be supported initially. I played it for 30 minutes trying to find a setting where it would not CTD, shrugged my shoulders and left it for a few weeks. When I went back to it, it had been updated and has worked fine ever since.
To be honest I was only faintly aware that there was a lot of anger at the time; most of it seemed to be clueless people talking about VP and how they hated them using a wrapper. I know VP have a wrapper tech if the source code for a game isn't available, but what I have on my disk now certainly looks like a native port.
Last edited by etonbears on 8 July 2017 at 10:22 pm UTC
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Quoting: ShmerlMaybe in the EU. Antitrust in the United States is effectively a dead letter at the moment. The monopolists have the richest lobbyists, and the richest lobbyists rule the US, ergo no antitrust enforcement.Quoting: MetallinatusQuoting: ShmerlWhat stops anyone from partnering with Dell, and making them provide Linux options on all their models, and not just on a couple of laptops? I agree though it requires money. I'd also like to see KDE used for such purpose.Honestly, if someone tried that, Microsoft would strike back their own deal with Dell to keep it from happening....
They can be hit with anti-trust pretty hard if they'd do that.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThey can be hit with anti-trust pretty hard if they'd do that.Maybe in the EU. Antitrust in the United States is effectively a dead letter at the moment. The monopolists have the richest lobbyists, and the richest lobbyists rule the US, ergo no antitrust enforcement.[/quote]
Yeah, it's pretty corrupt. But sometimes stuff works in courts.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Jul 9, 2017
From what I recall/have read, MS was on the verge of being split up for being a monopoly, but then there was the 4 year shift in government and the anti-trust case went away. Pays to have the right people in your pocket before they get power, I uess.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: ShmerlMaybe in the EU. Antitrust in the United States is effectively a dead letter at the moment. The monopolists have the richest lobbyists, and the richest lobbyists rule the US, ergo no antitrust enforcement.Quoting: MetallinatusQuoting: ShmerlWhat stops anyone from partnering with Dell, and making them provide Linux options on all their models, and not just on a couple of laptops? I agree though it requires money. I'd also like to see KDE used for such purpose.Honestly, if someone tried that, Microsoft would strike back their own deal with Dell to keep it from happening....
They can be hit with anti-trust pretty hard if they'd do that.
Not entirely sure the EU is any more effective. They do give some anti-competitive companies a good kicking in the balance sheet, but not always for the right reasons, and almost always way too late to prevent damage to competition...
1 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Jul 12, 2017
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: slaapliedjewhen I was first trying it, worked perfect, second time around everyone was missing their lower portion of their bodies!
See https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=26114#notes
Quoting: slaapliedjeStill stuck on the first boss...
Do you mean the Beast? It can be somewhat annoying indeed. Make sure you use Specter Oil.
Ha, yeah the Beast. The problem is that my last save was at the beginning of the whole dungeon where you kill the guards then have to go through and kill more, then you run into the witch. So I have to re-do that so I can brew up some potions. Otherwise my current save was right before the boss due to the auto-save, so I have to skip through the cinematic every time.
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Aug 21, 2017
Well, Witcher 3 was promised AND cancelled long after that VP-storm. So they promised, don't mind to haters, and cancelled, don't mind to haters. In the end, it all comes down to the price. SteamOS and Steam machines are failed (though it was nice try), even Valve don't support VR stuff on their's own platform. But how many VR owners in Steam? 100k? (and I very optimistic there). VR of course much coster, than Alienware Steam machine (alpha counterpart). Not any gamer could use VR because of their health (I, for an example, cannot and not only due to bad vision). Almost any glasses owner couldn't, except the ones, who uses lenses.
...
Now I have about 50% of my library in Steam compatible with Linux. Sadly, most of them are indie (and some of them broken, I don't mind much).
...
Now I have about 50% of my library in Steam compatible with Linux. Sadly, most of them are indie (and some of them broken, I don't mind much).
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