Quoting: NeoTheFox

Quoting: qptain Nemo

Quoting: NeoTheFox

Quoting: qptain NemoMy refund request has been denied based on the playtime (20 hours).

Well sure thing it was denied, 20 hours is more than enough for what the game costs anyway, and don't shy away from Proton, it works really well. I've been getting games left and right for it, it's amazing. I mean, I am 100% with the developer here - if they can't fix the engine to have good performance on Linux and Proton does it better anyway - why should you care how "native" is it?

It's the principle of the thing. I bought a native Linux game. I no longer have access to what I paid for. It was simply taken away from me. I buy games in order to play them with Wine / Proton "all the time", but at my discretion. I think it's fundamentally unfair to put a customer in a situation where what they have is so far removed from what it was advertized as at the time of purchase that it doesn't work (or isn't officially supported) on the platform it was bought on and for.

They never advertised Linux support, on forums they stressed that the beta is experimental, and they never put SteamOS logo on their store page.

If that's the case, I might be in the wrong.

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Quoting: NeoTheFox

Quoting: qptain NemoMy refund request has been denied based on the playtime (20 hours).

Well sure thing it was denied, 20 hours is more than enough for what the game costs anyway, and don't shy away from Proton, it works really well. I've been getting games left and right for it, it's amazing. I mean, I am 100% with the developer here - if they can't fix the engine to have good performance on Linux and Proton does it better anyway - why should you care how "native" is it?

It's the principle of the thing. I bought a native Linux game. I no longer have access to what I paid for. It was simply taken away from me. I buy games in order to play them with Wine / Proton "all the time", but at my discretion. I think it's fundamentally unfair to put a customer in a situation where what they have is so far removed from what it was advertized as at the time of purchase that it doesn't work (or isn't officially supported) on the platform it was bought on and for. Can you imagine buying a PlayStation game which suddenly stops working one day and the developers just going "eh, pretty sure you can still play it on an Xbox, good luck kid lol"? Can you imagine Sony letting that slide? Heck, can you imagine some big game on Steam suddenly completely dropping Windows support and there not being an absolute uproar and an avalanche of refund requests? And I think the playtime argument is completely beside the point. I didn't get bored of the game after those 20 hours. When I was paying for it I didn't know I'm paying for a temporary offer that can just disappear for arbitrary reasons. If developers are cutting access to the things that somebody paid for, they should (ideally at least, from a moral perspective) bear the cost. Perhaps they could let the engine developers know about those costs, too.

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My refund request has been denied based on the playtime (20 hours).

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I bought it when it supported Linux, wouldn't have if it didn't or I knew it'll stop, so I'm requesting a refund. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's a huge shame though, it was quite fun when it worked.

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I salute, cheer, and tip my hat.

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Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: qptain NemoI don't understand the connection some people make between reducing cuts for people making Linux ports and developers making bad ports as the result.

Laziness. Some companies already make bad ports even in the absence of incentives. If Valve offered "free money" to anyone putting up a Linux port on the store, you don't think even more companies would put in minimal effort to tick the box and take that extra cash? That wouldn't be the first time people try to game the system; just recently one of Valve's announcements mentioned "developers (...) producing 'games' that generated revenue without anyone actually buying and playing them [External Link]" by abusing the trading card system. Putting up a Linux executable that barely launches sounds easy in comparison.

There is no doubt in my mind that bad or soon-unsupported ports would (continue to) happen, which leaves Valve with a choice of either paying those companies for nothing or policing their software. We all know Valve like to leave moderation to others, but I doubt they would enjoy losing money for the heck of it either. And with Steam Play working the way it does now, a bad port is more detrimental than no port for us Linux gamers. So Valve would essentially be giving some devs a bigger cut for preventing us from playing their games on Steam.

Yeah I think more companies would, I hope they would, that's the point, that's what I want to happen.

It's not that hard to support Linux objectively though. Minimal effort ports don't necessarily translate into bad quality ports. And if the mainstream engines are so flawed that this is never true for them, that's frankly a completely separate problem and the fault of the engine developers first and foremost. I think it should be solved by encouraging the engine devs to fix their engines, it's not going to be solved by giving up on encouraging developers to port their games.

Example: visual novels using Renpy. Virtually all of them support Linux. Pretty flawlessly. Probably not because they all happen to be developed by massive Linux enthusiasts. Probably has more to do with the toolset used being properly made and easy to utilize without issues.

And regarding lack of support, again, I'm not saying, and I think nobody is saying that Valve have to wave this big sign that reads "please scam us". The ports should be proper ports. Nobody is advocating for the developers to get money for nothing with zero accountability.

Of course if developers started supporting Linux out of genuine respect and interest it'd be highly preferable but it's a difficult target to hit and I don't believe that this approach would lead to such disastrously negative results.

There is also a flipside to this coin. Yeah, some developers have made terrible ports. Some other developers on the other hand have made very good properly supported ports of cool good quality games, but then just decided not to support Linux with their next releases. We're losing some developers who treated us absolutely right in the past and did everything right but now are packing up. Assumedly because it's not worth it to them. What now? I don't know about you but I'd rather get a bunch of crappy ports by people who don't have much respect for their craft, than lose people who do care for good because the market has lost all merit to them. That is just about the worst thing that could happen and it's already happening on some scale.

Having said all this if Valve have an even more effective incentive up their sleeve, I'm all for it. I hope that is the case.

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I don't understand the connection some people make between reducing cuts for people making Linux ports and developers making bad ports as the result. Every platform maintainer incentivizes developers to develop for their platform, if a developer for some reason decides to crap on the hand that supports them in some way and use it as an opportunity for half-assing things, well that's directly on them, there is no inherent incentive to do poorly there. And even if you're cynical about this and think that of course they will, well, I don't really see why any other equivalent incentives would change anything. Money is money, you get more money from more sales, you get more money from reduced cuts. Sure, a smaller audience for your mistakes is a factor but that's why only non-broken ports should count of course.

I don't even understand what is the alternative supposed to be if giving developers simple straightforward monetary incentives apparently isn't a pure and true enough method of motivating them to embrace Linux the right way.

Quoting: tmtvl

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: jarhead_hQuite frankly I think that if I were Valve reading that I'd be pretty pissed.

Eh? Not sure why you came to that conclusion. I fully agree with BTRE here, especially the point on taking even a 1-2% cut if a developer does a multiplatform game. Not just to help foster Linux games, but to support a healthy developer community to give them just a little more support for branching out.

Have absolutely no clue why you would think Valve would be "pissed".

Easy, isn't it? Saying someone else has to pay a price for your decisions. If you want developers to earn more from making games for you, why don't you just pay more yourself?

This would be fair to say if Valve didn't explicitly get involved in promoting, improving Linux and their own Linux-based platform. It's very reasonable to assume they are invested in the success of SteamOS and as such propose such a logical incentive for people to adopt their platform.

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The Steam DRM is completely optional.

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Quoting: Guest[Good read, witten January 2018]

So You Want To Compete With Steam
https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-steam/ [External Link]

Many good points are addressed, and strictly within the PC space.

"For one, there's no way in hell you're going to be able to manage the amount of traffic and server load they do."
Even Amazon learned this lesson. A-M-A-Z-O-N!

What a great article. :'D It made me about 300% less worried about this whole thing.

Quoting: GuestI do wonder if EPIC Games Store is simply going to be a ported version of WeGame.

https://www.wegame.com/ [External Link]

If it is I really hope they keep the cute anime girls. (. ‿ . )

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It's a shame they didn't actually tie this to Linux / SteamOS support and it doesn't apply to smaller devs but oh well, it's quite understandable in the light of lots of AAA companies moving to their own stores.

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