Quoting: mao_dze_dunI'm stunned why some people can face cold numbers and still refuse to accept reality. The Linux market is TINY which is why game sales are also tiny in percent. A lot of people like to present alternative math by which 10% of all Linux gamers on Steam will always buy any given game. Well guess what - it doesn't work that way. Nobody ports to Linux expecting a profit bar actual porting companies. All in-house ports are a work of love and mad props to developers who actually do them. But next tine a couple of spiteful people (you know exactly who you have) start spitting venom at a developer who plain admits the numbers aren't there - please refer them to this article.

You sound (weirdly) angry, despite the cool tone of the other replies here. As I said earlier, no one is refusing "to accept reality" - it's simply odd that such a popular game has such a low percentage of Linux sales when so many other very similar games do so much better - usually much higher than our "0.5%" market share suggests.

As for whether the number are there or not, that depends. If you're going to sell 1M copies, then sure, 5000 extra sales is pretty meaningless. If you're going to sell 50K, then 5000 extra sales suddenly looks pretty sweet (albeit only one dev has reported close to 10% Linux sales). If my £9 game takes in £6 profit... that's £30K in the bank. That's great, even if Windows and Mac still nets you a more significant £270K.

Either way, the devs have to do the maths. "5000" times "game profit" should, in most cases, cover any expenses related to the Linux version. Not all cases, but certainly most cases. And while you might be right that Linux support is often a work of love, love doesn't pay the bills.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: KlaasI have not bought the game because it is priced above my “I'm willing to buy a Steam version” price point which is about 8 €.

If the game was released on Itch or GOG I would buy it ASAP, although I'm still not convinced that I would enjoy it more than Dicey Dungeons which is somewhat similar and seems to offer a little more control for the player.

Welcome to GOL! If you liked Dicey Dungeons, you'll absolutely love Slay the Spire. I can tell you that while I played all the characters in Dicey once (and once only) in about 5 or 6 hours (being generous, it was probably less), I'm still playing Slay the Spire after nearly 100 hours.

I paid $7.50, plus $2 tip, plus $2 VAT for Dicey. That's roughly £8.50 in UK money. Meanwhile, I played £12 for Slay the Spire in November last year. It's since gone up to £19.50. Dicey will also go up in price when it releases, although I admit that Slay's jump was quite large.

So, I suppose that even at the more expensive price point, I'm getting way more than twice the value for Slay than I got from Dicey.

I'll go back to Dicey eventually, it's awesome. But it doesn't (yet) have the staying power that Slay's demonstrated.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: toojaysWhy were they surprised? What were they expecting, and why? These numbers are very close to the Steam hardware survey. Surely a very popular cross-platform game with low system requirements should more-or-less mirror the state of the market?

As the article notes, many other developers of similar games (well, indie games, I mean) tend to report much, much higher percentages, usually in the 3-10% region. For example: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-developer-of-rise-to-ruins-has-shared-some-linux-sales-and-players-data.11300, which also links to other examples.

Could just be that when an Indie game becomes truly popular, it's because the Windows AAA crowd has picked it up, so we get squashed back down to the 1% mark. Maia has sold around 100K copies, but that's only a tenth of Slay's sales. Which makes sense when you consider that 4.4% of Maia's 100K would be around 5000 sales, roughly in line with Slay's 0.5% of 1M sales (i.e. 5K), or 2.6% of Rise to Ruins 250K sales (i.e. 6.5K).

[Edit: fix link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Magbed

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoThese are my platinum reports:

To protect your privacy, external media requires approval to load.

Source: i.imgur.com

View cookie preferences.
Accept & Show Accept All & Don't show this again   Direct Link

I have more reports to do..

See... i dont get why people mark them as platinum when there are so many workaraound involved... thats not platinum rating.

Fully agreed.
If you have to do anything else than just launch the game, it is not Platinum. Same if the performance is MUCH worse than on Windows.
If you can make the game run perfectly with some steps, as many of these reports say, that's Gold, Not Platinum.

What we have here is someone unconsciously (I don't think that is on purpose) skewing statistics, and that's not helping anyone in the long run.
The reports and hints are appreciated, but almost none of these are reports that should be Platinum.

I feel that ProtonDB should have functionality to report a report as having the wrong rating.

Well first of all, he only notes tweaks for two of his many titles, and one of those is a precaution, not a requirement. Secondly, while I agree that any tweak downgrades it to Gold at best, it's not like you're going to cherry-pick one user's reports to base your opinion on a game.

Indeed, you can't even see a specific user when browsing. So if a few folk are misusing Platinum/Gold ratings, it's still useful overall.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: gradyvuckovicIt's pretty simple for me.

I already have a Steam account.

I already have over 200 games in Steam.

I have no desire to see Steam suffer, because any threat to Steam is a treat to my game library.

Steam is run by Valve. Valve heavily supports Linux, more so than any commercial entity would while thinking rationally and I am infinitely grateful to them as a result.

Exclusives aren't competition, exclusives are the opposite of competition. I refuse to be forced to use a platform due to exclusives.

I wouldn't buy a game from a store that doesn't even have a native Linux client, even if I was interested in shopping elsewhere.

What cut Valve takes from devs is irrelevant to me, as Steam's prices are usually better than what I get in retail stores, they run frequent specials with great discounts.

Steam's service is fantastic imo, and I am not on board with the mindset of 'Everything needs to be redesigned every 2 years to stay cool', that's not actually user friendly at all. If something is already great, it doesn't need to be redesigned, it just needs to be refined and Valve have been refining Steam for a decade. It's almost perfect the way it is.

Fortnite needs to die as soon as possible to cut off Epic's source of revenue, I can't believe I use to think they were an OK company.

Great post. I can't believe @Shmerl is holding his/her(?) tongue over this thread so well, because of course not only is the shoe on the other foot (exclusives outside of Steam), but also you've raise the excellent point that a threat to Steam/Valve is indeed a threat to your carefully horded (and paid-for) steam library. We're just renting those titles (permanently) rather than owning them.

Is Epic running the same gig? Or can you download a DRM-free version of their titles for play without the need for the Epic launcher? Knowing Epic, I'd expect both a forced launcher AND draconian, bullshit DRM on everything. In fact, isn't Metro getting the Denuvo treatment now too?

Shmerl's probably cackling away at the irony of us Steam users realising that Steam's DRM threatens those precious libraries. Okay, probably not. Shmerls always struck me as a fairly mature dude. I'd be cackling away though, if I didn't have nearly 800 (!) titles on Steam right now and precious few are DRM-free from Humble, GOG, or Itch.

I am buying more Itch titles these days though. Love those guys. Especially love the fact that you can overpay on that platform if you choose. Not so much of a fan that they apply VAT at the end of the transaction though. I wish they'd tidy that up.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: etonbears

Quoting: scaineMinor point to the above - Valve is privately owned, so there's not shareholders to pay dividends to. Not only is it privately owned, GabeN owns more than 50% personally. He's valued at just $4Bn as an individual. Richer than Trump basically (assuming you believe his $3Bn valuation... I'm sceptical).

So, stinking rich. Just outside of the top 500 richest people on earth. As an aside, while Epic is raking it in, Tim Sweeney, as CEO, is only (ha!) worth $75m, reported mid last year.

I don't know what the articles of association for Valve Corporation are, but in general private companies can, and usually do, have shares. They are simply not listed anywhere for public trading, but can be sold in private transactions, and used in share option schemes etc. Similarly, private companies can, and do, pay dividends.

I would think that Gaben's net worth is primarily his 50% stake in Valve. Valuations of people and companies ( public or private ) are, of course, of questionable real value, except as an indicator of immediate financial clout. And valuations can often change quite quickly if not based on diversified assets.

Of course, and obviously Valve do have shares - it's public knowledge that GabeN holds just over 50% of Valve, for example. But there's a gigantic difference between a publicly traded company which is beholden to shareholders short term expectation of both performance and dividend, and a privately owned company which sells its shares to its employees. It's suspected that most of Valve's executives hold the rest of the shares, with some options available to general staff. However, of course, since they're privately owned, they have no obligation to reveal the split and to date (that I could find) never have.

Privately owned means that most of this is guesswork.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I enjoyed Sunless Sea, loved the atmosphere and writing, but got to a point quite quickly (only about 10 hours of gameplay) where your overall goal was only feasible through a very specific set of options, trips and quirks which sucked the life out of it for me. It became a chore to play and I'm not interested in my games being chores!

Looking forward to playing this though, based on Liam's recommendation.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Think I'll go play a bit of Salt and Sanctuary till I pick this up...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Minor point to the above - Valve is privately owned, so there's not shareholders to pay dividends to. Not only is it privately owned, GabeN owns more than 50% personally. He's valued at just $4Bn as an individual. Richer than Trump basically (assuming you believe his $3Bn valuation... I'm sceptical).

So, stinking rich. Just outside of the top 500 richest people on earth. As an aside, while Epic is raking it in, Tim Sweeney, as CEO, is only (ha!) worth $75m, reported mid last year.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

How have I missed this? And it's free! Magic find. Looking forward to giving this a shot at the weekend.

View this comment - View article - View full comments