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The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Mountain Man, 4 July 2017 at 12:00 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: Luke_Nukem
Quoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.
Not even close to the level of pettiness shown by that vocal chunk that spewed forth a wall of toxicity towards those who were trying to help us out.

That's just the background noise you have to put up with when doing business.

Again, threats of violence are not "background noise". Can't believe so many people are trying to justify this.

Just imagine if you provided a physical service on the street - pretzels, shoe shine, whatever - and on the one hand, you have a group of people literally 10 feet away shouting that you should just fucking die because your service, in their opinion, is sub standard. Then on the other hand, a second group of people standing 5 feet away telling you to grow a thicker skin, just ignore those guys, pfff, just background noise.

Yeah, sure. This is one of the most depressing threads I've ever experienced on the internet. And, given Reddit, or the Steam Forums, that's really saying something.

I'm not justifying anything. I'm just trying to put things into perspective. A hostile post on an internet forum is nowhere close to a mob threatening physical violence from 10-feet away, so your analogy doesn't hold water.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By scaine, 4 July 2017 at 11:56 am UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: MaCroX95
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: Luke_Nukem
Quoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.
Not even close to the level of pettiness shown by that vocal chunk that spewed forth a wall of toxicity towards those who were trying to help us out.

That's just the background noise you have to put up with when doing business.

Again, threats of violence are not "background noise". Can't believe so many people are trying to justify this.

Just imagine if you provided a physical service on the street - pretzels, shoe shine, whatever - and on the one hand, you have a group of people literally 10 feet away shouting that you should just fucking die because your service, in their opinion, is sub standard. Then on the other hand, a second group of people standing 5 feet away telling you to grow a thicker skin, just ignore those guys, pfff, just background noise.

Yeah, sure. This is one of the most depressing threads I've ever experienced on the internet. And, given Reddit, or the Steam Forums, that's really saying something.

And who would ultimately be wrong? People who judge you for not doing your job well or not keeping your promise or people who defend you for no reason, only to look moral? I mean sure, we should behave like people and not make threats and justify barbaric behavior but the answer isn't all that simple... I've seen so many polite critiques on internet where they diss every part of some games and yet they do come out and in some cases sell very well... it's just that we're small market and that's why we got the game cancelled. Even if we were the nicest people in the world when tw2 came out, tw3 would still probably get cancelled when they saw that SteamOS isn't going anywhere.

And I'm NOT justifying the threats to jaycee and his coworkers...


You're over-complicating this. Critique all you want. When you threaten me or my family because of some fucked up justification that my work doesn't meet your standard, you've crossed a line.

You say that we should behave like people, not make threats... but then claim the answer isn't that simple? Wrong. It's very, very simple.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By MaCroX95, 4 July 2017 at 11:47 am UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: scaine
Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: Luke_Nukem
Quoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.
Not even close to the level of pettiness shown by that vocal chunk that spewed forth a wall of toxicity towards those who were trying to help us out.

That's just the background noise you have to put up with when doing business.

Again, threats of violence are not "background noise". Can't believe so many people are trying to justify this.

Just imagine if you provided a physical service on the street - pretzels, shoe shine, whatever - and on the one hand, you have a group of people literally 10 feet away shouting that you should just fucking die because your service, in their opinion, is sub standard. Then on the other hand, a second group of people standing 5 feet away telling you to grow a thicker skin, just ignore those guys, pfff, just background noise.

Yeah, sure. This is one of the most depressing threads I've ever experienced on the internet. And, given Reddit, or the Steam Forums, that's really saying something.

And who would ultimately be wrong? People who judge you for not doing your job well or not keeping your promise or people who defend you for no reason, only to look moral? I mean sure, we should behave like people and not make threats and justify barbaric behavior but the answer isn't all that simple... I've seen so many polite critiques on internet where they diss every part of some games and yet they do come out and in some cases sell very well... it's just that we're small market and that's why we got the game cancelled. Even if we were the nicest people in the world when tw2 came out, tw3 would still probably get cancelled when they saw that SteamOS isn't going anywhere.

And I'm NOT justifying the threats to jaycee and his coworkers...
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By damarrin, 4 July 2017 at 11:46 am UTC Likes: 6
Wishing someone to die or the like is never ever an appropriate reaction to anything that might happen in a relation between people pertaining to a digital product. It's completely unacceptable no matter the built-up expectation, the amount of money paid, time spent waiting or whatever.

Companies are made of people and while most decisions tend to be made based on objective grounds, emotions do play a role.

If 100 Windows users send a developer death threats, they will grow tougher skin, wish they could tell them to fuck themselves but try to ignore the hate and keep on working on their game hoping other non-hate-spewing people will buy it.

When 100 Linux users send a developer death threats, they'll do what they wished they could do to the Windows people: say screw you fuckers, I won't release my game for you. Lots of satisfaction ensues, with very little (if any) financial consequence.

Also:

QuoteMy son of 13 is currently playing TW2 bought on GOG

Are you sure that's a sound decision?

And:

Quoting: libookamiWhiny and demanding wall of text

And here's why we can't have nice things.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By scaine, 4 July 2017 at 11:37 am UTC Likes: 4
Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: Luke_Nukem
Quoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.
Not even close to the level of pettiness shown by that vocal chunk that spewed forth a wall of toxicity towards those who were trying to help us out.

That's just the background noise you have to put up with when doing business.

Again, threats of violence are not "background noise". Can't believe so many people are trying to justify this.

Just imagine if you provided a physical service on the street - pretzels, shoe shine, whatever - and on the one hand, you have a group of people literally 10 feet away shouting that you should just fucking die because your service, in their opinion, is sub standard. Then on the other hand, a second group of people standing 5 feet away telling you to grow a thicker skin, just ignore those guys, pfff, just background noise.

Yeah, sure. This is one of the most depressing threads I've ever experienced on the internet. And, given Reddit, or the Steam Forums, that's really saying something.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By MaCroX95, 4 July 2017 at 11:31 am UTC
Quoting: BeamboomThere's apparently quite a few crackheads in this community, sadly.

To those of you who call this bullshit since they didn't stop releasing for Windows, you must now step away from the keyboard, take a nap, and when rested sit down and ponder a bit why that claim is the most stupid thing you've said so far this summer.
I won't even explain why it is so. If you can't figure that out, Internet is not for you.

And who certifies you sir to judge for whom the internet is or isn't :D you can express your opinion just like anybody else can, that's all.

I still believe there's much more to it than just the flaming of the community. It seems very naive to believe that community's whining is the only reason why they would give up the entire already predicted development, very likely that finances and costs are involved...
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By scaine, 4 July 2017 at 11:30 am UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: omer666There are a lot of good points made in this thread. My own position about this is that there were several justifications for such strong reactions. We must analyse what's gone wrong in context. <SNIP>

Justification for threats of violence? Death threats? Yeah, real classy. I didn't even read past that opening sentence.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Mountain Man, 4 July 2017 at 11:23 am UTC
Quoting: Luke_Nukem
Quoting: Mountain ManIf that's the reason they've abandoned Linux then that seems rather petty.
Not even close to the level of pettiness shown by that vocal chunk that spewed forth a wall of toxicity towards those who were trying to help us out.

That's just the background noise you have to put up with when doing business.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Beamboom, 4 July 2017 at 11:23 am UTC Likes: 4
There's apparently quite a few crackheads in this community, sadly.

To those of you who call this bullshit since they didn't stop releasing for Windows, you must now step away from the keyboard, take a nap, and when rested sit down and ponder a bit why that claim is the most stupid thing you've said so far this summer.
I won't even explain why it is so. If you can't figure that out, Internet is not for you.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Tuxee, 4 July 2017 at 11:21 am UTC
Quoting: AlveKattWow... Some of the commenters here actually say they deserved the backlash. Being a game dev must suck. Getting second thoughts about my dream to make my own game...

Well, you could develop open source applications and get hate mails, because you don't want to fix this or that bug or are not interested in this or that feature or don't provide builds for this or that distribution.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Pecisk, 4 July 2017 at 11:18 am UTC
Quoting: AlveKattWow... Some of the commenters here actually say they deserved the backlash. Being a game dev must suck. Getting second thoughts about my dream to make my own game...

Don't let them define you. I personally think that while online communities have serious problems with such toxic people - and there's really not that ways to avoid them - it is always someone's choice to react to these nutcases.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By AlveKatt, 4 July 2017 at 11:14 am UTC Likes: 4
Wow... Some of the commenters here actually say they deserved the backlash. Being a game dev must suck. Getting second thoughts about my dream to make my own game...
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By MaCroX95, 4 July 2017 at 10:56 am UTC Likes: 3
Eventhough Jayce got personally offended in the backlash I can understand his emotions and why he thinks that CDPR and VP cancelled the port, but I can't share the opinion in this case.

CDPR was hoping that SteamOS would evolve and adopt very well and when they saw that valve did very poor with these machines they decided not to produce the game for 2% of the PC market from which not everyone will buy the game. Whining of the community wasn't a huge factor I believe.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By silmeth, 4 July 2017 at 10:53 am UTC Likes: 4
Quoting: HexDSLthe port was crappy when it was released. people complained because they couldnt play crappy port.. port fixed, people stop complaining...

The message that the porting team SHOULD have taken from this "dont ship broken game!"

The message they DID take from this was "screw them for calling us out on broken shit, lets not give them anything else"

Ill be honest, if THIS is their attitude, im not even sure i WANT their port any more.

They should have expected complaints and criticism, sure. They should not have expected, nor should they have received, hate mail and death threats to personal mailboxes.

On the other hand, I too don’t believe that such Internet shitstorm was the reason further work on ports were discontinued. I don’t want to believe that CDPR people decided to dump Linux just because of some Internet guys with anger-managements issues.

I live in Poland, I work in IT (not in gamedev though), and my hypothesis is that the business people, the shareholders, might have opposed the Linux ports since the beginning and used that whole shitstorm to stop all the Linux efforts without a rational reason, just because of their personal agenda – because eg. they have some irrational(?) fear that maintaining Linux port will eat up all their money and give no revenue back, and Windows is what they know, what their kids play on, and so what they believe in. The fact that SteamOS did not catch on did not help too.
Sit back and watch a galaxy evolve or take control of an empire in Galimulator
By Lakorta, 4 July 2017 at 10:42 am UTC
Bought it some time ago. It's quite fun (and cheap) :)
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By rkfg, 4 July 2017 at 10:41 am UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: heidi.wengerThrough Wine it's getting better and better. Games are getting easier to port later on now that there is Vulkan taking over, game engines get better Linux support..
These two points combined, Wine already supports Vulkan, it just passes the calls through without any noticeable overhead because the API is the same on Windows and Linux. So in the worst case a Wine-wrapped port is almost always possible (except if the game is protected with Denuvo crap or such). Honestly, I stopped caring about the port techniques. If it works fine out of the box it's enough to be a good port.
Sit back and watch a galaxy evolve or take control of an empire in Galimulator
By razing32, 4 July 2017 at 10:40 am UTC
TBH looks a bit like a mobile port.

But hey , it looks ok and for 2$ can't complain.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By razing32, 4 July 2017 at 10:27 am UTC Likes: 5
Quoting: MilesI'm not sure I understand. How is this different from the Windows platform complaints of the same type? I still chuckle at all the various comments from the Windows users complaining about extreme problems with WB's Arkham Knight (my favorite saying that it was like watching a PowerPoint presentation, the graphics were so broken!). This seems like a an unfair double-standard showing that they have very thin skin for business acumen. This won't serve them well on any platform in the long run. I ended up purchasing Witcher II despite the problems because I had faith that they might fix it. I was proven right and for that, I would have given them good word or mouth, reviews and more purchases. I know that this is being reported as just rumor but if this truly is their reasoning and it's later confirmed as true, however, I will no longer be interested in buying their products on ANY platform, much less Linux and I will be sure to mention their attitude and thin skin.


It's different to windows since on windows (and other consoles) they have their largest customer base.
If you had a restaurant and 1% of people had a special dietary need and when you try to cater to it they threaten you , would you bother ? I know I wouldn't.

Also this isn't about being thin skined.
It's about threats to someones family.
This is criticism:
"Your game is bad. I will not buy from you again"

This is not :
"I hope your family dies"

A few trolls you can ignore , sure , but when you get these in the tens or hundreds , then what ?
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By omer666, 4 July 2017 at 10:10 am UTC Likes: 5
There are a lot of good points made in this thread. My own position about this is that there were several justifications for such strong reactions. We must analyse what's gone wrong in context.

Back when the Witcher 2 was released, people had great hope in Steam Machines, and we all thought such ports would be native. Nobody was expecting a wrapper at that time. They should have advertised this from the beginning.

Then, the product in itself was so badly optimised it was unplayable.

The fact that Wine could run it with twice the performance didn't help in any way.

To finish with, communication from the devs was a disaster. The were no clear answers to our questions, and at first we were left trying to troubleshoot the game ourselves, which took me quite​ some time, along others.

With all these elements taken into account, you can see why there was an escalation.

Now, to the positive side of things:
Both devs and community learned from each other. The community is no longer afraid of wrappers, and several ports from VP have been acclaimed since then. VP went on to contact the community and with all the data and testing customers undertook, I think they learned a lot about their target OS, as well as its audience.

When you spend that time on a project and end up with greater knowledge, it is ridiculous not to take advantage of it. Both the community and VP did, but not CDPR.

PS: oh and I forgot to mention that at the time we didn't have a strong media. GOL is now a reference for Linux gaming that both gamers and devs can rely on. Such problems wouldn't happen that often nowadays because now we have a place to send/get informations. Thank you Liam for what you've done.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By crt0mega, 4 July 2017 at 9:53 am UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: NyamiouWho know if this guy is really who he claim he is, jaycee_1980 doesn't bring any results anywhere except on reddit and he's only been here for a month. Also who would use this surname, Jaycee is the name of a girl who was born in 1980 and was abducted at 11 year old for 18 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Jaycee_Dugard. For me this guy is a massive troll, plain and simple.
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The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Asu, 4 July 2017 at 9:42 am UTC
that's really, really, really sad...
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Geppeto35, 4 July 2017 at 9:38 am UTC Likes: 4
Water has flow under the bridge. My son of 13 is currently playing TW2 bought on GOG on a modest pc (ubuntu, i3, 960, 8go) and enjoy it. Thank you Virtual Programming and CD Projekt RED for that game 'n port.

I would conclude from this story (I didn't known before)
We love all games and ports. We like companies that try porting, even if it falls short sometimes. If ports come unfinished, we can ask for better job with positive communication. If nobody answers or works on, then it seems that, as all communities in the world, we have our bunch of mad-haters to release from their leashes :)
Game store itch grows up some more, as Double Fine now have their titles on it
By orzo, 4 July 2017 at 9:38 am UTC Likes: 1
There is too much of everything on Itch. As I see it -- if they plan to sign up more for-profit devs -- itch needs to split into two separate sections for "premium games" and "workshop". I'd personally go all the way and made two independent clients: One "walled garden" for certified devs (like Double Fine; registered businesses) and the other for hobbyists, where anyone can publish with a press of a button (possibly directly from Unity3d with some kind of itch plugin).

Itch as it is right now can't compete with Steam or Gog (it's oversaturated, esp during Ludum Dare), but Itch as it is right now is the single most important publishing tool for bedroom coders, compos, devjams etc. There is no alternative to it. A compromise has to be found to make the service profitable and keep its current status - free-for-all file-hosting.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By gojul, 4 July 2017 at 9:34 am UTC Likes: 2
To be honest given the state TW2 was released (and as of now it is the only VP port I have which crashes so much, even Bioshock Infinite with its memory leaks is not so crash prone) they should have marketed it as alpha and everyone would have understood. If you compare it with Arma 3 which is absolutely a stunning port everyone would have understood.

So clearly yup the community was disrespectul and has members to blame, but VP has also some responsibility at marking as "stable" something which was probably not even tested (I remember that at some time I could not even move the character... and the pad leads TW2 to crash...)

But now if they could release TW3 (I can support if necessary for bug reporting just the same way I do w/ Feral titles) it would be great.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Pecisk, 4 July 2017 at 9:31 am UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: thelimeydragonCan't people put their anger into something more important:

Emacs vs Vi

(I hate both, I normally just use nano)

What about gedit or geany?

/me ducks :D

Also yeah, nano is handy as heck.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By scaine, 4 July 2017 at 9:27 am UTC Likes: 10
Quite a lot of folk don't seem to understand that this is Jaycee's opinion, not an official CDPR press release.

Also, hate is never justified. But criticism can be justified easily, even if it's not always welcome.

Finally, I wish people would stop pointing at Torvlads, or Stallman as justification for abuse. You might as well throw Jobs in there too. These people are/were revered for their vision despite their often abhorrent people skills. Again, there's no justification for hate.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By HollowSoldier, 4 July 2017 at 9:11 am UTC Likes: 3
I call BS on this. Companies make and release games for profit. If TW2 was a reason for not releasing TW1 and TW3, it was low sales figures. They could care less about community whining. If that was a thing, companies like Activision wouldn't even exist, not to mention being successful...
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Miles, 4 July 2017 at 9:01 am UTC Likes: 1
I'm not sure I understand. How is this different from the Windows platform complaints of the same type? I still chuckle at all the various comments from the Windows users complaining about extreme problems with WB's Arkham Knight (my favorite saying that it was like watching a PowerPoint presentation, the graphics were so broken!). This seems like a an unfair double-standard showing that they have very thin skin for business acumen. This won't serve them well on any platform in the long run. I ended up purchasing Witcher II despite the problems because I had faith that they might fix it. I was proven right and for that, I would have given them good word or mouth, reviews and more purchases. I know that this is being reported as just rumor but if this truly is their reasoning and it's later confirmed as true, however, I will no longer be interested in buying their products on ANY platform, much less Linux and I will be sure to mention their attitude and thin skin.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By Tuxee, 4 July 2017 at 8:51 am UTC Likes: 5
Quoting: Nyamiou
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: NyamiouThe idea that a company would judge an entire community over the reaction of a few individuals no matter how loud they can be is completely unacceptable, if CDRP are really like then they got the hate they deserved.

And "they got the hate they deserved" is the problem. People like YOU are exactly the problem.

People like me? WTF? seriously.

Sure. Since you consider that a company deserves hate (because of a product not meeting some people's expectations).

You should apply for a job in the Trump administration.
The Witcher 3 didn't come to Linux likely as a result of the user-backlash from The Witcher 2
By heidi.wenger, 4 July 2017 at 8:46 am UTC
It's still possible from another porter now that some time has passed. Through Wine it's getting better and better. Games are getting easier to port later on now that there is Vulkan taking over, game engines get better Linux support.. We've not seen the end for Witcher 3 Linux port plans i reckon.
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