Quoting: EikeOne point to decide might be:
"Do you want/need more money or do you want more people to experience your work?"

That implies that there's no more people to reach out to in your current market, or that those are harder to reach than the new market. This is not the case here.

You need to be especially motivated to reach those particular people, give priority to them over the others, at the expence of the added cost. You choose some people over others.

Let's agree on at least one thing: Windows gamers are no less worth than Linux gamers. We are all gamers. We just sit on different platforms. And any artist, regardless of ability, want to reach an as large audience as possible. That's a fundamental drive for any creative soul.

Those that support Linux today, do that because they have a particular fondness for our platform. Very likely because they got developers who are Linux fans.

Or, evidently in some cases, they assume it doesn't cost them anything extra to just check the "linux" box when compiling out of Unity. And we all know how successful that's been at times...

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Quoting: ShmerlIt's not a correct analogy. Releasing for Linux is expanding your audience. That wouldn't stop you from continuing releasing for Windows users.

... But it forces you to spend time on the new market, at the expense of the old. Time is not an infinite resource. As any developer can confirm. That's the entire point of the analogy.

But we're running in circles now.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: BeamboomI assume you have a job. Let's say I offer you another job, the same tasks and responsibilities, only I offer you half as much in salary.

Bad analogy.

No - it's a very good analogy. You're already catering for one market. The question is, would you also embrace the new offer, with the consequence of having less working ours to spend on your current employer, and less outcome. This is the reality for almost all developers. Time is a limited asset.

Maybe you would still accept that job, if you liked the employer a lot. But the most rational thing - from a personal economy point of view - is of course to work fulltime for that other employer.

And this is really the simplicity of this question. And this does not indicate anything about the quality of your work as an employee.

Quoting: ShmerlGood, and I told you, that those who treat art (like games) as pure business, produce garbage art.

Do you yourself realise how exceptionally black and white you see the world?
It looks to me like you're saying that art is only found in indie releases - especially if they support linux?
No great art direction, scripting, design, voice acting, storyline, no artistic integrity, no artistic ambitions, nothing like that in big produtions?

I think you see this way, waaaay too political. It's clogging up your eyes!

Quoting: ShmerlAnd making masterpieces is too expensive.

If you by "masterpiece" means very niche work with restricted appeal and destined for a very particular audience, you got a point. This is why many western countries for example support certain segments of cultural work in their contry.

But one mans junk is another mans gold. And we should both be weary with sitting too high on our horses and believe we have the monopoly to define good art/games on behalf of all.

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Quoting: ShmerlThose who release Linux games do. And they are not greedy, as publishers who use the logic you described in order not to release for Linux.

I assume you have a job. Let's say I offer you another job, the same tasks and responsibilities, only I offer you half as much in salary.

You can't keep both jobs, and you like your other job too. If you accept my job you need to work less on the other job. And as a consequence, your income goes down. Same job, same work hours, only less earnings. Your rent is the same, your expenses hard to cut.

I'm a cool guy, I'm fun to work for.
If you still decline my offer and figure you are better off to keep your current job, would you then describe yourself as greedy?
Or rather an idiot if you didn't?

Quoting: Shmerlcan claim they don't know how to run business, and what not. But I'd rather welcome their attitude towards Linux community

I claim they have other motivations to support our segment than for business reasons. Interests that others may not have. And that's fair enough.
A Linux gamer is not more "worth" than any other gamer, is my claim. You have to be particularly fond of our segment, have other reasons to support our platform. Motivations that may not be shared by all.

And that is backed by what many devs has publicly said. They are not doing it for the money but because they dig Linux.

We should appreciate those, of course. But it's wrong if you to just slander all those who don't have particular emotions towards our segment as "greedy".

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Quoting: ShmerlNot supporting Linux when it's profitable, while arguing that doing Windows only games is more profitable, is totally about greed, not about sensible decisions and healthy business.

You obviously do not run a business.

You honestly seriously do not understand how choosing an alternative with barely any profit instead of focusing on the segment with a lot of potential is a poor business decision? Or is it just that you don't want to understand?
To earn one new Windows gamer as a customer is no less "honourable" than one new Linux gamer? A gamer is a gamer?

No, like I said, you need to have OTHER motivations to chose the lesser alternative. You need to be particularly interested in that segment. possibly for non-profit reasons. And many are! There's a LOT of developers out there who just simply loves Linux. I would not be surprised if that is the dominating reason why they support our platform at all. Several has openly admitted so.

But many doesn't. Without them being "greedy". Or capitalist swines. Or any lesser human beings.

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Quoting: Eike* I don't like it.
* I'm disappointed by Linux native gaming not keeping the traction it had (which I only partly accuse Proton for).
* It's technically inferior. Having a binary wrapper fells bad (spoken as software developer).
* Except for the few whitelisted games, it doesn't entitle me for a working game. (Whatever that in reality might be worth for a port...)
* It feels plain wrong to run Windows Exes on Linux.

I don't want to be third class citizen in these aspects.

I call this a good answer.
But it's also an answer based on ideology more than practicality.

But yes - the lost traction. Made us all depressive. It made me think. "Why?". We lost traction before Proton kicked in - it dropped in the wake of the "Steam Machines" flopping.
Then I brushed some dust off the theoretical models learnt during my university years (I got a degree in market economics - but have never worked in that field directly, my career is in the media and IT industry) and started to think about this from a business perspective. And while the depressive outlook remained ;) it all made rather clear sense. Business sense.

I was (and to a certain extent still am) of the exact same opinion as you list above. It feels dirty to run windows binaries on my beautiful Linux desktop. I never installed Linux to run windows bins on it in the first place!

But the gamer in me? Oh man, the gamer in me is just SO delightfully happy that he can finally - FINALLY - play Fallout 4. And man, what an experience. What a fantastically detailed universe to explore. Next up, after some hundred hours spent in F4? Then it's probably GTA5. After that? Maybe Cyberpunk 2077?

Oh joy of all joys. Happy times!

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Quoting: LinuxwarperNative games underperforming or breaking is because of developers and not inherently because developing games on Linux is bad.

Absolutely. There's many examples (outside gaming) where the native Linux version outperforms the native Windows version. No reason why it shouldn't be the same with games. If - IF - they are truly native code. But:

Quoting: LinuxwarperEven Feral can't do anything about this, with Tomb Raider underperforming compared to Windows [External Link]. If Feral was on the task to make a Linux version, while the game was being developed, you can bet the performance would be comparable to Windows.

... The uncomfortable reality that too many miss in this, is that from a technical point of view there's not really that much of a difference between the AAA "ports" and running a game in Proton. Feral uses their own set of libraries to translate APIs as well - that's how they could release such big games relatively fast after a release, and with an as stable performance as they have (very few Linux related issues). And this is the very reason why we get an overhead and loss of performance compared to Windows. It's unavoidable.

Heck, people even called Virtual Programming releases for "ports" - their work is practically Wine bottles in closed source software.

So in may ways, if we call their work ports we might just as well call what Proton does as a "generic porting tool" of Windows games.

And it is also worth noticing that the work on Proton does indeed contribute to the Linux ecosystem - to my understanding more than Feral has, to pitch those two against each other.

So the reality here really is not black/white at all.

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What a remarkably amateurish mess. Are these guys complete hobbyists? Have they never worked in a professional development environment?

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Quoting: monnefWhy indie games should be paying more, in relative numbers, than big publishers?

If you talk about the fee on publishing the game, I dare say that $100 shouldn't be much for anyone. If you're semi-serious about putting your game out there on a an as massive market as Steam, I'd say it's pretty much nothing.

I think that particular part is a good idea, to keep the absolute worst out of the store.

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Quoting: LinuxwarperBecause them developing their games properly for Linux will help the ecosystem

Yeah, ok, you put this in the context of the broader picture. I do agree with you from that perspective - it will undobtly benefit the overall ecosystem of Linux.

Quoting: ShmerlNot when you are aiming to reach more users, instead of "I want moar $$$". It's not about greed, but about creators increasing their audience. This topic really is about the commercialization of art in general. If you view art as pure business, that art quickly becomes garbage.

Gaming is business. A major player in the entertainment industry, an industry with millions of artists doing fantastic work, from musicians to actors, 3D artists, makeup artists, game designers, composers, painters, map designers, you name it. Art and business can easily go hand in hand, in many cases great art is also good business.

The gaming market is massive. No indie has tapped all the potential on their current platform(s). Nobody needs to support Linux in order to reach more gamers. They need to be particularly interested specifically in our segment. The rest have millions to struggle with reaching out to on just that one platform. Or branch out to the consoles, where a new massive market awaits.

And it's not about greed. It's about making sensible decisions. Even the most credible artist want to survive and live on their art. And to survive you need to run a healthy business. Ideology is what you can afford when your business is doing good.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMind you, that is a rather big if.

Absolutely. Indeed it is. As experienced myself, with the current generation of Proton.
But - IF - it works out of the box (and indeed many titles already do), I really do not mind if I lose a few frames a second. If that's all I have to sacrifice from not running a native binary.
IF.

Add to this the sad(?) fact that indeed Proton have been observed to perform better than the ported games (compared to the Windows performance), and this picture is really starting to get a bit convoluted - and really quite interesting.

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