Quoting: Mountain Man"SteamOS didn't turn out to be what we all hoped."

He speaks for all of us.

Seriously. Can somebody message that Paradox quote to Gabe?

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Quoting: liamdaweThey have seriously long-term support for their games, more so than the vast majority of developers. Pushing out DLC (that is not required) enables them to continue getting funds for each team working on each game, plus they always do a free content patch with each DLC.

I agree! I mean...look at how old CK2 is, and they are STILL making content for it. I love this game, and they keep making it better and better. Which is waaaay better than the usual "fire and forget" approach other publishers take. If you compare that to the Civilization franchise, they keep (re-)making the same game over and over, releasing it with graphics updates (and sometimes downgrades, like the horrible art style they picked for Civ VI), and one or two minor new features, I keep buying CK2 DLC for a few years longer, thank you!

As for their continued Linux support - I guess we're safe as far as their Clausewitz II games go, as they already ported that engine to Linux and can probably port games using it to Linux with minimal effort, as long as they keep using/updating that engine.
The problem might be their -other- games. Like Cities Skylines, which probably had to be built from the ground up to support Linux, costing them additional resources. They might be tempted to say "nah, let's not bother" next time. Which would suck, thinking that Cities Skylines is one of the best games we have on Linux.

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Quoting: buenaventuraI just bought Europa Universalis IV for 10 euros at their awesome Valentine's Sale (which wasn't even advertised here as far as I've seen?) and I am just getting into it. Feels like a typical "mega nerd dad game" that will just devour my nocturnal life, so Paradox, expect me to buy some DLC real soon!

The odd thing really is that I was flabbergasted when I read that Paradox isn't doing well on Linux. They make the exact type of games I would have assumed to be really appealing to Linux users. I would have expected their Linux market share to be way above industry average.

Turns out, not. Meh :(

Just bought three DLC packs I didn't yet have, too. Just because.

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Quoting: Alm888snip

I can totally accept not being able to play PUBG, or EA/Ubi games. I consider them "platform exclusive" games that just aren't available for my platform. That's fine. What I don't (want to) accept is having no AAA games at all. As in zero, nada, nothing.

We -have- AAA games. The selection could be greater, sure, but we get enough AAA games that we don't -need- to boot Windows 100% of the time when we're in the mood for playing a game.

Yet.

But with your attitude, this picture might change soon enough, and it won't be only PUBG that makes you boot Windows (I hope you -never- use that either btw. - it's got built in DRM!). Paradox is currently supplying a very healthy portion of all AAA games released to Linux. And if they go, others might follow quickly.

Then it will be back to Tux Racer and cheap Indie games.

Well, for you that is.

Since I am not a knuckleheaded ideologist, I still have other options. WINE being one of them. Dual-booting the other. I'd -very- much prefer to see AAA games continue to being released natively on Linux, but apparently people like you are working really hard on putting an end to what might be remembered as the time when Linux got good games for a brief period in history.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI've never quite understood the big problem with Steam "DRM". As far as I can tell, I can play my games in offline mode without an internet connection. So, like, the games will play without phoning home. So what's the problem?

As I said above, it's an ideology for them. The ONLY time when Steam's DRM is actually getting in people's way is when they want to sell their games to another person, which would normally be legit, but is made impossible by Steam's DRM. The fun thing is that close to 100% of the time there is no solid desire to sell off used (=older) games, because old games tend to be dirt cheap on Steam anyway (sales...), so there is no real market for second-hand games.

I -swear- that a good approximation to 100% of the "Steam is so evil because DRM" crowd are in fact utter hypocrites that tolerate DRM anywhere but on Linux - but otherwise happily buy smartphones, gaming consoles, streaming or cable TV subscriptions, movies and E-Books. None of which come DRM free.

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Quoting: Alm888Sorry, Paradox, but DRM-free or it didn't happen. I won't give Valve a cent.

<rant>

You do realize that this attitude is part of what might make bigger publishers reconsider supporting Linux, yes? If you're not buying their games for purely ideological reasons (and that's what it is), they might oblige and stop offering them.

Am I a fan of DRM? Certainly not. But mildly intrusive systems like Steam's are still better than having no games at all. And as others have pointed out, Paradox doesn't even -use- Steam's DRM features, so this makes boycotting them extra-dumb in my book.

This Steam bashing coming from some zealots here makes me angry, in all honesty. Without Valve pushing us, we would have a handful of low-budget, garage-made Indie games and Tux Racer to play. In other words, nothing worth mentioning. I guess I wouldn't even BE here, because I'd still use Windows 99% of the time when playing games, instead of the other way around, which Valve had no small part in making possible.

If people like you would finally put their knuckleheaded ideology away and start buying games from Steam they would have bought from GOG without even thinking twice, publishers like Paradox wouldn't think about dropping support for us. In other words, yes, I think you're a part of the problem here.

PS: I hope you don't have any Android/iOS smartphone, any streaming subscription or cable TV either. All of these have built-in DRM, so you folks have to boycott them, too!

</rant>

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I bought every single one of their games, and will keep doing so.

But we need a bigger push from Valve's end, if we ever want to break through the 1%-2% ceiling. I am also afraid that publishers might get tempted to jump ship if they don't see actual progress with SteamOS anytime soon. Right now it's going waaaaaaay too slow.

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On Steam store, it actually says "Open Code", not open source. And they also say that it's ok to be used for modding purposes. Which is not -quite- open source, but still above and beyond of what close to 100% of all game developers do, who habitually tend to faint if you dare asking for the source code of games they stopped selling 20 years go.

And the game looks fairly interesting, too!

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Good to see Square Enix is still committed! After not seeing anything from them making its way to Linux for a while, I was getting worried!

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It -is- a sound strategy, and I think a lesson learned from their failed attempt to push SteamOS-based SteamMachines at a time when the product wasn't yet ready to compete with established systems. If you want to gnaw away at Windows/XBox's market share, you need to present customers a fully functional system that's -at least- on par with what you're attacking. We still lack a convincing argument for gamers currently (more or less happily) using Windows for gaming to switch to Linux. Every single game available for Linux is also available for Windows, so we need to beat Windows as a -platform-.

We have some things going for us - Linux is free-as-in-beer (if you're a system builder that's something you obviously like), open (no danger of it getting locked down), and arguably the overall better operating system than Windows. But we're still lagging behind in a few aspects as a -gaming- platform. Vulkan filled the most glaring hole and finally gave us the well-performing graphics API that OpenGL never was (although it seems game devs are much less keen on low-level graphics APIs than most people thought - so far they seem to stay away from both DX12 and Vulkan and consider DX11 "good enough"). Graphics drivers are another problem, and it's good to see that Valve is determined to improve that area (even if their efforts largely affect AMD users only, while the NVidia end will still be a mess). Distro-fragmentation and resulting support nightmares is probably the biggest problem overall - and SteamOS seems to be in no small part meant to remedy that and establish THE Linux gaming distro.

The downside of playing the long game is that it takes...well...long. What I am personally afraid of is some of the larger studios currently supporting Linux with the few AAA games we have, will lose patience if they don't see at least -some- progress going on. We had some tremendous momentum when Valve entered the Linux market, but it -did- slow down a little. We're getting the odd AAA game, but it almost feels as if we're getting fewer overall and fewer meaningful ports than two years ago. And we didn't have a NEW larger studio starting to support us since...Square Enix, if I am not mistaken? And even they didn't throw anything our way lately (no Rise of the Tomb Raider, no FF game...). The last true blockbuster we got was...Civ 6, in early 2017? And Aspyr quietly faded away as a driving Linux factor since then. I don't want to be a Negative Nancy, but right now we're -losing- momentum, not gaining any.

In short, I appreciate what they are doing, but if they are still committed to establish SteamOS as a competitor to Windows/XBox and PS4 in a few years, they could and should be a bit bolder, IMHO. One developer more won't change the overall picture all that much. I don't know how many people are working on SteamOS, but I think they need to hire a few more if they want to keep this thing going in a meaningful fashion.

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