What really irritates me about that is why middleware develpers would care about end user marketshare at all. We are not their customers. Game developers are their customers and what counts for a middleware developer is the count of projects that choose to not use their product because of missing features like linux support...

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Quoting: dreamer_Team 17 grew to be quite Linux-friendly nowadays :)

They never were particularly hostile. Somewhat mixed. OC2 is by far their best linux release, yet, though. Hope this continues.

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I loved to play oc1 on my ps4 with friends and bought the linux version of oc2 on release, but never really played it, cause it's clearly a coop couch game for me and playing linuxPC->steamlink->multicontroller is something I never really setup right. Even if I did, I'd probably set it up with my steamcontrollers and I'm not sure they are a good choice for this game :whistle:
But I'd gladly play online with any of you, if you like. even with azardk ;)

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Quoting: ShmerlI recommend you to avoid speculating about "why", looking for excuses why they shouldn't do it, and instead voice your support for them doing it. You can do it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/b977ex/proposal_for_google_stadia_provide_drmfree/ [External Link]

Thanks, but no. I told you the conditions under which I'd raise my voice. Maybe something else will happen, that will change my mind. I wish you best luck, anyway. It's not like I'm against them doing it. ;)

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:whistle: I still don't get it. Why in the world should google be forced to create a drm free linux gaming store and help QA testing games for our niche platform? 'Because they could' is not a strong argument at all. They 'could' also pay fair taxes, as could a lot of other corporations.
If they actively worked against us - and we all could name several parties that actively and purposely worked against our goals - we had a reason to be against them, but I don't see them do it, yet.
We still don't know any details about their efforts and from all we know, it could actuallyhelp us by encouraging developers to port games to Vulkan and Linux. But it's still the publishers decision to do the extra work to do QA and publish. Also, google is no game seller outside the android market and did not hint any plans to do so.
With the current skepticism of the EU regarding internet corporations and their spreading into new business niches, they might very well get a lot of push-back if they start to sell (virtual) goods outside android. Also, corporations doing business with a political agenda is seen pretty negative in the EU these days and what you imply would have no other reason.

If there is any party in the position to emphasize on linux publishing, it would be Valve. Selling games is their key business. There is evidence Valve is planning to build up a linux based streaming framework themselves (and they would be wise to do so) and if their runtime environment is even remotely similar to google's, they might decide that the workflow to make a game available for streaming is to publish a game for Linux on their store. That could turn out a profit for everyone. If developers could target linux gaming and Valve streaming with the same build they use for stadia, they might very well be willing to do the extra QA needed.

What might also change the situation would be google actually selling gamer chromebooks. Stadia might make it possible for them to build a compatible gaming platform on top of ChromeOS and use their *dominance in streaming* to help their ChromeBook business. If that ever happens, I'll gladly help you pressure them to give us access to it. :D
But I don't yet see that happen, as ChromeOS pretty much is about moving applications to the cloud, sad as it is.

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Quoting: x_wing

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ShabbyXGoogle is huge, and so is the amount of feedback they get. Depends on the team, but they usually go through everything, even if they can't literally reply to everyone. Probably the first step would be to wait for launch, then submit feedback through whatever interface they have. Mind you, they could disagree with the suggestion or have it as low priority, but they won't be able to engage with you personally due to the massive amount of feedback they get.

I posted the proposal here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/b977ex/proposal_for_google_stadia_provide_drmfree/ [External Link]

Stadia subreddit has an official community manager from Google. So I guess this is as good as it gets, if she can help directing this to anyone in the company who could use such idea.

The only big problem is QA. Even games that would be suitable to release for desktop would require this "extra" process which means that you give an extra cost on publisher side. In the end, it'll be more a publisher choice than something that Stadia could bring.

Totally agree. Just selling stadia ports as linux ports without additional QA would be like selling Unity exports without testing. We used to beg devs to do the latter, especially before Steam on Linux was a thing, and see how this changed. If it doesn't run well for a subset of our users, shitstorms are on their way.

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Best case scenario for us would be a bigger brand releasing a linux based console with very similar hardware to stadia servers. And I'd prefer AMD, Sega and Valve to Atari any time.
Thinking about it: Imagine a console that is actually similar to Stadia servers. Want an upgrade? Put a second one on the network and let them work as a cluster :O

Edited: Referred to Stadia as Strada

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Quoting: CandricS

Quoting: qptain NemoUnity and UE developers getting strongly incentivized to improve their Linux support is fantastic. That alone is good enough news for me.

I'm not too sure they will improve Linux support. I expect it to be something more along the lines of adding support for Stadia. I get the feeling that Stadia won't be pure Linux, in the same way you can't say Android is Linux - developing for Android isn't developing for Linux. I'd be glad to be proven wrong when they actually release this.

While it will have it's own, non-SDL, non X SDK, there will definatly be a whole bunch of synergic effects. And I wouldn't be surprised if SDL would be ported to Stadia in the long run. Why not?
It will have a linux like filesystem, a linux kernel running under it, open source AMD drivers empowering it and last but not least Vulkan. There will be a bunch of otherwise windows developers learning to handle those things and a lot of tooling work will be done around it.

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Quoting: dannielloGoogle provided no information about: how much it will cost for publishers/developers? And more importantly how much it will cost players? It will be "buy once" approach or subscription based? Probably subscription based but how much games I will have in this subscription? All "stadia powered" games?

Or maybe subscription based payment for stadia account plus "buy once" approach per every single AAA game? Probably it is what Google and developers would enjoy the most (plus of course adding micro-transactions on top of it;) If yes - I do not think that it will be big success... Especially that it will be rental, so after developer or license vanish - bought game also will vanish...

I'd assume it will be free for some titles, but else will have a buy after x-hours of streaming approach. Google would have a very hard time to get bigger titles with the wages they pay for music and videos. It might turn out the same whenever Valve releases their SteamLink based CloudStreaming platform, only Valve may have the benefit of you choosing if you want to stream the game or play it locally, as they have no interest to ruin their game sales business.
Now imagine Valve would instantly allow every game with a native linux build in store (whitelisted proton included) to be streamed for 2 hours or whenever you like as long as you own it. Then we would seriously profit.

Remember Valve probably knows of this for a while already. All the things we saw them releasing in the last months were them preparing for this competition. I know on which side I'll be.

From a linux-desktop-gamers perspective, I'd consider playing a game that has no native linux build through Stadia similar to playing it with windows, only maybe a little more comfortable. I'd have a serious problem with 3rd-party Stadia-exclusives.
If google took a similar approach to Epic Store, it would be terrifying, but their chances to be sued by the EU will hopefully keep them from doing such ****

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Quoting: ElectricPrismThe ELI5 from a developer perspective (Player Unknown) probably looks like this.

Everyone has a maximum of 8-12 hours in a day where they could work.

They're already slammed with requests from users and problems to fix to keep the wheels running.

With the existing success of the game, why should they divert their very limited resources away from making sure the existing playerbase sustains.

Anyone that has ever owned a large business knows how tricky it is to bring in new human resources, and how ineffective, inefficient, and costly problem identification, and resolution can be. It's really easy to bite off more than you can chew.

With enough player demand though, their priorities can and do change.

This is just one of many reasons developers/studios/publishers may decide to not support linux. Remember there are documented games that were ported to but never released on linux.

But for middleware, the situation is very much different. Especially AntiCheat software seems to be quite competing, there's no AntiCheat software with a near monopolic state currently. So each dev has to decide which AntiCheat he's going to use. Even 1% customers make a difference in such a choice. It may only take a couple game devs telling them they chose EAC because of Linux support for them to reconsider.

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