We disable Unity hardware stats (analytics) in our games made with Unity engine. I suppose many other serious developers also do so - to avoid extra Firewall messages, but also to avoid disclosure of any personal data - some users might not expect that the game will connect and upload some data somewhere, especially when the game is singleplayer-only.
This feature could be disabled only in paid version of the engine - Unity Pro.
So I think these stats are biased to games made by (mostly) inexperienced developers. They're usually casual games and Linux players are not much interested in such games.

Steam HW survey is better http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey [External Link] - Linux share is 0.91% (February 2016). This is much closer to the real market - most Steam games have Linux share 1.5-5% of total sales (I think median is 3%). The explanation is simple - not every game is available for Linux - only about 30% of them (I used SteamDB https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/ [External Link] ). So 30%*3% is 0.9%, very close to the HW survey stats.

Also Steam HW survey presents more realistic info about primarily resolution (1920x1080), RAM (12 GB) and other stats - just select "Linux only" in the dropdown filter before the table there.

Regards!

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Hi guys,
The Linux compatibility issues should be fixed now with VoidExpanse v1.6.9.
If you have any problems please let me know here or on Official Forums http://forums.atomictorch.com [External Link]
Regards!

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Thanks guys for your kind words and support! We're really glad to hear that our effort is appreciated.
I just want to notice that VoidExpanse currently has a problems running on most Linux configurations due to long-lasting issue with Unity 5.2/5.3 - they're switching on new OpenGL rendering code, however they'd suddenly broken support for old GL rendering code so we cannot back to it, and new rendering code simply cannot compile even the default Unity Bloom/Blur shaders in some conditions. That's a shame, but good news is that we finally managed to contact right persons in Unity and the fix is coming with the next Unity patch release this or next week. Also there are several reports that the issue is not reproducible in Unity 5.4.

Quoting: Mountain ManI think the most encouraging thing here is that even with a small percentage of sales, Linux can be profitable in the right circumstances, the most important factor being a work flow that allows for easy porting.

Sure. Some games have ~5% of Linux customers. Is not that a big deal if you selling only a few thousands copies of the game, but this number really matter when sells exceed 100k or even million. 5% of million is 50k - most indie developers today can only dream about such sales in total.

Quoting: LeonardK@ai_enabled: In case you want to use XNA, have you looked at FNA already? It's an opensource re-implementation of XNA used by a well-known Linux porter.
I hope your engine will work on C# well, I've not much experience with it.
Also C# 6.0 is so-far a letdown for me, Roslyn is still not nice to set up on non-Windows and this doesn't seem to change too soon :/

Yes, we considered FNA and MonoGame. FNA is desktop-only and uses SDL (OpenGL rendering) on Windows. MonoGame has a not so good fame regarding the Linux support, but everything is improving very fast, there are a few contributors working very hard. Also they're going to implement support for Vulkan and it might improve compatibility with Linux.
Regarding C# 6.0 and Roslyn compatibility with Linux - well, Roslyn is already used in MonoDevelop/XamarinStudio http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2015/Sep-21.html [External Link] and everything is going to be improved as Microsoft target now is cross-platform open-source solutions. Also their acquisition of Xamarin is a big step in right direction.

Regards!

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Quoting: zikzakThey shoudl consider HumbleStore too, they would gain visibility there. Unless there are some fees or whatever (I do not know how it works).

Yes, we're selling VE in Humble Store https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/voidexpanse_storefront [External Link]
Dinocide is coming very soon to GoG and Humble Store.
Regards!

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Quoting: TakIt sounds like the moral is: Difficulty of porting increases with the complexity of the software.

Exactly. And that means most of the ported Indie games today are quite simple games, limited in modding and other aspects.

Quoting: Mountain ManInteresting to hear that Unity doesn't play well with Linux when you consider just how popular it is with developers. I wonder if they would have better luck with Unreal Engine, Source 2, or Cry Engine?

Unreal Engine 4 and CryEngine should be a much better choice as the source code is opened. But Unity has a much, much more supported platforms (might be important for non-desktop games).
Unfortunately, all these engines are requires deep knowledge of C++, so if you're making a complex game (especially with client-server architecture) switching from Unity (C#) is tough decision. A huge part of game development with UE4 might be done with Blueprints (node-based visual scripting), but anything sophisticated requires C++.
We're implementing our own engine on C# with possibility of using any graphics API library or game framework (such as XNA/MonoGame) powered with C#.

Quoting: Mountain ManOn the positive side, the sales figures here are about double what the Steam hardware survey shows.

Yes.
Also we would like to know how many players actually playing the game on each platform, but SteamWorks Product Data doesn't display properly this data for us ("VoidExpanse simultaneous players on Linux" graph is equals to "VoidExpanse simultaneous players", looks like a bug).

Regards!

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Quoting: zikzakToo bad they only sell their titles on Steam.
DRM will also hurt their sales, both titles appeal me but with DRM it's clear I'll not purchase any.

I will post the response from @Lurler (he has a problem with registration here):
Actually both of the games are available DRM free on our website, including Linux version. And if you get them direct there will also be a few extra goodies as well. But you will obviously receive a Steam key as well.

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