We all know third-party ports of DirectX games to OpenGL are going to have decreased performance. This has been true in every port I've seen. It might be different when it comes to porting DirectX 12 to Vulkan, but the ultimate goal, I would think, would be to have games developed with Linux in mind from the beginning. Games like that always perform very well.

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I'm sure half the PR people who make these announcements don't even know what Linux and SteamOS are. They're just posting the information given to them. But how does communication break down so badly that they end up with the false information in the first place. If the company truly has no intention of porting to Linux, who fed the PR person that information and why?

In the case of the Witcher 3, it's an even bigger goof up. They posted a huge banner with the Witcher 3 and SteamOS. I saved it as proof. It's on my computer and my server. How can someone be that misinformed about reality? The simple answer would be: they're not - they just jumped the gun, and both games will see Linux versions. A more complex explanation might be a frightening look into very disorganized and confused companies.

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Two things:

It's interesting that no one has mentioned the elephant in the room: Virtual Programming. Despite being a "wrapper", their eON system is now getting excellent performance on DirectX games. Perhaps that may be the best route for developers who aren't going to begin with native OpenGL code when they start making a game.

As for those developers who do start with OpenGL, the performance seems to be great. When developers don't rely on third-party porters, their games run very well on Linux. I'm talking about games like Victor Vran and Magicka 2.

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I think we are looking at it from the inside out rather than how the rest of the world sees it. To us, SteamOS launched with now "new" launch titles. To the rest of the world, it had 1500+ launch titles, more than any console ever had at launch. Having said that, Rocket League is the one game that should have been ready since they did promise it during preordering.

On an unrelated note, I'm starting to think the people who complained about Steam Controllers were just whining because they like to whine or were trolls. It didn't have as steep of a learning curve for me as it seems to have for many people. It just took me an hour or so to get the hang of it. My 8-year-old daughter picked it up and knew what to do with it almost instantly. Granted I'm not playing some competitive FPS online, but the controller wasn't really made for those anyway.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: oldrocker99No complaints here, except for Steam defaulting to GOL for me to know it's even available. As usual, Thanks, Liam!.

Yeah, same for Grow Home… not a trace of it on Steam’s home page… sigh.

I thought you knew. The Steam webmaster is a monkey.

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While you all are worrying about other releases, my big question is: How do I transfer my beta saves in Magicka 2? I found the save location for the beta, but it must be different for the final release.

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Quoting: flesk

Quoting: melkemind

Quoting: fleskOutland was self-published by the developer, Housemarque, on PC though, so Ubisoft didn't have anything to do with the Linux version of that game.

Ubisoft still owns the rights to Outland. Housemarque couldn't publish it on Linux without Ubisoft's consent [External Link].

As far as I can tell that only implies that they own the intellectual property. That doesn't mean they had any say in publishing of the PC versions.

But that's exactly how publishing works. Having signed a few publishing contracts in my day, it was the same for me. When a publisher owns the copyright to something, you absolutely must have their permission to publish the material anywhere, even if you wrote it. That's what "All Rights Reserved" means.

In this case, the developer might have already had a clause in their contract that allowed them to port it to Linux, but it would still belong to Ubisoft. When you start the game on Linux, the Ubisoft logo comes up. Therefore, by definition, there is a Ubisoft game already on Linux.

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Quoting: fleskOutland was self-published by the developer, Housemarque, on PC though, so Ubisoft didn't have anything to do with the Linux version of that game.

Ubisoft still owns the rights to Outland. Housemarque couldn't publish it on Linux without Ubisoft's consent [External Link].

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Quoting: reaVer

Quoting: wvstolzing

Quoting: reaVerGuys, I think we're all ignoring the fact that the sky just came falling down...

Why, what happened?

The publisher that recently took a firm stand against PC users (and Linux users) is now actually publishing a Linux game.

Maybe in the future, hell will freeze over (again) and we'll see a Blizzard game for Linux too. One can hope.

I have a Ubisoft-published game called Outland, and it's actually one of the better Linux ports I've played in terms of performance (not bad gameplay too).

These publishers only speak dollars and cents. If a developer, even one of their subsidaries, can demonstrate that a Linux port will yield a good return on investment, they'll sign off on it even if they don't know what Linux is.

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If nothing else, this has the whole world talking about Linux gaming. I never thought I'd live to see the day. :D

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