Quoting: SnowdrakeThat's some good news for sure !
Did anyone know if codeweaver is still putting some effort on D3D11 support ?

I don't know, but proper DX11 support should be one of the higher priorities for WINE right now. Maybe the only one for the time being. WINE is getting increasingly irrelevant for gamers, as it's currently unable to run most modern games. Not even with the usual hiccups we're used to when running games in WINE, but simply not at all. Games are using DX11 these days and have been for a while. Meh, even older ones are sometimes losing WINE support these days, when the devs make updates to their graphics. Elder Scrolls Online and Star Trek Online used to run in WINE and no longer do.

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Well, it's certainly not doomsday, but I'd still have thought the large supply of Linux games we got in the past two years would have at least helped us to grow -at pace- with the other platforms. But our market share doesn't seem to change at all. One of these days we need to break though the threshold of marginality if we want more publishers to support us. I would think dev studios not supporting Linux are watching our market share - but if we stay below 1% forever, they won't see a good reason to change their attitude.

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Still, working on Windows games having a native port available is an odd decision, given the dozens of high profile games NOT having a Linux port. One should think it's the lowest possible priority there is. If working on that game helps -other- games running better, the logical choice would be directly working on the -other- game.

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Dungeons don't necessarily have to have better rewards than open-world content. That's one of the things about MMOs I never understood - why do people think all the best stuff needs to drop from scripted boss fights? It's not a law of nature just because WoW did it that way.

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Thanks for the update, Liam!

While I have no doubt that this game will be fun for some, this still doesn't sound like a game appealing to larger audiences to me. Personally I have never seen a sandbox MMO that didn't bore me to hell inside 5 minutes. The recipe for success in these games is usually joining the largest guild that will have you and dominate the game with numbers. And that's really all there is to them. On top of that you get intellectually challenged 15 year old boys dancing on your corpse yelling "PWNED U, N00B!!!", after they managed to gank your character from behind, while you were collecting crafting mats.

In short, not my idea of fun.

The MMOs that can hold me all have one thing in common - good storytelling and lots of quest content to explore. The really great ones have good crafting and playing housing systems ON TOP of that. But crafting can't really carry a MMO on its own, and guild PvP will lose its appeal quickly once you realize that it's really all about numbers.

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I am not quite sure what a "legacy publisher" is. If you are referring to the companies currently releasing pretty much 100% of all AAA titles, then...yeah. That's the ones we want to release Linux games right now, no? Except you're happy getting more 8bit retro games looking like the stuff they released back in the mid 80s. Nothing wrong with (some of) them, mind you, but we have 2,500 of these already. What we need to grow as a gaming platform are games appealing to the mass market. "Oh look, Linux can do outdated graphics like we had 30 years ago!!!" isn't going to cut it.

As for these "legacy publishers", they will not change their internal processes for us 1% any time soon. They are used to making Windows games and that's what they will do for the foreseeable future. For the time being we need porting houses to get access to these games, like it or not. It's actually these porting houses that might be able to press middleware developers into providing a Linux port of the stuff that currently doesn't run in it. They ARE what's currently driving Linux game development. We got the major engines already. The battle these days is for the middleware. If you want "legacy publishers" to switch to cross-platform development, we need to become a serious gaming platform FIRST. We're not quite there yet.

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Quoting: Shmerl"Porting houses" can become a thing of the past. Serious studios will accumulate knowledge in house and do cross platform development themselves. Some already realize it (inXile for example). Others are only getting the idea. With wider adoption of cross platform engines, all this will be less of an issue.

One should think so, but look at who brought us pretty much ANY major title in 2016 not from Paradox Studios...

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Ok, we all knew that Valve was pushing Linux to protect their business against Microsoft's obvious attempts to create an Apple-like monopoly on software distribution. There is nothing wrong with that. It did us good, despite they don't actually "love" Linux (Hint: Businesses love money more than anything).

I think Valve gave us the initial push to get us visible and viable as a gaming platform. And make no mistake - Microsoft is still dreaming of Windows Store being a monopoly one day. Valve cannot let us die, even if they are currently happy with the status quo of Linux being "just" a threat and nothing else. They will do what's necessary to keep us alive. Maybe not more. But certainly no less.

Right now, I am not worried about Valve. SteamOS is dead in the water, granted, but 2016 has also shown that SteamOS isn't really THAT necessary for Linux to thrive as a gaming platform. As a game developer, Valve has been a non-factor for a long, long time, so all I want from them at this point is supporting and expanding the Steam platform. And they seem to be committed to at least that part.

I am generally positive for 2017 to become a good, maybe even great year for Linux gaming. The ONE thing I am really worried about is basically every single AAA title on Linux relying on exactly ONE company to port them - Feral. And as awesome as Feral is, but monopolies are never a good thing (right, Microsoft?). No, in case you wonder, but I no longer consider Aspyr to be a serious Linux porting house. The one sore spot on an otherwise great Linux year 2016 was indeed the quiet demise of Aspyr as a Linux porting house. Sorry, but if a company needs an entire quarter year to asses the "feasibility" of porting a game (I am talking about Civ VI) to Linux, I can't take them for serious anymore. This is a laughable excuse for "Eh, we have no real interest in it". All source code is portable by definition, and a porting house worth their salt would know if any middleware components used for Civ VI would be available for Linux without even having to ask anyone.

If Valve really wanted to give us a push where it matters, then it would be encourage a few more larger publishers to start in-house porting their major releases. I realize that EA and Ubisoft would laugh them off, but how about bribing Rockstar or Bethesda a little?

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I was also pleasantly surprised by how many games of the Top 100 came with a Linux version. Personally, the ratio was even better for me, since I barely could find a game in the Top 100 that I -wanted- and does not come with a Linux version. It was basically Rise of the Tomb Raider (which has a strong chance of getting ported one day), Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls Online. The other Windows-only topsellers I don't want enough to miss them...

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Well, in their defence, update 11 is in beta. In contrast to some other companies, I always had the impression that Introversion actually cares about their Linux version.

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