Quoting: BeamboomI did think it was a little bit odd that support at GOG should be this well informed of such plans (or lack thereof). Even if they are owned by the studio, anyone who's worked for an employer this large (they are close to 400 employees as far as I understand) everyone does not know about everything that goes on.

They are not even located in the same country: GOG offices are located in Cyprus, while CD Projekt is in Poland.

Actually both are located in Poland, but GOG is registered in Cyprus. Kinda like how many US companies are registered in Nevada or Delaware even though they may conduct little or no business there. I do believe that GOG has a US office in California aswell.

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How does that MoltenVK thing perform?

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Does any alternative to Minecraft come even close to it? I tried some Minecraft like game on my phone and it didn't even come close to it.

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So anyone know which source files are supposed to have the Vulkan bits?

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: thelimeydragonNightdive in the past have released 1 (maybe 2) games that were released on Linux where they rewrote the game engine from scratch and then open sourced it.

So they do deserve some praise.

This is why I find their earlier comment about no one in their dev team doing Linux, how did they do their previous Linux testing?

AFAIK Night Dive isn't developing the game themselves in this case. So that may play a role.

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"Compared to the funding goal of 900,000 (which again contain all your mentioned costs) these 200,000 sound quite "substantial"."

Well both the Kickstarter fees and the credit card fees are %-based. The physical reward fees are also proportional to the amount of backers and the contribution amounts per backer. It depends on which reward level people are at. Declined payments and the like probably also has a certain proportionality. 400 pledges at the $25 level amount to $10000. So does a single $10000 pledge.

But the latter has many, many, many, many, many times as high costs associated with it. But in general, the more pledges, the more money they have to spent on manufacturing physical "stuff" and shipping that same "stuff" to their backers.

I was a (happy) backer on Broken Age. I am very fuzzy on the details, but almost immediately after the campaign ended, they shared a breakdown of the campaigns various costs and stuff on their backer forum. I think something like 40% of their receipts went to various fees, expenses, backer rewards, overhead of running the campaign itself, etc. I don't think Double Fine, having no prior Kickstarter experience, expected it to be so much.

I believe that between them Kickstarter and the credit card companies take away about 10% of the pledges. So if you pledge $50, that is approximately $5 in the pocket of Kickstarter and the credit card companies. If you pledge $100, it is about $10, etc.

My point is simply this: We shouldn't infer a $200,000 budget for the Linux port just because that is the distance between the base goal and the Linux stretch goal.

I am not claiming that it is a small amount or trying to justify it as such or anything. Just explaining that there are other factors/costs involved than just making(and testing etc) the actual Linux port. In addition to the things I listed earlier, there is also the matter of having a buffer for unexpected expenditures.

"How can they estimate any costs whatsoever, when they apparently are entirely clueless how much effort it's gonna be?"

A very good question. Cost estimation is always to a certain extent a mixture of art and science. But it would seem in this it is in the best case scenario a rather rough guesstimate of sorts. I suppose often you would tend to set up what you believe to be a sort of worst case scenario of what you think it would take in terms of manpower.

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It appears they aren't even sure about which engine they will use! There is a comment about looking into using Unreal engine near the earlier linked comment about a Linux demo.

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: dmantioneWell, it's a process... many developers know Unity allows near-free Linux ports.

Then why would you need an extra USD200,000? Can't be attributed to pure QA.

Best guess is they are planning to outsource the work to someone else.

Well $200,000 extra in pledges is not $200,000 extra to spend on development, you have to subtract Kickstater fees, credits card fees, declined payments/chargebacks, manufacturing of physical rewards, shipping of physical rewards, etc

Nobody says that the entire net amount after that will go to the stretch goal. They might use part of that for other things/expanding the game or something. But even still an expensive Linux port might well eat up the money that is left over after all those various fees and expenses.

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Quoting: DevlinSo they are not making plans for their FIRST strech goal but I'm sure that they have plans to release other stretch goals day one, I cannot believe that they will delay localization or extended narrative after Linux version is released.

They should reorder the strecth goals and stop using Linux as a bait.

I would love to see them address precisely this. Someone should send a version of this comment to the developers.

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You need to read this to understand Valve: http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf [External Link]

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From the GOG.com terms of service:

"6.11 Other legal rules applying to Store Credit and Bonus Codes: Store Credit and Bonus Codes do not constitute electronic money of any kind. Store Credit and Bonus Codes are non-refundable and non-transferable. Store Credit and Bonus Codes have no cash value and are not exchangeable for cash. Store Credit and Bonus Codes do not constitute personal property rights, have no value outside GOG.com and can only be used to purchase GOG content. Store Credit and Bonus Codes that are deemed unclaimed property may be turned over to any applicable authority. Store Credit is valid for one year from the most recent purchase that gave you Store Credit (so any new purchase resulting in you getting Store Credit will refresh the expiration date of your Store Credit balance). GOG.com may implement additional rules on the use and amount of Store Credit and Bonus Codes in the future."

"9.1 Please follow these rules regarding the GOG services and GOG content:
(a) Only use GOG services or GOG content for your personal enjoyment (for example, don't use them to make money)."

So for example when GOG gives out games for free or the like, you can't take those keys and sell them on G2A. So any such keys can't be legitimate if they appear on G2A. So when G2A in the past has claimed that it has sold legitimate keys of The Witcher 3 for much cheaper than it is on GOG that has been a lie.

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