Patreon Logo Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal Logo PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
Latest Comments by riusma
Make sure you play 'Gone Home' this weekend, as it's free for a short time
12 Nov 2016 at 4:06 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: sigzthis game is completed in 4hours, not sure the free week end is worth for developer.
More info here [External Link]. :)

Aside the fact that, as Liam previously noted, it's also a good PR for their next game Tacoma. ;)

Make sure you play 'Gone Home' this weekend, as it's free for a short time
12 Nov 2016 at 3:00 pm UTC

It's a good game if you're in the "walking simulator" genre! Perhaps a bit short for its price (full price, not when it's free obviously), and probably more telling for people who have lived in the nineties (for cultural references). On Steam the game may require to be launched with the "LC_ALL=C %command%" options (if the commands for moving don't respond in game). :)

Event[0], the utterly fantastic looking sci-fi narrative exploration game is getting close to a Linux release
12 Nov 2016 at 2:52 pm UTC

It's on my wishlist since the developers have announced that they will investigate for a Linux build. Seems to be a short but interesting game! Don't know if I will buy it day-one as we don't currently lack good games to buy (Tyranny, Deus Ex, Mad Max... and hopefully soon Shadow Warriors 2). :|

Developer of 'Steam Marines' talks sales, Linux represented 2% over the lifetime of it
9 Nov 2016 at 10:41 am UTC

Well doing some (rough) mathematics to get some (very rough) numbers:

* We know (Steamspy) that only 1% of Steam "active" accounts have more than 100 games in their library (that's the accounts that really buy a lot of games and that are the more susceptible to buy an indie game), which gives us some 2,000,000 of such accounts. If the 1% of Steam users being under Linux is accurate (more or less) that gives us some 20,000 of such accounts as Linux gamers (from a total of 2,000,000 global Linux accounts as Steam can claim some 200,000,000 active accounts).

* If the game sold some 100,000 units with Linux about 2% of those sales, we have 2000 Linux units for 95,000 Windows units (Mac representing about 3%). So, the game is owned by 5% of Windows most active users (95,000 Windows units / 1,920,000 Windows most active users), by 5% of Mac most active users (3000 Mac units / 60,000 Mac most active users), and by 10% of Linux most active users (2000 Linux units / 20,000 Linux most active users).

The game has probably a better marketshare on Linux that on others plateforms, but granted also probably has less revenues from it if it wasn't a day 1 release leading to Linux buyers more susceptible to buy it on sales or in bundles (depends a bit on the marketing when the game finally came to Linux: with less advertising at the port launch you will get far more traction by sales and bundles, and it will be even more the case with mixed reviews, those being deserved or not). Nonetheless, with Mac and Linux port you get a better potential customer's surface when it comes to the long tail (Note: on September 2014 only 50% of game published on Steam were sold at more than 25,000 units, one year before the figure was above 100,000 units... 2014 is the beginning of the hard times for indie dev' as the amount of published games on Steam start to grow faster than the amount of potential buyers, with each game receiving less visibility on Steam too).

It is true that with less games available on Linux each one should get higher Linux sales than our (more or less) 1% global Steam marketshare. On the other hand Steam has hit the 1000 games available on Linux at the beginning of 2015 (and hit 2000 games one year latter) which represents already far more games than you can expect 99% of Steam's active accounts to own (again only 1% of Steam "active" accounts has a library of 100 games or more). Peoples don't buy games randomly (visibility and reviews play a role) and even with less games available Linux than on Windows we also have far less "junk" games (porting game to Linux was far more difficult as crossplateform engines were only at the beginning of their Linux support) and so I don't think that the 3000 vs 10,000 games available between Linux and Windows figure (which was more 1000 vs 5000 at the beginning of 2015, and more 2000 vs 8000 at the beginning of 2016) works that great when trying to estimate what Linux sales should statistically be: only considering the games that fall in the same category as repartition between all pateform may not be the same (2D may be more easier to port on Linux than more demanding 3D engines) and removing some "junk" games and some older games from Windows stats may help giving a more accurate figure, but again the relative quality of each market should also be taken in account and (IMHO) here Linux wasn't getting the worst games (which is less the case now as exporting games toward Linux market gets more easier with crossplateform engines) despite a low amount of "AAA" games. :)

Developer of 'Steam Marines' talks sales, Linux represented 2% over the lifetime of it
8 Nov 2016 at 5:05 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: HoriStill, this is not the customer's problem or concern.
You're absolutely right, but I was more speaking from the dev' viewpoint here (i.e. he only gets 70% of 4000€ ~ 20.000€ depending on how optimistic you are toward Linux sales). :)

NB: just to be clear, I've really nothing against this dev' who seems to be a nice guy from what I could see on the Steam's forum where people were asking for a Linux port. :)

Developer of 'Steam Marines' talks sales, Linux represented 2% over the lifetime of it
8 Nov 2016 at 4:21 pm UTC

Quoting: liamdaweThe thing about SteamSpy, is that you shouldn't entirely trust their data. I've seen multiple reports of it being way off. Just something to think about when quoting numbers :)
Well, for above 15.000 units it begins to give orders of magnitude (about +/- 50%) if you take data with a (large) pinch of salt (and know how Steamspy works), and above 100.000 it begins to be relatively accurate (about +/- 10%). Taking SOMA as example you find more or less what you can expect from the 450.000 units the dev' have sold (including PS4 units) in Steamspy. Note that in some cases dev' have pretended that Steamspy wasn't accurate... and some months later Steamspy was indeed right when dev' were forced to give actual numbers (that was the case for Kerbal Space Program). :)

Quoting: valguskWow either Valve or this guy is greedy.
Valve takes 30% of incomes. :)

Developer of 'Steam Marines' talks sales, Linux represented 2% over the lifetime of it
8 Nov 2016 at 4:01 pm UTC Likes: 4

I've said it before, and I will say it again, don't bug developers for a Linux version if you aren't personally interested and plan to buy it. It can create situations like this, but it's also worth noting that the developer may have overestimated how much they would make from Linux.
Well, according Steamspy the game has sold more or less 100.000 units (on Steam, or activated or played on Steam) which leads to approximatively 2.000 units accounted for Linux players (which is not that bad for a 20€ game - not a cheap one - with mixed reviews). From Steam forum I would say that there is less than 2.000 Linux players who were asking for a Linux version. ^^

Quoting: raverrebel
Quoting: veccherhe said 3% of mac users represents 50% of his support issues, 2 options: he have a problem with his mac version or mac users are quite annoyng.
but 2% for linux even after being launched 1 year after the windows version is quite a good number actually.
I think he meant that 50% of the reported issues by Windows users are actually not issues but user caused problems. The other 50% are technical issues.
And btw, that 3% of Mac users represents over 50% of my support issues. So extra bad for Mac.

Source [External Link]
;)

Through the Woods no longer coming to Linux due to platform-specific technology
5 Nov 2016 at 12:22 pm UTC

Honestly, I'm currently watching a Let's play of this game (and was just remembering that it was cancelled on Linux) and I do not understand where are "[their] most visible graphical features which has become a staple of [their] art style". The starting idea and the setting are interesting but IMHO the "art style" is generic and more close to a third person RPG like The Witcher 3 than a "horror" game with its own unique strong graphical atmosphere. I suppose that now I know why TW3 never came to Linux, it's only due to an incompatible art style. ^^

'SOMA' from Frictional Games sales figures released, Linux accounted for around 1.1% of sales
24 Sep 2016 at 4:21 pm UTC

Quoting: dmantioneI don't get your point. A Linux user buying 100 out of 2500 games compared to a Windows user buying 100 out of 8000 games, should still have the effect that those 2500 games should see considerably higher Linux sales than the Linux market share on Steam. Doing the math puts the expected sales at approximately 3.5%.
Hmmm, ok I get your point, sorry! ^^ (note that now it's more 2500+ vs 10.000+ between Linux and Windows giving an even worst result)

Well, perhaps here we are a bit short data-wise for expecting to reach theoretical statistics (I mean, we have global sales which include an unknown amount of PS4, a partial look at the Linux sales which remain a tiny percent of global ones, and SOMA remains a game with a less wide audience than others which may leads to a "not enough randomize" sample). :S:

'SOMA' from Frictional Games sales figures released, Linux accounted for around 1.1% of sales
24 Sep 2016 at 12:29 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: dmantioneBased on our Steam Survey market share, and the amount of games available on Linux, you would expect that a Steam game with Linux support would have approximately 3.5% sales on Linux. This is because we Linux gamers have less games to spread our money over.
With 2.500+ games available on Steam for Linux now I think it is no more the case, as the amount of games that are worth playing (I will say about 250 ~ 500 games looking at my library / wish-list) is already above the amount of games the average gamer has on its library (of course you will find many accounts with 1000+ games, but most of the Steam's accounts have less than 100 games in their library). :S:

Edit: according to SteamSpy (data from october 2015) only 1% of Steam accounts (representing 1.3 millions at that time) have more than 107 games in their library, and only 20% of Steam accounts has more than 4 games (source: Canard PC, october 15th 2015).