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Latest Comments by Liam Dawe
Editorial: Steam Machines are not dead, plus a video from The Linux Gamer
27 Feb 2017 at 1:30 pm UTC

Quoting: Alm888Well, to "pay you with your own coin": as you can see here over the time the absolute number of Linux customers raised, not fell (starting from 22k and towards 41k by the "HIB V" ).
Try looking at later graphs, Linux drops, by a fair bit too. And yes, I realize I am arguing against my own points of Linux gaming being storng, but I want to give a clear picture here. This is Humble Bundle and not the topic at hand: Steam/SteamOS/Steam Machines.

Humble Bundle may have done a small push with a few small indie games, but they didn't really push the platform forward at all. All they did was continue the race to the bottom for indie developers finances with cheap bundles, now they hardly ever do them.

Quoting: Alm888And lots of people who complaining about poor performance.
No, there's a few loud people. You don't get a good idea of how people feel based on a minority of a few people bashing ports. If they weren't performing well enough for the majority to be happy enough to continue buying ports, these porting houses would have stopped porting by now.

Feel free to keep arguing, but I don't see a point in continuing it on with you. We have obviously very opposing views here and I do have other work to do :)

I tend to stay positive, look at the good things we have going on and you seem to do the opposite, you're not who I serve it seems and that's perfectly fine, everyone has their opinion. I am just surprised by the absolutely determined pessimistic attitudes by some, it makes me wonder why they visit if only to downplay our progress, it's strange. :)

Editorial: Steam Machines are not dead, plus a video from The Linux Gamer
27 Feb 2017 at 11:16 am UTC

Quoting: Alm888
Quoting: liamdaweThe fact still is most developers would still be ignoring Linux or would have stopped doing Linux versions by now if it wasn't for Steam.
And that's where we diverge. Current improvement has nothing to do with either Valve or Feral.

The reasons are:
1) We showed our strength at Humble Bundles in the 2010;
2) We were heard by "inXile", "Harebrained Schemes", "Double Fine" at Kickstarter in 2012. Even the projects that utterly failed ("The Banner Saga" ) helped us in the end;
3) In order to win inXile's contract (and many others, like "Dreamfall Chapters", "Pillars of Eternity" etc.) Unity3D devs hastily ported their engine to Linux which became a turning point for us as it enabled game developers to create a lot of high-profile Day-1 releases.

And Valve... well, "Faster Zombies", the proven feign swing towards Microsoft used as the leverage in Valve's bargain on "Microsoft Store".

Feral? Lots of un-optimized ports of three-year-old games requiring top-of-the-line hardware in order to run acceptably.
I still stand by what I say, if it wasn't for Valve most if not all companies would have likely stopped doing Linux versions by now.

Sales from Humble Bundle to Linux gradually dropped lower. Look at say HIB1 where Linux was $317K to HIBX where Linux was $123K. Humble didn't show anything other than initially showing there was a small market for Linux. Valve, however, continue to actually invest in Linux.

As for Feral ports, people like to claim lots of things about their ports, yet I've seen plenty of people on pretty rubbish hardware massively enjoying their ports. You just seem to be one of the people who choose to repeatedly trash-talk them.

As for your random statistics there, you're guessing as much as anyone. No one has any really decent numbers on it. Even with your guesstimate, 300K+ extra people possibly buying Linux games is nothing to turn your nose up at.

I'm not claiming anything about Valve being our absolute messiah here, let's not kid ourselves or put words in my mouth. I'm simply saying things are good, better than they have ever been and it's set to continue. It's not going to suddenly die-off like some people like to think and claim.

Editorial: Steam Machines are not dead, plus a video from The Linux Gamer
27 Feb 2017 at 9:40 am UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: jnriversSo tired of the Vulkan hype train. If games don't get ported properly and continue to use D3D wrappers nothing is going to change. Wake up OpenGL isn't the problem, it's a scapegoat for ignorance. Vulkan is not a magic bullet that suddenly makes gaming on Linux what it should be.

Don't get me wrong Vulkan is the future, it's just not adding anything that wasn't already there.
No offence, but you sound like someone who is parroting what I've seen others say without a) ever testing Vulkan and b) just not actually understanding any of the problems of OpenGL (we did have a recent editorial about this, maybe you missed it).

I've tested 3-4 games that are using Vulkan that I cannot name and I can say without a doubt their performance vs their OpenGL counterparts are much, much better. You don't need to take my word for it, as you will see for yourself at release. By now, I think I've proven myself enough that my word can be trusted.

Quoting: Alm888
Quoting: liamdaweTorment: Tides of Numenera
It has nothing to do with either Valve or Feral. It was financed on Kickstarter and made on Unity3D engine.
I never said it did, I was talking about how healthy Linux gaming is. The fact still is most developers would still be ignoring Linux or would have stopped doing Linux versions by now if it wasn't for Steam.

Quoting: Alm888
Quoting: liamdaweFor those wondering about my "more users" comment, remember that the Steam Hardware Survey percentage for operating system use is a ratio, so even when the percentage drops the overall user count is probably higher due to Steam's constant growth in terms of overall user-base.
That's just pure rationalization. By that logic we can conclude that the number of Linux gamers grew solely because of the increasing number of humans on the Earth! That's true but hardly relevant to Valve's push. And the numbers show us the obvious: Linux became less represented on Steam and thus less appealing for developers.
I...don't think you understand how percentages work my friend. A very basic example: 0.8% of 100 million and 0.8% of 115 million is a different number, you know that right? A basic example, but it should make my point very clear.

You cannot wipe away my argument by using something outright idiotic like the amount of humans on Earth. Steam IS growing, every time Valve talk about it the number is significantly higher. If you choose to ignore that or try to wipe it away with an outright ludicrous argument then you just cannot be reasoned with.

Quoting: Alm888
Quoting: liamdaweRight now, I see SteamOS and Steam Machines as being on a temporary hiatus...
In my country we have a saying: "Nothing is more permanent than the temporary".
A nice saying, but again, why on earth would Valve be continuing to invest in Linux including paying people to fix up our drivers if they weren't going to continue? It would be a massive waste of time and money for them.

Quoting: m2mg2Every argument for everything is a rationalization. Steam is growing quickly and Linux use is growing also. Windows use just happens to be growing faster, which when you look at it from a total percentage makes it look as though Linux use is shrinking. If you want to know if Linux use is growing you would have to look at only the number of Linux users. Obviously we are a small market. Hopefully we will become a more appealing one as time goes by.
Thank the stars someone understands :)

@GoLBuzzkill's comment, with a username like that, why am I not surprised by your tone? :) Still, I don't disagree, you're right on a few points, but things are progressing on all fronts, especially the AMD driver situation.

The latest elusive target is live in HITMAN, including in the Linux version
26 Feb 2017 at 7:10 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Dribbleondo
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTMost certainly they will either sell those in the end or give them to us for free. At least after the game is finished finished.
I think they will too, probably in the form of a "season one elusive targets" pack. Would be a shame of they didn't.
I'd better not have to pay for them, then there would be an outcry.
Depends, I wouldn't mind paying $5 to access all of them whenever I want. As long as it's something that was worked on after release, not something they kept back to drip feed into it.

The latest elusive target is live in HITMAN, including in the Linux version
26 Feb 2017 at 11:06 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTMost certainly they will either sell those in the end or give them to us for free. At least after the game is finished finished.
I think they will too, probably in the form of a "season one elusive targets" pack. Would be a shame if they didn't.

Aspyr Media confirm the 'Australian Summer' Civilization VI update should be on Linux in 'a matter of weeks'
25 Feb 2017 at 9:58 pm UTC

Quoting: Kimyrielle
Quoting: Mountain ManWhere did you hear that Aspyr is moving away from Linux?
I thought them barely doing any Linux ports anymore would be a hint?
Well, in my interview with Aspyr Media they did say this:
Its no secret Steam machines haven't taken off as well as the Linux community had hoped, but that doesn't prevent us from considering titles for the platform. It does however make us be more selective as to which titles we chose to port.
So it's not quite a priority any more.

Aspyr Media confirm the 'Australian Summer' Civilization VI update should be on Linux in 'a matter of weeks'
24 Feb 2017 at 9:08 pm UTC

Quoting: meggermanTypo dude.

'a manner of weeks'
Ah yes, tired eyes by both me and Aspyr there.

Thanks, in future, please do use the submit corrections feature.

Entroware have unleashed the 'Aether' laptop for Linux enthusiasts featuring Intel's 7th generation CPUs
24 Feb 2017 at 5:00 pm UTC

Quoting: OrkultusJust wish some of these Linux laptop manufacturers would throw in a video card that is worth a damn.
Plenty do, Entroware do have higher end models too, but this unit is not meant to have a beastly GPU as it's not meant for gaming.

The latest elusive target is live in HITMAN, including in the Linux version
24 Feb 2017 at 4:57 pm UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: GuestThat's the most gimmicky thing I've ever heard of. A level that is only available to play for a certain period of time and only lets you try it once? How about no, and take back control over your own games. Glad I didn't support this. Publishers need to learn to stop ruining games with their gimmicks. Let us play them when we want, how we want, with no strings attached.
I'm with the others on this. So what if it's a gimmick? All games have gimmicks. It's an additional feature where the developers repeatedly add in entirely new missions to do and the challange is to do it without dying or that's it. It's entirely optional and it's actually very fun due to knowing if you fuck up that's it. That actually increases the fun of them for me, to know I have to really concentrate and really think it through. It's a true test of your abilities in the game.

It's completely separate from the rest of the game, it's a bit of extra fluff. Tons of games have daily and weekly challenges, this is no different.

I don't get the issue.

Security: You might want to change passwords on sites that use Cloudflare
24 Feb 2017 at 1:05 pm UTC

Quoting: Levi
Note: GOL is not affected, as we don't use Cloudflare, however, a lot of other sites do.
Not anymore at least :P
Well, we haven't used them for quite some time and a long time before this was an issue, so we are in the clear :)