Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI don't see what would be in it for anyone doing that, anyway. "We've released it for the Deck, but wait! What if some Linux user goes and buys it? They might give us money and play the game, and then where would we be?!"

The thing that game developers are nervous about is someone installing it on some obscure and broken distro, it not working, and then them leaving a negative review or wanting a bug fix. The developers know that they don't want negative reviews and don't think that they'll want to do a bug fix, and aren't experienced enough to judge whether distro fragmentation or single-distro breakage are widespread problems.

You'd think just saying, like the developers of that one game with an article today (um, Thumper) did, that it's supported on Steam Deck but not on Linux generally, would be enough to deal with that, without going to the trouble of actually blocking people from using your game.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: slaapliedjeMy only real fear would be if companies started releasing 'native' versions for the Deck, and figure out some sort of check so you can't run it on normal Linux desktops with a game pad.

It wouldn't be especially hard to do, but it would make Valve cross. Valve have lots of ways they could dissuade that behaviour, but simply saying, "this makes us cross" would probably be sufficient.

I don't see what would be in it for anyone doing that, anyway. "We've released our game for the Deck, but wait! What if some Linux user goes and buys it? They might give us money and play the game, and then where would we be?!"

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Quoting: mirkobrombinEdit: Oh wait, maybe that was a joke :S

Yup.

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The trailer was eerie and cool, but I couldn't figure out what a player would be doing, exactly. I mean you're zooming down one track; you can't really dodge, most of the time it doesn't seem like you're shooting anything although now and then it seems like a shock wave comes out of you. I presume there's something, and it's related to the rhythm and all that--I'm just wondering what it is.

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Quoting: CybolicThe wording is odd, but I can't fault their stance (for now). To me, it sounds a lot like when Ubuntu was the only officially supported distro for many games, only here they also protect themselves from NVIDIA driver bugs and any other hardware and software stack differences.

That was kind of my take: They don't want to commit to supporting all kinds of distros and hardware configurations and maybe driver issues and whatever, so they're just officially saying it'll work on the Steam Deck. I mean, I've seen many, many people talk here on GoL about the expense of supporting another platform, particularly one with a ton of complexity, being a main stumbling block in the way of more Linux games even if the actual release is very cheap.
So yeah, I think fair enough really. Pretty much "Yeah, it'll likely work, but don't expect us to have someone on staff taking Linux support calls". They wanna open the can a bit, fish out one little "Steam Deck" wormie, and then tamp down the lid before all the others get out.

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But if you don't update your Wine version, it'll be old Wine in new Bottles.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: vipor29i mean tomb raider runs miles better in proton than the port. proton has come so far that at this point we can just be happy that a title is fully playable.

I started up a game of Civilization VI recently, and out of curiosity decided to compare the native Linux version to the Windows version in Proton. I was stunned to find that the game performs substantially better in Proton. Using the graphics benchmark, native topped out around 25 FPS. In Proton, it's 70+ FPS!

But does it help turns flip over faster? For me the big thing with any Civ is, once I get into the later game, you're like waiting forever for the computer's turn.

I don't think it makes the AI run any faster.

Oh well.

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: vipor29i mean tomb raider runs miles better in proton than the port. proton has come so far that at this point we can just be happy that a title is fully playable.

I started up a game of Civilization VI recently, and out of curiosity decided to compare the native Linux version to the Windows version in Proton. I was stunned to find that the game performs substantially better in Proton. Using the graphics benchmark, native topped out around 25 FPS. In Proton, it's 70+ FPS!

But does it help turns flip over faster? For me the big thing with any Civ is, once I get into the later game, you're like waiting forever for the computer's turn.

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Whoa. Definitely an impressive look. Hard to tell for sure, but hints at being the kind of gameplay I like, too.

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Quoting: ripper81358The numbers of steamusers using "linux" will grow once the steam deck is released. But that doesn't mean that your unsupported desktop gaming hardware will soon be officially supported for linux or anything else in that regard. Developers that have decided to support the deck are only targeting this specific device not desktop linuxgaming in general.

That will be a problem to some degree, but not necessarily a huge one. For instance, in the initial rush of native games around the whole Steam Machine thing, I have the definite impression that various distros kind of converged in their gaming-stuff support . . . in the general direction of whatever Ubuntu was doing, mostly, but they did a fair amount of "what it takes not to be that distro the games don't run on". Plus stuff like SDL2 matured and got better known. I expect the same will be true for this, although it will be to make sure Proton runs fine and it will be more towards Arch.

There could be some hardware problems, particularly due to troubles with NVidia drivers, because the Deck uses AMD. But it's not like the games were built solely for the Deck, they were built to run on PC hardware, which is the same hardware all the Linux gamers are using. So probably not huge hardware issues, just a few corner cases with driver problems.

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