They should stop porting their games, and start releasing native versions instead. They have plenty of money, get another couple of developers and check that the game compiles on GNU from the start.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I always said that the idea of "porting" is terrible. Porting means taking a Windows code and putting plasters on it until it runs on GNU. It results in inferior releases that eventually break.
The way to go is "native" releases, i.e. developing the code so that it compiles on both Windows and GNU. Many developers are doing that right, e.g. Paradox Interactive.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: damarrinYou realise it’s 5% of 1%, which means 0.05% of all users?

Oh daaaayyyymn... No I didn't think of that. DUH!
Ok so THAT's a lot less impressive indeed. Damn. It's barely anything at all.

Well you have to give it time, there are tens of millions of computers out there, the Steam Deck has only been out for a few months and lots of backorders have not been fulfilled yet. It is going to be two or three years before we may see significant volumes.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Could we overtake Mac this year, thanks to the Steam Deck?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I see this as a confirmation that "porting", intended as a company reworking a game developed for Windows by somebody else, is a failure.
Games need to be developed in parallel for all the intended platform. Paradox interactive does this right.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I would be curious to know how many preorders they got for the Steam Deck!
And how many are they planning to ship in Q1 and Q2 2022.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ArdjeThe question is: how can we help companies like Feral?

If Steam Deck is successful, Feral could reinvent itself as a consultancy that helps dev companies to build in-house capabilities in the GNU/L space.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Much depends on the success of Steam Deck. If it manages to bring millions of new users to the GNU/L world, devs will have an incentive to provide the best experience possible on it, hence to provide native, in-house releases (rather than ports).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I think this is good news, Feral ports were usually not very good: lower performance, delayed patches, additional bugs, etc.. The very idea of "porting" smells of a sub-par product.
I like to see *native* releases; it they cannot provide that, ensuring good compatibility with Proton may be better than a port.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: TeodosioI would like to see a new game from Valve, released on GNU/Linux only.

Exclusives are bad.

That would not be an exclusive, because anybody can download a GNU distribution and install it, free of charge, spyware and other restrictions. It would not be "excluding" anyone.

View this comment - View article - View full comments