Quoting: BeamboomThere's a lot of talk about market share here. Lots of assumptions and theories. But if there's one thing we DO know, is that the fact that Steam has been on Linux for several years now, and the Linux user base has been, for all practical purposes, completely stationary. Hasn't moved in any significant rate at all.

Total number of Linux gamers affects sales, not market share. From what I've seen, total number of Linux gamers has been growing, year after year. I explained the idea above though. As with classic supply and demand, potential profits depend on both. If there are too many games per certain amount of gamers, profits will go down for developers, even if amount of gamers is growing. So market will balance naturally by lowering the number of produced games. It's not a sign of anything negative.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe rest of what he said is pretty frightening though. He seems quite definite that Linux gaming is shrinking over time.

He mentioned their sales, not Linux gaming in general. It makes zero sense for it to be shrinking, when more gamers use Linux every year. In my view, sales go down due to natural balancing of the market. I.e. if amount of produced games is growing faster than influx of new gamers, people will be proportionally buying less from a particular developer (not less overall though!)

Market will naturally balance out, by developers making less Linux games, until amount of Linux gamers will grow over some point for them to increase it again. And if price of making Linux games will continue falling (due to Stadia and etc.), it will speed up tilting the market in the positive direction, like he said.

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We don't need it. Just ditch all that garbage that had Denuvo.

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Paradox head of sales talking about Linux support (08:15): https://play.acast.com/s/theparadoxpodcast/Buzzsprout-1340245 [External Link]

He brings an interesting point, that Stadia can help them continue supporting desktop releases due to cost being covered. That what I think will impact developers a lot more, than people using Wine / Proton and etc.

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Wine, dxvk, vkd3d and etc. are anti-lock-in tools. They are undermining MS's grip on the market. So it's a good thing.

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I'd wait for functional OpenHMD + Monado support, before buying anything of this sort.

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Regarding demand. Developers have no clue about it, if you don't buy from them and just keep silent. They have no access to stats from other developers. The stores have those stats, but they aren't public and not shared between developers.

So if you want to demonstrate demand - reach out to developers directly, create polls, wish requests, vote / comment in existing ones, and etc. Show developers that enough people want to see their games on Linux. That could work.

Examples:

* http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=652719 [External Link]
* https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/bloodlines-2-for-linux.1162040 [External Link]
* https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/cyberpunk_2077_on_linux [External Link]

Saying "I don't buy from that developer to show demand" makes no practical sense really.

So, again - reach out to developers. As ZED creators put it in the recent interview:

I think the future of gaming for Linux is looking good, hopefully I can help! The quality of hardware support is the best it’s been and game engines are bringing stronger and stronger support. Just need to keep being vocal so game devs keep putting in the small effort to port

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Quoting: Sir_DiealotOr there are fewer games for Linux released now that SteamPlay is around. Who can say with certainty? Historical data and statistics probably can. Who is going to dig in?

Hard to say, but I've seen examples of developers using such excuse (inXile/Krome used it, not to release classic Bard's Tale trilogy for Linux).

I doubt though, it plays a significant role in the global sense. Those who want to release for Linux will, Steamplay or not. Those who don't, always will find another excuse.

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When are they going to start supporting XDG base directory spec? $HOME/.dosbox really should retire already.

And they should switch from Sourceforge to something more fitting the times.

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Great interview, thanks! I backed the game and wait for the Linux version to get to GOG.

This part though was a bit strange:

Platforms like Proton and Lutris are beginning to make WINE obsolete.

Wine is really the base of Proton, and without it Lutris won't work with Windows games either, so it's hardly obsolete ;)

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