Quoting: CatKilleryou wouldn't let a child act like that, much less a professional software developer

If a child opens a lemonade stand and sells lemonade *with a cup* for 25 cents, then after you drank the whole lemonade, they regret it and ask for the cup back, will you ask for a full refund of your 25 cents? I sure hope your answer is no.

If a developer supports Linux, I buy and play the game to the end, with no intention of replaying it, then they remove Linux support, should they give a full refund? Do you see the analogy?

That's why I'm saying it's not so simple to define a rule that's fair. A developer pulling Linux support after they made sales is a dick move, but if your solution is to scare them from the start, they will simply chicken out and not do it in the first place. Funny you mentioned children, because that's exactly what I learned from my own child; you scare them to keep them safe and they become cowards.

In short, if you want more Linux support you need to encourage developers, not scare them, and some may very well fail after trying and that's normal.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: ShabbyXAllow me to clarify, IIUC, kokokk's point is that even if the developer truly wants to support the platform and even if they honestly will try their best, forcing them like suggested may scare them so much they would decide not to take the risk.

They wouldn't be forced to support anything. They'd just have to give the money back if they lied about providing support when they don't, rather than just keeping it.

To put it another way: if you've written on your store page that you're going to support a platform, to entice customers on that platform to give you money, but you are unable or unwilling to provide that support, why should you get to keep the money?

I get your point, but your assumption is that any developer who drops Linux support has a malicious intent, and they were trying to cheat people out of their money right from the get go. That's where the disagreement really is. I don't believe for example the developer in this article intentionally thought "let me boost my sales by 1% through lies and deceit". They simply bit more than they could chew.

And regarding refund, I do wish there was a refund system for this, but it's not simple to be fair. For example, I had a lot of fun with Rocket League before they pulled the plug, is it justified that I get a full refund? I don't think so. Some cases are very clear to me though, if I bought the game and haven't played it yet, and support is dropped, then yes a full refund makes sense.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: GuestRight, so let's put the following way:
Since most of developers are not so good (tm) at their job, not so much native titles will come in the future if you force them to unconditionally support Linux after launch.

Why the hell should anyone be giving them money for a game they won't support? Just because they lied about it to pretend that they would? Taking money under false pretences is fraud. Those are the people you want to buy games from?

I give up, probably there's a language barrier here.

Allow me to clarify, IIUC, kokokk's point is that even if the developer truly wants to support the platform and even if they honestly will try their best, forcing them like suggested may scare them so much they would decide not to take the risk.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPGame developers suck at software development, despite doing exactly that

Well the majority of "game developers" are actually just artists. One-man-army game devs are artists who can code a little.

Even a good majority of professional developers suck at programming (sorry, but that's the truth), can't really expect much from artists.

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Quoting: GuestWell, I guess it's time to reinstall Windows on my main gaming PC again. With Ethan Lee and Ryan Gordon raising concerns, Feral cancelling ports and many other developers bailing out of Linux gaming, I don't see any reason to stay. I don't want to mess with custom Proton runtimes, DLL overrides, env variables and many subtle bugs that plague even the games with "Platinum" rating on ProtonDB - I just want to click and play, like a normal person.

Maybe in 2016-2018 the market share was lower, but at least we were getting ones of the best indie games natively, Feral and Aspyr were porting the top AAA games, and... Maybe some people still remember that actually in the middle of 2018 Feral were at their peak performance - both in terms of porting quality and the amount of contracts they were getting. Right before Valve dropped Proton bomb on them.

I'm not leaving Linux completely - I will still prefer free software for my daily tasks and use Linux on my non-gaming PCs. I might revisit Linux gaming if the situation changes, but... Right now I don't see a reason why I should prefer gaming on poorly implemented Windows to gaming on Windows.

Don't know about you, but I exclusively buy native games and still have way too amny games in my backlog. Despite proton, there's no shortage of good games on Linux.

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Quoting: PangaeaThis development has been a concern of mine for quite a while, and I'm surprised not more people could anticipate where this was going.

Everybody could see where this is going.

Quoting: Pangaeathe freedom that Linux USUALLY means.

Believe it or not, Linux usually actually doesn't mean freedom. You have Linux in servers, phones and microcontrollers, non of which offee *you* any freedom. Desktop where it does offer freedom is a small percentage.

Quoting: PangaeaAnd here we are, seeing the consequences of people blindly supporting shteam, valve, google and proton. Heck, there is barely an article on this very site without a plug about it.

This is the part I really don't agree with. No one is "blindly" following Valve. They are in it for the money, we all know it. We like Valve because of all they've done to make Linux a viable gaming platform (despite it all being selfish).

Like it or not, steam is removing one of the biggest hurdles to Linux adoption.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: mylka

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: mylka

Quoting: DebianUserExactly what i was afraid of, and why i can't say if Proton is a good thing or not.

on the one hand you have 1 game from feral and maybe some other devs not porting their game to linux

on the other hand you have 1000s of games you can play, including the ones they would have ported.

imho the answer is pretty clear

I mean... maybe to be a little gross. But isn't this sort of like the short term gratification of getting a hooker... but then later down the road you figure out you caught something nasty and long term are forever cursed? That's kind of what this seems like, bad things long term, for short term solution.

For me, the specific use case of Proton is for games that would never even remotely get a native port. Games that are years old, and no longer supported. Or for games that won't even run on Windows 10.

what is long term for you?
for how long gaming on linux is a thing and nothing really changed?!?!
do you wanna wait another decade? or 2? or 3?

linux needs market share, which you wont get without games/software. with a bigger market share the native ports will come back

Isn't that basically what I said? The problem is we get the short term 'fix' by using Proton. The longer term may never happen now because developers code for 'Proton-friendly' vs 'Native-Friendly.' so we're stuck with never getting the full performance of the Linux system. But instead of longer term becoming a healthy thing where people start seeing the benefits of releasing native software, they just figure they'll sell one version, everyone will buy it anyhow, and there will be no incentive to make a native (hence better performing) version for the Linux users.

My response here is applicable as a response here too.

TL;DR: either market share stays the same, in which case none of this matter, or it will rise in which case native ports will come. It absolutely doesn't make sense for a company to "code for 'Proton-friendly'" because no one is going to have a signicant portion of their revenue at the mercy of some layer they can't control. Simple as that.

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Quoting: DebianUserExactly what i was afraid of, and why i can't say if Proton is a good thing or not.

Disclaimer: I actually exclusively buy games with native support. That said...

The way I see it there are really two possible futures (10, 20 or whatever years from now):

1. Linux doesn't have a big market share among gamers. In this case, it really didn't matter that proton stopped native ports. People just didn't come to Linux to game, and we few should at least be happy we have a way to play games.

2. Linux gets a significant market share. In this case, do you really think developers will continue relying on Proton? If Linux does get a significant market share among gamers, I don't have a doubt that companies will start doing native ports, simply because you can't have a significant portion of your revenue be at the mercy of some translation layer you can't control.

In short, either proton is irrelevat or good. There is no scenario where proton would be a bad thing long term.

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Valve actively asking devs not to port doesn't sound great, though chances are it's because native ports (sometimes done in a hurry) don't work as well as proton, so it makes sense to tell devs to use proton if they are otherwise going to do a terrible job at porting. Valve probably has data here we don't have, so don't be so quick to judge.

Regarding native ports in the future, I think it's pretty obvious. If you are a dev and your game has 20m users on Linux, you *will* spend resources on a native port, simply because the risk of proton breaking your game and you getting 20m angry users is too high. So if the game is successful (and so is deck), it (or the next game from the developer) will get a native port.

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Quoting: sudoerInitially I was excited about the opening opportunities for Linux, but after reading about how you can install other OSes and numerous posts in the Steam forums about removing Linux and installing Windoze 11 because "Linux sucks" by illiterate and ignorant people and trolls (kids and teenagers and even older people don't know about the filthy tactics M$ has used to become a monopoly, nor do they care about it and can't be "ethically moved"), I'm a bit sceptical about Steam Deck's impact on Linux gaming. I think it should have been a locked Linux-only system in order to force more devs actively supporting Linux and to end Epic's chinese lame exclusivity practices. Now Swiney chinese frontman and his shills like pc-gamer are happy about how everybody will use his Store instead, on a foreign system probably running Windoze, (another happy company about it that sees no real threat again), will continue his predator tactics further canibalizing the PC market and devs won't have any reason thinking about Linux or not going to that store since their game will be playable through Steam's Deck. In short terms Valve also benefits from it as people will buy their handheld, but in the long run nothing will change for Linux or it will change so slow again that is going to be neglectable. I think Steam Deck could have been one of the most impactful opportunities for Linux to finally massively break through, one of those rare moments in history which can change the world, but Linux will miss it because Valve decided to do such a compromise that will shoot back.

The reasons you mention against micrsoft and epic are the very reasons this should be an open platform. You complain about exclusives yet you wish for an exclusive platform.

See if you fight violence with violence then you are no better than that you are fighting against. I get that sometimes the same dirty tricks they use against you seem very effective to get back to them (like you could spread FUD by making (incorrect) posts like "tried windows on the deck, it didn't run well etc"), but we are better than that.

The end doesn't justify the means.

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