Everyone, Epic Games!
Lets all thank them for bringing COMPETITION to gaming RIGHT?!

So there goes a Linux native game. An actual game with an actual native Linux title, will be bought and locked up in a store that doesn't support Linux. It will no longer be available for purchase and play on Linux because of Epic.

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Imma keep it real with ya chief - That response is 100% PR Talk

They got busted. All of that response is just code for:

"We're not going to support Linux until we think it's financially worth it and we still don't think it is and truth be told we don't think it's financially worth it for our customers to do so either, but now we know developers who ask about Linux support might rat on us to reddit to make us look bad, we're going to give a canned 'Sorry we do not currently support Linux at this time but we might support Linux in the future.' response next time a developer asks about Linux support instead of our honest opinion."

That last line in particular makes it clear, don't expect Vivox to support Linux any time soon.

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Quoting: callciferDo I think Epic is being extremely aggressive with their store? Yes. Do I think there is any other realistic way of ending Steam's dominance? No.

Why would we *want* to end Steam's dominance? For a regular PC gamer that makes no sense but it makes doubly so no sense for a Linux gamer..

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Epic Game Store: "Love early access games?"

"no.."

Epic Game Store: "Then you'll love the first early access store!"

"no thanks.."

Epic Game Store: "Too bad, that game you were going to buy is now exclusively on our store!"

"please stop"

Epic Game Store: "We're here to save the PC gaming market from Valve and Steam who were wrecking it!"

Ugh..

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This! This right here! This is why I love Valve and won't shop anywhere else, this is how you support Linux! (Take Note 'Epic' Games!).

Thanks Valve. <3

Gah, so many games to redownload and retest, ProtonDB reports to write, thank goodness I have a 4 day Easter weekend off work!

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Well, this is absolutely something I was happy to leave on Windows, but on a technical level hats off to the clever folk who figured that out.

Also shame on Epic Games. It's a bloody Electron app, which means 98% of the application is just HTML, CSS and Javascript running via Node and rendered in Chrome. Electron apps that don't feature any platform specific code literally require NO changes to port. Assuming they have some Windows specific code in the application for downloading and installing games to their correct locations, it couldn't be easier to add a simple if(platform=="linux") then add some Linux specific logic to the sections which require that. For the company that created Unreal Engine 4, it couldn't be any easier to port something as simple as that, yet they still can't be bothered to do so.

So no they don't deserve credit for suggesting applying for a grant, assuming they would even give one and that throwaway statement wasn't just designed to give them temporary free positive PR among Linux gamers, they should just offer a Linux version of the store.

Epic is basically saying via their actions that they aren't willing to perform even the most minimal level of effort necessary to support Linux but they're happy for the Linux community to do the work for them. Contrast that against Valve's support.

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Fantastic work as always doitsujin, you're amazing! <3

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The Godot project is exceptionally worthwhile. They're trying to hire a 3rd full time coder and are 85% of the way to that patreon goal. I've been learning the engine as well and can honestly say they're probably onto something big, and if they keep going Godot will be very successful. This could be for game development what Blender is for 3D design.

Once it has just a bit more dev time into it and some other refinements, this engine could be used by many indie game devs out there, and once that happens you have lots of game devs using an engine that can easily do a 1 click export to Linux and which will use Vulkan instead of DirectX. That's going to be a very positive thing for Linux, gaming, and open source.

If you can afford to eat maybe have 1 less takeaway meal a month to join the Godot patreon, $5USD/month to support Godot would go a long way.

If big AAA game design studios were smart, they'd drop a stack on Godot a few times over the next few years to help speed along the development process, because at the rate Godot is going, in the near time I can very easily see it displacing Unity, long term it could even steal marketshare from Unreal, and a project like this is almost perfect for open source since its users are coders who can help grow the project, and the competition is very expensive. It's not hard to imagine Godot becoming the most popular game engine to use for game development in just a few years.

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Re: Price
IMO, sell it at a loss.

Hear me out.

What would absolutely kill this product is a high price tag.

VR headsets are expensive to make, and VR headsets that push boundaries with hardware are usually even more expensive. Couple that with the fact VR is effectively just an add-on rather than a platform, and the still very small market for high quality VR games (due to the small number of users - sound familiar?), the expensive hardware requirements and the unusual requirements for using VR in general (eg: room space) and you have a product with a high price tag and high entry barrier.

Valve needs to move as many of these headsets as possible to seed a market for VR and for this headset.

Selling the headset at below manufacturing cost is not entirely crazy for a few reasons.

1. This product will become cheaper to mass produce in large numbers eventually. Making a lot of something is always cheaper than making a small quantity of it. In order to achieve higher sales quantities, the price will need to start lower.
2. It's also a great way for Valve to secure their future as the home of PC gaming since I can't think of any real competitor to Steam that has VR games or Steam's level of VR support. But as long as VR represents only 1% of the market, that isn't enough of an edge. (sound familiar?)
3. With 3 Valve VR games incoming they can at least partially or perhaps even fully make back the loss on the headset by selling the games. But they won't sell those games if no one buys the headset. Plus, Valve will make back even more of that loss on extra sales of other VR games on Steam as one of the first things a new VR gamer does after getting a headset is buying a whole bunch of VR games to try it out with. Valve will get 30% of every VR game sold on their platform, so getting as many headsets out there as possible is very important.

Selling at a loss is not uncommon for hardware, Sony has done it before with Playstations, after a couple of years of manufacturing the same thing in large numbers the cost of manufacturing goes down and the money is recovered by selling games.

How far below cost is another matter but this headset needs to be very affordable and high value for money to be a winner, while also being high quality. That combination would put a VR headset in the hands of many gamers, and rocket the VR gaming industry forward.

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Every update is appreciated, especially when even a minor could potentially effect a huge number of games, since Steam has roughly 25,000 games. Thanks Valve, we appreciate it!

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