Quoting: Guest

If you're a game developer, maybe it's time to consider a free and open source kit like Godot Engine. Just a thought.

Game developers can't just move to a new engine, especially if they're working for a studio.

That's why he said "time to consider"--as in, look at, consider the possibilities of, do some testing, think about trying future projects in. Not "Switch right away on your existing projects".

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Quoting: wytrabbit

Quoting: ljrkFurther, they don't support this product anymore.

I am skeptical that a company that chose to do what they did with installCore, has given up on being shady.

All game developers are shady. They even have special code for it--I see them talking about "shaders" all the time.

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They sound like jerks. Whether they're telling the truth or not, I sure ain't gonna buy the thing.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Mountain ManGames bought in Linux and played in Proton are logged in Steam as a Linux sale, so people refusing to buy any game that requires Proton are, at least theoretically, directly harming Linux.

So if I choose to buy a native Linux game instead of a Windows game, how exactly am I harming Linux? Please explain. Nothing theoretical about this, it happens regularly.

It reduces the number of Linux sales for certain titles, which tells those developers that they were right to not support Linux directly. That's the exact opposite of what we want.

So it tells people who did nothing that they can continue to do nothing, whereas if more Linux people bought their non-ported title it would tell them . . . that they could continue to do nothing. Sure, big loss there.
But at the same time, it increases the number of Linux sales for certain other titles, which tells those developers that they were right TO support Linux directly.
Really, I'm not seeing the net harm here.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: GuestWindows only, shame... When i saw the trailer it looked like a nice game.

Why is it a shame?

Are you asking that because you don't know the person's answer or because you do know and you're waiting for their reply so you can give them a hard time?
Proton is great, but I don't think there's any point to razzing people for preferring Linux native.

The reality is, Proton is a perfectly viable option for Linux gamers that, in many cases, gives native-like performance and grants access to hundreds of games we would otherwise never get to play on our operating system of choice. It's also a reality that even if every single Linux gamer boycotted every game that didn't offer native Linux support, it would not compel a single developer to suddenly produce a Linux version to take advantage of what is, by all accounts, a negligible sliver of the market. I wish it weren't it so, but those are the facts.

So, in the end, refusing to buy a promising game because it can only be played in Proton reminds me of the adage about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

So?
Some people preferring native Linux purchases is still incrementally more motivation to go native Linux than no people holding that preference. And it certainly doesn't do you any harm if someone else has that courage of their convictions. It will either have no effect or a positive effect, but there is no way it can have a negative effect. And if the whole Linux gaming community grows, and the "native strongly preferred" current stays significant, when the whole reaches a certain size it will have an impact.
So why always this rush to convince people not to do it? They're not cutting off your nose.

Disclaimer: I run, and buy, almost all native games, but not mainly out of political conviction. It's just that I buy games mostly when they're mentioned on GoL and look good, and up until recently most games mentioned here were Linux native games, and I have more games than I can play anyhow, and I'm not really into the genres AAA games are usually in, and the genres I am into are well represented natively on Linux. So I've made one or two exceptions, but mostly I haven't found much point to go for non-native. But I can't claim to have been doing it largely out of political virtue.

You say there is no way that avoiding Proton can have a negative affect on Linux. I disagree. Games bought in Linux and played in Proton are logged in Steam as a Linux sale, so people refusing to buy any game that requires Proton are, at least theoretically, directly harming Linux.

No, that doesn't work. They wouldn't be buying fewer games overall, just a different distribution. And the games they do buy also count as a Linux sale, obviously.

I don't get this idea that you can only support one or the other. It's not a zero sum game. We can increase the presence of Linux across the board by supporting both native and Proton.

You just claimed it was a negative sum game. Please make up your mind.
At any rate, it isn't a zero sum game, exactly, but the optimum strategy is a bit more subtle in my opinion. People seem to think that either you think Proton is a good idea, in which case you should want everyone to use it and to treat Proton and native games interchangeably, or you insist on native, in which case you think Proton is a bad idea which will reduce developers' motivation to make native games, and should want nobody to use Proton or Wine ever.

But the best strategy is not for everyone to do the same thing. The Civil Rights movement needed both a Martin Luther King and a Malcolm X, a good cop and a bad cop.

Ideal is a mix. Proton is a Good Thing. It is a tool to grow Linux gaming market share. It drastically reduces the barriers to entry for Linux gaming, making Linux a viable gaming platform.
But ideal would be both for the Linux desktop to have a very large user share, and for that large user share to translate into developers (game developers in specific, but also software in general) targeting Linux natively, as a major target not an afterthought. This is better than continuing to rely on emulation for a number of reasons, from quality of the software itself to better defence against hostile moves; if software is made for Linux in the first place, it is not vulnerable to clever stunts by for example Microsoft.

Now. The obvious case: If everyone ignores Proton and refuses to use it and makes sure the Linux community is hostile to noobs that do, or worse if Proton or something like it did not exist, that would be terrible for the growth of Linux as a gaming platform. In fact, there's a strong case to be made that such growth simply would not happen, and the Linux (gaming) desktop would even decline. We need Proton, we need the Deck, its importance is hard to overstate.

But that doesn't mean the best strategy is for everyone to treat Windows games playable with Proton as first class citizens. If everyone did that, then no matter how much Linux gaming grew, there would be little impetus for developers to make native games, and Linux gaming would remain vulnerable to whatever Windows did.

Rather, it's best if Proton goes from strength to strength, helping to grow the number of Linux gamers, but a significant portion of those gamers strongly prefer native games. Say around a third of Linux gamers avoid Proton, or at least spend much less money on Proton games, strongly preferring native. If Linux as a gaming platform grew to around 18% of Steam users, then not making native games would lose you maybe 6% of sales. That's around the size of Mac. It's a significant motivation. Of course, we have to grow that big before the people avoiding Proton games matter, but there's no chance of that if they aren't a significant part of the Linux gaming culture now, and play a part in shaping that culture as it grows.

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It's interesting that of the Unchecked, two are Gold on ProtonDB and two are native. So presumably it wouldn't take much for all four of those to become Playable.
That leaves only the three Unsupported as definitely not workable on the Deck--but note that even that doesn't mean they don't work on Linux period, since all three of those Unsupported are actually Linux native. Presumably their Unsupported category is about specifically Deck-related issues, not Linux-related issues. I'd say that's particularly clear for Alyx, eh?

Bottom line: While only 43/50 of those titles are currently "Playable" or better on the Steam Deck, already a pretty dashed good figure, all 50 can be played on Linux. That's amazing.

Incidentally, 25 of them, exactly half, are Native, not even counting Tomb Raider. We get more native titles than some people think we do.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: skinnyraf

Quoting: GuestValve are fully responsible for the current situation as they require every game sold on the Steam Store to have a Windows executable, as per their developer documentation.

Ok, are you suggesting that Valve is the blocker for studios releasing Linux builds of their games?

If said game doesn't have a Windows executable, Valve will not allow it on the Steam Store.

That's not what was asked. But you know, I think there actually was one game on the Steam Store a few years ago that was initially Linux-only. So I find myself wondering if you're actually right about that. Frankly, it wouldn't be the first time you said something about Valve that was simply inaccurate.

Not that it matters much--essentially nobody was ever going to be releasing games that weren't Windows, 'cause it's a monopoly. If the rule you're claiming exists, its intent was probably "No console games" or something.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: TheRiddickIt's a shame the developer didn't move to Vulkan API for the game.

If you are only targeting Windows, you'll keep developing with DirectX as it makes no sense at all to switch to Vulkan.
And that is a huge issue that people saying "I don't care if it's native or proton" don't seem to understand or, like Liam and Gardiner Bryant for example, understand but choose to ignore, hoping it goes away "once market share blah blah blah"...

I myself am in that latter camp, because I think market share is indeed going to blah blah blah . . . or at a minimum, has a much better chance of blah blah blah than we ever had without Proton. But right now with the Deck, which could not exist without Proton, we are already beginning to see market share blah blah blah.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: GuestWindows only, shame... When i saw the trailer it looked like a nice game.

Why is it a shame?

Are you asking that because you don't know the person's answer or because you do know and you're waiting for their reply so you can give them a hard time?
Proton is great, but I don't think there's any point to razzing people for preferring Linux native.

The reality is, Proton is a perfectly viable option for Linux gamers that, in many cases, gives native-like performance and grants access to hundreds of games we would otherwise never get to play on our operating system of choice. It's also a reality that even if every single Linux gamer boycotted every game that didn't offer native Linux support, it would not compel a single developer to suddenly produce a Linux version to take advantage of what is, by all accounts, a negligible sliver of the market. I wish it weren't it so, but those are the facts.

So, in the end, refusing to buy a promising game because it can only be played in Proton reminds me of the adage about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

So?
Some people preferring native Linux purchases is still incrementally more motivation to go native Linux than no people holding that preference. And it certainly doesn't do you any harm if someone else has that courage of their convictions. It will either have no effect or a positive effect, but there is no way it can have a negative effect. And if the whole Linux gaming community grows, and the "native strongly preferred" current stays significant, when the whole reaches a certain size it will have an impact.
So why always this rush to convince people not to do it? They're not cutting off your nose.

Disclaimer: I run, and buy, almost all native games, but not mainly out of political conviction. It's just that I buy games mostly when they're mentioned on GoL and look good, and up until recently most games mentioned here were Linux native games, and I have more games than I can play anyhow, and I'm not really into the genres AAA games are usually in, and the genres I am into are well represented natively on Linux. So I've made one or two exceptions, but mostly I haven't found much point to go for non-native. But I can't claim to have been doing it largely out of political virtue.

You say there is no way that avoiding Proton can have a negative affect on Linux. I disagree. Games bought in Linux and played in Proton are logged in Steam as a Linux sale, so people refusing to buy any game that requires Proton are, at least theoretically, directly harming Linux.

No, that doesn't work. They wouldn't be buying fewer games overall, just a different distribution. And the games they do buy also count as a Linux sale, obviously.

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Quoting: furaxhornyx

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: GuestWindows only, shame... When i saw the trailer it looked like a nice game.

Why is it a shame?

Are you asking that because you don't know the person's answer or because you do know and you're waiting for their reply so you can give them a hard time?
Proton is great, but I don't think there's any point to razzing people for preferring Linux native.

The reality is, Proton is a perfectly viable option for Linux gamers that, in many cases, gives native-like performance and grants access to hundreds of games we would otherwise never get to play on our operating system of choice. It's also a reality that even if every single Linux gamer boycotted every game that didn't offer native Linux support, it would not compel a single developer to suddenly produce a Linux version to take advantage of what is, by all accounts, a negligible sliver of the market. I wish it weren't it so, but those are the facts.

So, in the end, refusing to buy a promising game because it can only be played in Proton reminds me of the adage about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Refusing to buy a game that doesn't run natively on your OS of choice is perfectly legitimate, and maybe we GNU+Linux users shouldn't be so damn quick to buy Windows games.

Maybe if Valve only gave the "verified" tag to GNU+Linux native games (that run flawlessly), developers would have more incentive to actually port games to our OS and ultimately support them.

You can be sure that if only native games can get the "Verified" status, and windows-only game could be "Playable" at best, we would see a drastic increase in Native versions :wink:

Or maybe that's Valve's long-term plan ? Once a lot of games reach the "Verified" status, change the rules so that they will "lose" that precious badge if they don't go Native... Evil, but perfect :grin:

Probably not, but what I can imagine is, once the Deck has some really solid sales numbers under its belt, them adding a new status above Verified for solid native Linux.

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