Quoting: scaineThey chose to simply ditch a platform. The people on that platform have been shafted, treated like second-class citizens. Of course they have a right to demand their money back.

Quoting: scaineIf you take, say, £50K sales, and assume we're 1%... that's £500. Sure, that's a chunk of money to an individual, but c'mon. If you run your studio like a business, and your experiment with Linux didn't yield results - pony up the five hundred quid. Take the hit and move on.

Exactly.

Are we tiny minority that doesn't matter, in which case pony up. Or are we actually often a reasonable portion of sales and the dev outfit just can't handle the support burden?

They aren't planning on any support burden. I don't know why people would think that you could skip testing and have no bugs in the result, but here we are. Testing brings its own benefits outside of the final sales, but bugs after release that you couldn't be bothered to test for? 1% extra ain't never gonna cover fixing that.

Even Valve's don't port your single-platform spaghetti code, just use Proton advice says that you need to actually test the thing, and they even give instructions on how to do it [External Link].

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Quoting: ShabbyXIf a developer supports Linux, I buy and play the game to the end, with no intention of replaying it, then they remove Linux support, should they give a full refund?

Yes.

They've had an interest-free loan from all their affected customers, and they get to not be dicks. Easy choice.

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Quoting: ShabbyXI get your point, but your assumption is that any developer who drops Linux support has a malicious intent, and they were trying to cheat people out of their money right from the get go. That's where the disagreement really is. I don't believe for example the developer in this article intentionally thought "let me boost my sales by 1% through lies and deceit". They simply bit more than they could chew.

And regarding refund, I do wish there was a refund system for this, but it's not simple to be fair. For example, I had a lot of fun with Rocket League before they pulled the plug, is it justified that I get a full refund? I don't think so. Some cases are very clear to me though, if I bought the game and haven't played it yet, and support is dropped, then yes a full refund makes sense.

Being unwilling to keep their promise through incompetence isn't actually any better than being unwilling to keep their promise through malice. They don't have to break their game, and they don't have to pull support. If they want to change their game in a way that they struggle to do on a particular platform they've committed to support they can either push on through to make it work, or not make that breaking change, or apologise and return the money to those customers affected. At no point is falsely claiming support and then just keeping the money acceptable behaviour: you wouldn't let a child act like that, much less a professional software developer.

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Quoting: ShabbyXAllow me to clarify, IIUC, kokokk's point is that even if the developer truly wants to support the platform and even if they honestly will try their best, forcing them like suggested may scare them so much they would decide not to take the risk.

They wouldn't be forced to support anything. They'd just have to give the money back if they lied about providing support when they don't, rather than just keeping it.

To put it another way: if you've written on your store page that you're going to support a platform, to entice customers on that platform to give you money, but you are unable or unwilling to provide that support, why should you get to keep the money?

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Quoting: GuestRight, so let's put the following way:
Since most of developers are not so good (tm) at their job, not so much native titles will come in the future if you force them to unconditionally support Linux after launch.

Why the hell should anyone be giving them money for a game they won't support? Just because they lied about it to pretend that they would? Taking money under false pretences is fraud. Those are the people you want to buy games from?

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Quoting: GuestAgain, the support i will give could not be dependent on my will, but on third party engine i've no control over.

As a developer it's your choice which engine and tools you use. As a developer it's your choice if you push an update that breaks your game for your customers, and as a developer it's your responsibility to see if that's going to happen before you do it. It's not your customers', nor Valve's, fault if you're just not very good at your job, and they shouldn't have their money stolen, nor reputation tarnished, because of it.

We can do without those press the build button but never bother to actually test releases, thank you very much. If a customer chooses to risk their money on a purchase for an unsupported platform, that should be their informed choice, not the unwitting result of developer lies.

"There aren't that many of these people, so it's OK to cheat them out of their money," which is the position taken by these developers, is morally bankrupt. But, similarly, if there weren't that many people it's not going to affect the developer much when they have to give back their ill-gotten gains.

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Quoting: GuestWhat will i do?

Don't lie on your store page. If you're going to support a platform, say you'll support it. If you're not going to support a platform, don't say you will. Bait-and-switch is terrible behaviour (and is illegal in lots of places); you shouldn't be able to do it and then just keep the money, even if your game isn't as high profile as, say, Rocket League.

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Quoting: GuestBut it can't read my mind, and doesn't have a clue if I want to continue playing that game or i'm just speculating.

They don't need to remove it from the user's library. But if they do, the customer can choose to rebuy it if they want to take the risk.

Valve know how to count a sale as for a particular platform. They include that information in their sales reports to developers. If a developer makes sales on false pretences, by lying on their Steam store page, Valve automatically refunds the money that developers shouldn't have taken in the first place.

It's not a punishment, it's just maintaining confidence in the Steam store: if customers are harmed by false statements made on the store page, they'll be made whole again.

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Quoting: F.UltraWhile I feel your frustration, I do think that such a move would decrease the number of native ports even more since Linux now would become not only a fringe market but also a dangerous one.

How so dangerous? That they should give the money back when they don't provide the goods they said they'd give in exchange? I'd want the same thing for Windows users if a dev took their money and then flatly refused to provide the product that had been paid for. Developers need to use their whole arse, and Valve need to maintain customer confidence in their marketplace.

Valve automatically protecting customers from rogue devs is the nice option. Being forced to do it in every country with consumer protection laws is the less nice, and much less easy, option.

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Since developers like this suck so much at customer service, Valve should force them to do better: give automatic refunds to affected customers, to make them whole, and withhold revenue until the cost of that has been recovered. That's what other retailers do. I'm only ever going to buy a handful of games from any particular game dev, but I buy hundreds overall from Steam; my confidence in buying things on Steam becomes less every time a developer pulls this kind of scam, which harms Valve.

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