Any news on itch.io or GOG release?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Yes, Valve can offer better cut for games that offer Linux releases, until Linux sales share will reach certain percentage. A bit surprising they didn't do it yet.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: kaimanThere's also little Valve can do to increase the potential audience (they certainly did try with their Steam machines

They didn't try hard enough and it was premature. They should try again today. It's not about runtime or single target. It's all about money. Google offered some good deals for publishers to release for Stadia.

For example, if Google cared about desktop Linux, they could use Stadia to make sure developers release for desktop as well. But Google don't care. Valve do, so they can for example offer something Stadia-like too (streaming) but tie it with desktop releases, to break the catch 22 problem.

I.e. imagine Valve make sure that anything coming out on their streaming also comes out on desktop Linux (they offer either technical help or financial incentive for that). That would be some positive move.

Waiting for market share to change is not a solution.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

However, the story in terms of native development is more positive. In the open-source world, Godot has a significant fresh round of funding with its 2020 showreel showing a notable upward trend in quality and quantity, while Blender made a huge leap with 2.80 last year. For the big-name engines, both Unity and Unreal's support for native game development is improving at a solid pace.

I think engines support, ease of use and cost of porting haven't been the blocker for quite a while already. Let's assume they are almost negligible even. Somehow that wasn't enough to boost the number of big native ports for the desktop. CDPR announced CP2077 for Stadia, but said nothing about releasing it for desktop Linux. Stadia development itself already lowers the bar for making native ports, but it is still not enough to budge the inertia.

Someone like Valve should put more weight behind pushing for native Linux ports, like Google did it with Stadia. Without it, the growth of the Linux gaming market will be much slower, especially as you said, MS and other lock-in proponents aren't sitting idly, they are always brewing some new junk that won't work in Wine without major effort to address it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Exactly. DirectX was used as a lock-in tool for decades, so it's as toxic as it gets.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestAs nice as it would be to have GNU/Linux on every employees desktop at a very big, global, corporate entity....there's many sectors and job roles to consider. Financial services, human resources, building maintenance, catering, etc. Microsoft has dominance on desktop, and familiarity of use is important. That's a reality to be faced.

I mean it should be an option, not that it should be the only option. Good companies make that option for you.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnd of course 'managed by' generally means you need some sort of 'spy' software to make sure employees are installing wireshark on things (or have a reason to do so) or using approved vpn clients, and definitely have to have an anti-virus... You know, all the things that makes a Windows workstation slower.

But even with those on top, I'd still be more productive using Linux natively :P

Those who spend money on it do it just fine (Google is probably the biggest example). They just shouldn't be cheapskates. But many bean counters think that forcing developers to use Windows saves them money, while in reality it costs them productivity.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Now with RedHat partnering with Lenovo, they should start pushing thier IT solutions, to give MS run for their money.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestJust a pity they couldn't go the route of allowing a corporate standard with GNU/Linux desktop in the first place, because that would have solved all the problems.

Normal companies allow it. Those whith thick skulled IT might not, since they don't want to spend money on anything extra. And Linux support costs money too. The funny thing is, that even supporting WSL would cost them resources and time. WSL is pretty pointless in comparison with proper desktop Linux IT support like Google, Mozilla, RedHat and others do it.

Also, since WSL2 moved to Hyper-V, I don't get a point of it anymore. It's not reverse Wine-like idea anymore, it's a VM. So just run Linux in VirtualBox or something if you are in such situation. At least you'll be using an open source virtualization.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

All of this is just PR noise for me and MS doing the wrong thing as usual. Until they'll support Vulkan instead of DX, all their tap dancing around the DX is just hiding the monstrosity within.

To Linux users - don't buy the bait. Use proper Linux, not some WSL surrogate.

View this comment - View article - View full comments