Quoting: ColomboBut they don't need to develop novel solution. They have to just fix one simple thing that is provided in one of these "hacks". Edit one file and recompile, push changes to Steam. Hell, its hour of work at max.

Exactly. Which only highlights how much they care about the Linux version.

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Before they said it's something that has to be fixed in the game, and Larian completely ignored this bug. Some even suggested that they don't have any Linux developers left in the studio.

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Quoting: drmothBeamdog has excellent Linux ports, always well tested.

Well, the notorious large partition bug wasn't caught, and wasn't fixed either.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: ShmerlAAA is too ambiguous of a term. Some simply mean big budget games by it, and not all big budget games are made by backwards thinking legacy publishers. Some are made by quite innovative and forward thinking ones, who are interested in Linux too. And in my experience, big budget doesn't necessarily guarantee artistic quality, especially if mass market is the target. Personally I'm interested in more good games, and whether they are big or small budget is really secondary for me. I acknowledge though, that perception of art is to a degree subjective, and good can mean different things for different people.

The hipster is strong in this one. :)

Seriously, I love a good indie title, but if you play a game like Mad Max or Tomb Raider, you'll see where all those millions went. There's just tons and tons of highly polished content, from graphics and animation to audio design, made by large teams of professional artists.

Millions went somewhere, but it bears a strong resemblance to current day mass market film industry. Most of it is pulp fiction style writing, with flashy graphics and CGI, and barely any depth in the script and story. Or in the games context - reactivity with choices and consequences. Sure, there are good authors out there. But most of the mass market is after flashy things, not after depth. I value more than "polished content" in art.

Quoting: tuubiOf course this is all subjective but assuming a game must be "less good" if it's "mainstream" is just silly. Or at least the assumption part of it is silly. Nothing wrong with informed opinion of course.

It doesn't have to be worse, but it easily can become worse. As soon as mass market kicks in, quality of art can easily be compromised for superficiality with flashy look. I'm not trying to downplay the value of good graphics - I like it same as the next guy. I'm just pointing out the pitfalls of mass market / commercialized art driven by legacy publishers.

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I hope they'll make it 64-bit and will avoid the notorious big XFS partition / no LFS bug.

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Quoting: KimyrielleI am not quite sure what a "legacy publisher" is.

By legacy publishers I mean old media style companies, driven by execs who see profit more important than art. They don't make art - they are certain type of middlemen who profit from others making it. Such companies exist in many art fields. Labels in music, "huge media conglomerates" in films, publishing houses in books, and so on. Games have their analog too, i.e. EA and similar. All those I call legacy publishers. I guess it's hard to define it formally. It's kind of a mindset which combines quite a lot of negative traits, such as purposeful distancing from users of their art, strong mass market bend which sacrifices quality, cutting costs more than necessary to increase profits by reducing support terms and so on. I guess you get the idea whom I'm referring to. Such mindset in my experience usually combines with avoidance of Linux and usage of DRM, though there is no explicit correlation between these. It's more of a common occurrence.

Quoting: KimyrielleIf you are referring to the companies currently releasing pretty much 100% of all AAA titles, then...yeah. That's the ones we want to release Linux games right now, no?

Well, not necessarily. AAA is too ambiguous of a term. Some simply mean big budget games by it, and not all big budget games are made by backwards thinking legacy publishers. Some are made by quite innovative and forward thinking ones, who are interested in Linux too. And in my experience, big budget doesn't necessarily guarantee artistic quality, especially if mass market is the target. Personally I'm interested in more good games, and whether they are big or small budget is really secondary for me. I acknowledge though, that perception of art is to a degree subjective, and good can mean different things for different people.

Quoting: KimyrielleIt's actually these porting houses that might be able to press middleware developers into providing a Linux port of the stuff that currently doesn't run in it. They ARE what's currently driving Linux game development.

I'm not sure they are the biggest drive behind Linux gaming progress. I think engine developers are, and their effort is impacting on a deeper level. But any progress is good, and credit should be given to any good contribution.

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Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: Shmerl"Porting houses" can become a thing of the past. Serious studios will accumulate knowledge in house and do cross platform development themselves. Some already realize it (inXile for example). Others are only getting the idea. With wider adoption of cross platform engines, all this will be less of an issue.

One should think so, but look at who brought us pretty much ANY major title in 2016 not from Paradox Studios...

And look at what games the worked with - all from legacy publishers from the likes of WB and Square Enix. Those aren't ones you'd even expect to be interested in Linux ever. For me those releases weren't relevant - I didn't even play them because of DRM. But I agree, that they represent mass market and are popular, so they are major in that sense (which in my experience doesn't necessarily equal to major in artistic quality).

So the trend will likely to continue. Legacy publishers will keep their heads in the sand, and sometimes will use third party porters to release games for Linux, while others (innovative / progressive publishers and developers) are more likely to develop for Linux themselves. The number of later ones is increasing, same as scale of games that they produce. So I don't really worry about legacy publishers being left behind.

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"Porting houses" can become a thing of the past. Serious studios will accumulate knowledge in house and do cross platform development themselves. Some already realize it (inXile for example). Others are only getting the idea. With wider adoption of cross platform engines, all this will be less of an issue.

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Quoting: Corben2016 was a great year for Linux gaming in general, with a lot of big releases. Some of them finally released after being announced a long time ago. But what's coming next? I'm missing big announcements to get hyped for and to look forward to.
There are some kickstarter projects like System Shock or Everspace, but that can't be all.

Quite a lot of good releases are coming out in 2017 (supposedly if they won't be delayed of course). Torment: Tides of Numenera, The Bard's Tale IV, Underworld Ascendant, System Shock (remake), State of Mind and etc. I don't think we'll be lacking good games.

Quoting: Corbenmy feel is negative @Shmerl

Why so? I might feel negative, when studios which started releasing for Linux would stop. That happened a few times in the past - CD Projekt Red, Larian (who supposedly don't even have Linux developers in house anymore and didn't include Linux version in crowdfunding for Divinity: Original Sin 2). But I think those are the minority. Most are continuing, and new developers start releasing for Linux in addition.

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Quoting: subSteam on Linux is clearly losing momentum, if Valve/Newell were really
up to change that - the money is there.

I don't worry about Steam. Rather about Linux gaming in general. And it doesn't seem to be losing momentum. Increasing number of studios now regularly release games for Linux, major engines are improving Linux support and etc. The trend is positive, not negative.

Valve so far also don't seem to have lost interest. They work on drivers / Vulkan and VR on Linux, which isn't a minor effort. My only concern is that they can end up with Steam only stuff (SteamVR is such example), that's not good.

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