Oh shit, this was a major blow. Major.
In fact I can't really think of a game/franchise it would have blown harder to receive this news on.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

... he's run out of Wine puns? When did this happen?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
CyberPunk 2077
The Outer Worlds

Can I add one more? Then:
Divinity: Original Sins II (please!)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'll be honest: I can understand where they are coming from. When your focus is to fight cheating to an as great extent as possible this is a rather small sacrifice, relatively speaking.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: subWhat's completely beyond me is that you can only subscribe for a notification when it's available again.
Why isn't possible to just order it even if it's currently out of stock?

What worries me is that it may indicate that it'll take some time before it's back in stock?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'll order Index as soon as it's available on the Swedish Steam store again.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestWhat I’d really like is if they ported some good action RPG game though!

Yes, me too!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

There's also a "Steam Linux runtime" option in the Steam Play version pulldown menu - I can't recall that being there before?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ShmerlSince their mobile craze, they aren't fighting for the desktop though. They simply don't care about it.

That's taking it much too far - but yes, the mobile segment is where they pull in the big money and has done so the last ten years or so.
But their desktop segment, especially when we look at laptops, is really massive and they are definitely still pushing forth, much harder than I'd say Microsoft do for their OS.

Quoting: ShmerlAnd I'd say despite the fact that it's so bad, they have higher than Linux market share. Because of marketing.

No gamers use OsX. Simply put. So the Steam share are of those who own a Mac who's also playing a game now and then. I believe their share of the desktop market in total is roughly twice the Steam percent, or thereabout.
(interestingly enough, the Linux desktop market share is also roughly twice the Steam share.)

And yes, Linux is definitely a better gaming OS than Os X. Even Apple fans admit that. But Apples percentage on Steam is not because they've marketed their computers towards the gaming segment. And let's be frank here - they do a LOT right in regards to UX. It's why they have the position they have.

Still - it's not that big a position! Even after all these decades!

And this is a fact that I just want to stress. It does say something about what it takes to gain a good position on this market. Apple is no small fish, never were.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI hate marketing. But, that's the world we live in, and I do like strategy. So OK, in marketing terms the question is not "how to market Linux", it's "Who do you market Linux to?"
(OK, before I go any further here I'd like to note that all the problems TheRiddick and Beamboom point out are mostly real and the ones that involve Linux itself should certainly be fixed, as should many others they didn't have space to mention. But that doesn't make them right in their assessment. It just means there are some people you can't effectively market Linux to.

Your suggested strategy holds a lot of truth in it, and yes defining the targets and breaking down the target audience and tailor the campaign would surely be how to go about.

But. It's not that easy.

To all you who form the optimistic side of this discussion, I strongly urge you to look around you, and see how this market is.

Look at Apple.
They have 6-7% of the desktop computer market. Big fucking APPLE! One of the richest companies in THE WORLD!! Apple, who spends who knows how many billions on advertising across the entire world has only 6-7%! That's all they've achieved after DECADES fighting for the desktop of the computer users. DECADES, and they are only a few times times bigger than the Linux desktop!
Apple, who has no server solutions, no other PC products to work on other than to market their desktop OS to the end users. Full focus on one thing, and a campaign that started in THE EIGHTIES!

That's the reality.
You can't compare this with a ipad or pad or mobile or any other niche, special purpose device. You need to look at this particular market and see how that works.

And it works like this: People who are not advanced users go for what they are exposed to at work and amongst friends. They use what their friends use, and see zero reason to do anything else. And as they get more and more familiar with their OS, the more and more it takes for them to change to a new OS and be a "noob" again.
Simple as that.

And the advanced users, well for them the tools count. They can't sit there and fiddle around with something lesser than what they know, and especially not if their workflow is embedded in those applications. They want to get the job done.

That leaves the rest of us - those of us who use Linux both at work and home (I'm one of those), we are what we are because of who we are - and we are and will always be a minority.

I'm not saying that this will never change. It can. But it's definitely more than just marketing that's keeping us from that change. In fact that rather comes last, after the core pieces are in place.

View this comment - View article - View full comments