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Worrying Aspects of Linux Gaming
jones_supa writes: Former Valve engineer Rich Geldreich has written up a blog post about the state of Linux Gaming. It's an interesting read, that's for sure. When talking about recent bigger game ports, his take is that the developers doing these ports just aren't doing their best to optimize these releases for Linux and/or OpenGL. He points out how it took significant resources from Valve to properly optimize Source engine for Linux, but that other game studios are not walking the last mile. About drivers, he asks "Valve is still paying LunarG to find and fix silly perf bugs in Intel's slow open source driver. Surely this can't be a sustainable way of developing a working driver?" He ends his post by agreeing with a Slashdot comment where someone is basically saying that SteamOS is done, and that we will never get our hands on the Steam Controller.
The Steam controller IS coming
Please move to gaming. It's the final blockade to me switching all the family and friends to Linux.
The old people were happy getting away from win 8 and back to a desktop that works, but the younger ones still can't accept Ubuntu.
Linux can and will in my opinion finally crush the other two os's - they are both fixated on the walled garden with "apps" to feed them.
Save us Linux, you are our only hope //the holograph figure turns and sees something, then fiddles with the holograph controls//
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I'm a guy who ordered a copy of Redhat all the way from Maldives back in 1996 (the shipping of which cost a bomb then), because it promised a new way to power our computers. From '96 till about 2007 I have exclusively used Linux in all my work. However, I've always had to keep a high-powered PC just for my games. With all the promise of different types of Wines and opengl implementations, games simply did not look as good or work as seamlessly (with few exceptions) as they did in Windows.
Since 2007, I have been using MacOS primarily for all my work, replacing all my Linux machines. Despite using Redhat, Turbo Linux, Slackware with Enlightenment, SUSE and Ubuntu, no Linux seemed to have the seamless productivity options boasted by the more mature MacOS or Windows applications, and some of these applications did not work proper with any of the Wines.
I think Linux as a desktop OS never really happened. I've mostly used it as my coding environment, and when I needed to author a document I swivel the chair and wake up the Windows (and these days MacOS) machine. All the various X, opengl and windowing implementations are just making applications ported to (or even originally developed in) Linux acquire quirks that aren't there in Windows and MacOS. Maybe instead of complaining about games developers, all the vendors should get together and conjure up a more unified Linux standard.
As someone who prefers almost any other OS other than Windows for my main, I still have problems believing that AAA gaming developers will make the big move to support an OS and framework that only covers a minuscule percentage of users.
I used to really be into running games under wine for Linux and OS X (osx86 *cough*), to the point where I would apply patches and do custom wine builds to get my favorite games running. I eventually just let go of it after 8 years and decided to always keep a Windows install ready for games and nothing else. That's probably why I haven't had much interest in SteamOS. It's a wonderful idea and I support it, but you need to win over the big players. The big players will most likely find SteamOS support to be financial waste. I'm glad that the amount of Linux games on Steam continues to rise, but like TFA says, it's just not worth the time and effort to optimize for Linux and in many cases not even try at all. There are many Windows applications that use a cross-platform framework that has wonderful support in X11, but why won't the company release a Linux or *nix version? Time, money, and less profits based on the amount of active desktop Linux users.
As the way things are going, SteamOS will be a great platform for indie games, that's for sure. But Ubisoft? Rockstar? EA? Activision Blizzard? I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future.
Perhaps I'm just getting old or something, but I've actually started to move closer to consoles, even with my nice PC setup that was the latest and greatest in 2013 which I keep around. The interest with indie game developers porting their PC games to PS4 makes me feel I made the right choice with getting one over an xbone. I wish the wave of Linux gamers receive the support they need to defeat this obstacle, but with its small percentage and the fact that it comes down to money and manpower to port and optimize games, it will unfortunately take some time for this to become a reality. If it happens, expect me to be there and ready to make the move from Windows when it comes to gaming.
Game developers are not Linux advocates. It is not their role to invest their time and money to displace Windows and Mac OS X with Linux.
Game developers create and sell games. Whether it is a Linux, Mac or Windows sale is irrelevant. A gamer who prefers Linux, but keeps Windows around for games, is already a customer. Letting that gamer move from Windows to Linux does not pay for Linux development, you are replacing a Windows sale with a Linux sale, there is no new money.
It is not game developers who are holding back Linux gaming. It is Linux enthusiasts who play Windows games that hold back Linux gaming.
Sure, the ports might not be optimised perfectly, but I don't care. You know why? Because I don't have to reboot to play them. Being able to use the desktop I like and still have games, even if not perfect, is way better than having to use a desktop I dislike or reboot every time I want to fire up a game.
Same reason I deal with wine, except the Linux ports generally "just work" which is also worth losing a bit of optimisation.
I still can't do the consoles. I bought one from every generation except the latest xbone / ps4 iteration. I just can't do it. I find the controllers bad for anything except fighting games and I generally like more complex games. Games that lend themselves to planning over days and often tabbing to a browser for insights.
I hate however having to boot to windows to play games. It drives me nuts. So I have a couple of linux native games I play but I mainly stream them from a windows machine via the steam client. It "just works", so my everyday machine is a dell latitude in a docking station running linux mint and I have an over the top gaming rig running windows in the garage. WOL and autostart steam. then a shutdown script. done.
Ultimately, it's Linux and OpenGL's fault, not the games companies. The OpenGL API is fundamentally opposed to an efficient implementation. It allows developers to do fundamentally inefficient things (like dramatically changing configurations at the last second, before rendering, requiring the driver to recompile/reoptimise shaders and/or reverify states) immediately before rendering. Furthermore, it doesn't allow developers to do fundamentally efficient things (i.e. giving the driver a heads up about exactly what state/shader combinations it's going to use, so that they can be made ready at compile/launch time).
There's a very good reason that games on PC/XBox target Direct3D, games on Playstation target LibGCM, and Apple have launched their own 3D API (Metal). You only need to look at the stats - Metal on an iPad Air will manage to run 3000 draw calls per frame, OpenGL, only 200. All because the API is fundamentally difficult to efficiently implement or use.
Gaming is never going to "take off" on Linux, because most Linux users don't like paying for software or DRM,,,,, and making games costs money.
The Valve/Steam experiment was just that--a way to test the waters, since nobody else had. Enjoy it while you can, because it's not a permanent thing.
Any expression of worry or complaint is inherently invalid as any conceivable problem that matters is a technical problem and any technical problem can be fixed by just doing the work needed to fix the problem.
The people who actually write the code have written what they wrote and the rest of us should be grateful. The prospect of some essay-writer making any sort of useful contribution is, frankly, laughable.
In other words, don't show me an essay, show me the code.
Want to know why game studios aren't going the last mile?
Because of money.
The era of the PS2, PS3, Xbox and Xbox360 signaled a huge change in the gaming market - suddenly consoles were popular, and profitable No longer did game developers had to rely on the fickle PC market and its absurdly high piracy rate (90%+) to make money - they could rely on consoles to make money (and most consoles have a reasonably low piracy rate - 10% or under on the Xbox 360, fair bit higher on PS3, but not more than 20%).
They don't have to deal with technical support, they don't have to deal with doing DRM (or the issues that arise from it), and other things. Valve helped out by releasing one of the first "app stores" which had built in DRM, but by then the transition had happened. The PC was no longer the primary platform - it was now a secondary one, and only worthy of getting a port from the console version. At least through Steam and traditional sales most PC ports made back their money, and piracy was still an issue, but when console games "got it first", it really didn't matter too much as you're just going for scraps.
So the emphasis is on - what do game makers get for optimizing on Linux? Remember, it's easy to get 90% there quickly, but the last 10% will take a lot more time and effort.
So if you can release a half-assed port that mostly works on Linux, it may sell. Optimize it and may sell better, but given the low-hanging fruit is gone, the profitability becomes suspect because the increase in sales may not be bigger than the increase in effort.
Hey, I said half-assed. You know what? Most PC ports the past few years of AAA games? They were half-assed, and often didn't even remove console assets! And this was way before SteamOS.
Back when it was announced. No small number of people voice some choice words with me at the time about how Valve supposedly knew what they are doing better than I possibly could.
Honestly, I really wished, and admittedly even dared to hope that I would actually be wrong.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
As the way things are going, SteamOS will be a great platform for indie games, that's for sure. But Ubisoft? Rockstar? EA? Activision Blizzard? I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future.
If the market is there, the game makers will follow.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Chicken meet egg. Egg meet chicken.
Both of you meet your chaperone, Valve, who are actually doing something to solve the problem of nobody bothering to port to Linux because "there are no other games on it", and thus nobody bothering to optimise for games "because nobody is porting to Linux".
More has happened in Linux gaming in the last couple of years thanks, almost exclusively, to the push from Valve than has happened in all the years before.
Something like a third of my 800-game Steam library runs on Linux now. That's bloody amazing. And they are all double-click-and-it-just-runs from the Steam client.
Those publishers too lazy to do this - are you telling me that they don't spot bugs in nVidia drivers and report them on Windows? Are you saying they don't spend a lot of their time working around bugs in drivers? Because for damn sure I've seen a lot of big releases have to patch like mad on day one when they hit all the ATI and nVidia and Intel bugs, and get bad performance reviews on certain chipsets etc.
Valve are DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Whatever you perceive the current state to be, that's something to be applauded. And, to my eye, they've done a damn good job and not once have bitched about Linux beyond "look at this odd performance bug we found where a manufacturer never bothered to turn the optimisation on for Linux machines".
I vote with my wallet and only buy games that work on Linux. Recently, Valve (all games), Borderlands 2, Witcher 2, Civilization V and few other games got the money.
For games that don't work on Linux, I either don't play them or if I'm tempted I'll pirate them and play it on wine. If you want my money, then you know what to do...
Also, if a game gets released on Linux after I've already played it, it will still get my money (see Witcher 2 above).
Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and the Unity engine both have Linux versions already. So does Valve's (obviously). EA's Frostbite engine has an OpenGL version, so that's part of the way. There's no market. Not a significant one, anyhow. Most people that are in the market to buy games either have a console, handheld, or a Windows/OSX PC. The vast majority. Then you've got the people like me, who dual boot all of their systems (so we're already customers, anyhow).
Then, over in a tiny little corner, you've got the Linux users with a gamer-grade PC, no OS but Linux, no console, and pockets lined with cash earmarked for games if only publishers'd release them on their OS of choice! Except it's "user", not "users". Yeah, that one guy standing in the corner. That's the market: people that want to buy games, want more than the (mostly Indie) games that have been released for Linux already, but won't (or can't) switch to a platform that has a larger selection.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Look, if you're going to keep pointing at me I'll have to bite your finger off.
Yea? My crappy racing wheel controller beats them for driving games, my not-so-crappy flight stick beats them for flying games. My keyboard and mouse beat them for most of the rest. What is left is fighting, sports, and platformers, which I don't play. If I played them I would get an arcade cabinet style controller for fighting, some basic gamepad for platformers, and still wouldn't play sports games.
Let me tell you a little secret. You can use racing wheel, flight stick, keyboard, and mouse on console too.
Also, my computer is upgradeabe, gets better graphics, ans also does other things besides running games.
Doesn't really matter when what's available on the market are console ports. You do have better graphic, I'll give you that
The best part is my computer need less updates than my consoles, which always require some updates whenever I switch them on.
Really? I always have to update steam each time I open it.
Valve isn't complaining. It's an ex-employee of Valve who is.
Mada mada dane.
You're only proving that Linux has still not matured as a full-fledged desktop OS. 20 years ago the only excuse we had for owning a copy of Windows was for the sake of gaming. 10 years ago it was the same. And now you're saying it's still the same.
Just tried Warthunder on Linux 2 days ago and was shocked to see that it simply worked like no other game on Linux ever before.
No crashes, runs in fullscreen mode well and yet I can switch workspaces without breaking it. Sound works well, incredibly fast on my old machine. Just amazing.
For me, this is a big milestone, because I am so used to Linux games ('bigger' ones) not working properly - especially on release day.
What I'd really want to see happening is that somebody would finally manage to be successful by consecrating on actual game content worth spending time on.
You know, I played my first computer games some 35 years ago - it's actually scary to think about those numbers; games like 'Colossal Cave' on a Cyber computer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure) or the first platform hoppers (character based on CP/M). What is really scare, though, is that content-wise nothing has ever moved since then. I don't give a toss about whether Linux has the very best driver for the latest ultra-, hyper-, super graphics card out there, because the games are still the same, old, tired re-run. It's like a $1000 gift card for MacDonalds - yeah, it's worth $1000, but on the other hand, it's for MacDonald's.
Then you've got the people like me, who dual boot all of their systems (so we're already customers, anyhow).
I've seen this claim too many times now. I also dual boot for the few games that I cannot play under Linux, when I can be bothered - which is not often. Dual booting is a hassle, especially since it happens so seldom, it usually involves updating the Steam client, the games, and even Windows itself which takes forever. So I don't do it (anymore). If a game is only available for Windows, I no longer buy it. I have so many Linux games already, I have no need for something that I know I won't be playing.
There you go; at least one instance of "lost sale due to Windows only".
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
I've been on Slashdot for a long time and always heard that this is the year of Linux on the desktop. It's not this year, or next, and it never will be.
Frankly, I am happy to run Linux to power servers or even for development work. It excels in those areas. However, the sad reality for our resident Windows haters is that well... Windows isn't that bad any more. It doesn't crash. Yeah, Windows 8 is a mess on the UI side but on the performance side, it's exceptional. It can run as a server quite well. IIS is a pretty good web server. SQL Server is also pretty good. And Visual Studio is still arguably the best IDE (though I can't speak from personal experience on this).
So what is the benefit of Linux gaming? Well, none, really. The real benefit is to instigate a bunch of Linux lovers to bring love to SteamOS and as a result, Valve, so that Microsoft never gets off the ground their 'app store'. Because that's the true reason of the discontent by Valve, isn't it? It's not that Windows is "so bad" any more, it's that Valve, which is basically a monopoly, is in threat of having that monopoly broken by Microsoft (kind of ironic if you think about it).
And that's the reality. If you like Linux, that's great. But you can't use the argument of Windows being that bad any more, which is WHY you like Linux. It's simply not true. I'm more of the opinion that the requirement you have should dictate the use of the right tool. And this is a case of forcing the wrong tool (Linux) to match requirements of playing games that seems backwards. But not being a Windows lover or hater, or Linux lover or hater, I suppose I'm in a unique camp that way.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Sorry to be raining on your parade, folks, but seriously, no one really cares.
If Windows 8 has become a utility OS for Steam and Valve is OK with that and is dropping Linux as a foundation - so effing what? Valve would've built yet another dodgy distro of Linux (a shabby Debian fork I'd guess) and I think we all can agree that we have enough of those. And if you think that Valve would've put effort into the community - think again. Their a business.
With Android and Chrome OS we already have to large Linux distros comparatively tightly controlled by a MegaCorp. And from what I can tell, Android is going to be the next gen gaming OS. Convergence is upon us and once that's through, no one will give a damn about the "Desktop" - it was a crappy metaphor anyway - or PC gaming. Aside from a few enthusiasts and development professionals perhaps.
You'll plug your phone into your TV/Monitor grab your favorite independantly manufactured gaming controller and play Assasins Creed 12 you've just downloaded and bought a 32-hour gaming ticket for.
NVidia Shield anyone? Did you see the gaming demo in the iPhone 6 presentation? Gaming on smartphones and tablets is just taking of and there are enough experts in gaming who've expressed their feeling that the current gen of consoles will be the last. XBone is bombing, Wii has significantly slowed and the PS4 is one step away from becoming Sonys all-in media and home computing center - if they don't screw this one up that is.
No one want the Linux desktop, because the Desktop is on the way out.
Utility OSes like iOS, Chrome and Anroid is where the parties at now. End of Story.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
My crappy racing wheel controller beats them for driving games, my not-so-crappy flight stick beats them for flying games. My keyboard and mouse beat them for most of the rest.
You do know that you can use those with consoles, right?
What is left is fighting, sports, and platformers, which I don't play.
And ARPG's, RPGs, adventure games, etc etc.
which always require some updates whenever I switch them on.
In other words, you play mostly on PC, so you're not using them enough and the updates build up.
"He ends his post by agreeing with a Slashdot comment where someone is basically saying that SteamOS is done" ..
.. 'and that we will never get our hands on the Steam Controller'
'I don't agree that SteamOS is done just yet', Rich Geldreich
That bit came from the slashdot commentator and *not* Rich Geldreich.
Until Linux can bring something compelling to the table, gaming on linux is only done for one of three reasons:
-Convenience, people who use a linux box as their main box and don't like switching to another OS for their games (SMALL market but growing)
-Politics, people who feel strongly enough about open source to write out any other OS as an option
-Novelty, people who enjoy tinkering with the OS and the freedom it offers, and want to make it work if possible
Gaming is, at its very basic roots, about immersion. You can't immerse yourself with graphical artifacts, having to fight to make games work on your platform, and having limited options on what you're able to play. You shouldn't have to work to be able to play, that's only enjoyable for the tinkerers of the world or if (20 years ago) that was the only option. Its no longer 1995 guys. Until linux can offer something that is worth considering, it is not a direct competitor. "It's open source" is only a valid to a small subset invested in the politics of it, and is currently the only thing Linux has going for it other than cost. Very few are going to consider open source a heavily weighted bullet point on the pros/cons list vs other platforms. Theoretically, Linux could compete on cost or performance, and more recently the vanishingly small possibility of Valve exclusives with SteamOS. Until it can do so without the downsides, its not going anywhere.
The number of people who exclusively use linux is vanishingly small precisely because linux is rarely capable of standing on its own for all of any given user's needs. Until that's addressed, people will have their second PC/Console/DualBoot/MAC for gaming, and linux will be seen as an inferior choice because more work and less product plague the platform compared to your alternative.
I did, on my PS3, I was getting 30fps max at 1080p. Some games like Resident Evil were dipping as as 3fps at times for scenes. They didn't perform well on the Playstation.
What is wrong with the nVidia drivers?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Companies barely optimize for Windows at this point (have you seen the minimum requirement for assassin's creed unity?).
Heck, some games have slowdowns on -consoles-.
And you expected them to optimize the Linux version?
Baby steps here cowboy.
Then, over in a tiny little corner, you've got the Linux users with a gamer-grade PC, no OS but Linux, no console, and pockets lined with cash earmarked for games if only publishers'd release them on their OS of choice! Except it's "user", not "users". Yeah, that one guy standing in the corner. That's the market: people that want to buy games, want more than the (mostly Indie) games that have been released for Linux already, but won't (or can't) switch to a platform that has a larger selection.
I think it's actually narrower than that, most people who use Linux exclusively do it because of ideological, economical or because you find it the best tool for the job.
The ideologists aren't going to buy closed-source, commercial DRM-wrapped games.
If you picked Linux to save money you aren't very likely to waste it playing games.
And using Linux for gaming is pretty much the opposite of being pragmatic.
The only real counterargument is if you consider there's a broad selection and more games than time to play them. You could play any one of these five games but you're going to buy the one that runs on Linux because that's convenient and you can play it on any machine you own. If you want to play *that* particular AAA title there aren't really any substitutes though.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Valve is still paying LunarG to find and fix silly perf bugs in Intel's slow open source driver"
Now see there's your problem. You're using Intel's crappy on board graphics and then complaining about performance in games. Try using a dedicated card from AMD or Nvidia.
"Some" easier probably, but the PS4 doesn't use OpenGL but GNM and GNMX
In Scott Adam's, Dilbert's Principle, he has a chapter on "abnormal" engineers. Normal engineers what to modify and perfect everything technical, to the detriment of usability and form. One "abnormal" engineer was a guy who had an unmodified TV remote and is quoted that he happy that the damn thing works.
Windows 8, from the desktop, works. I don't care about Windows as long as I get my damn Steam games.
We "FreeBSD cough*PS4" owners get cookies? No one told me. And while my PS4 may not have SystemD, my Fedora 20 box does....I don't mind it.
It is kind of weird reading all of the negative comments about the steam Linux experience because mine has been largely positive. After spending about a decade screwing around with wine to get various games to play often with limited functionality or weird graphics bugs, playing natively through steam has been amazing. I don't know what the Civ V experience was like on windows I guess but it looks great even on my 2 year old laptop. Beyond the indie stuff, I find it absolutely amazing that any AAA titles are getting ported to linux *at all*. Could it be better? Probably. Seems to me that is going to take time as the Linux gaming user base needs to expand to the point where it makes financial sense to go that extra mile. I'm willing to be patient and buy the ports as they come in, because that's likely the only way it is going to get better.
It doesn't mater what OS I play it on, I actively refused to buy a license for any game that doesn't at least run on OSX. Once most games have an OSX/OpenGL port its only a mater of time before Linux becomes a easier port/support option.
Momento Mori
There is no engineering solution to this particular problem. The only solution is a market one. When customers buy games on Linux desktop at the rate of Windows desktop the game industry and hardware stack developers will care enough to put their A team on it (better yet they will hire more developers downstream to work on it). I don't believe this will happen and here is why:
We are in the middle of a platform shift today. The PC desktop is in decline and the players are fighting for a shrinking market. Mobile is saturating the market. A successful Linux gaming market people don't want to talk about is Android. Google provided a compelling alternative to the Apple ecosystem. Many hardware vendors had a limited to no market in the Apple ecosystem, Google provided an more open hardware ecosystem with developer credibility. Hardware vendors are now squeezing every bit of performance out of the mobile hardware today.
The Linux desktop does not have the same opportunity now, we kind of blew it a decade ago when PCs were relevant. We then blew it again when Netbooks were on the rise (started as Linux only at first), and then blew it again during the Windows 8 debacle (Chromebooks are our only success story here (similar to Android in this respect)). With all the in fighting about compositors, windows managers, incompatible kernel ABI, etc there is no compelling story. There was no real market to demonstrate who the winners and losers were and drive developer resources, so here we are in 2014 still arguing about stuff like Wayland, Mir, X, etc. The "free" free market leads developers to argue about dumb shit like GUI tool kits, syntax indenting, and init systems. Hardware vendors don't give a shit because they can't sell units based on these things. We are not solving problems that would grow their bottom line and thus they have no interest in growing our bottom line. This is simple economics.
Many Linux desktop diehards have moved to MacOS X which is has competent desktop, with a rich market of customers willing to play, and software library that is brimming with quality apps, with a UNIXey environment underneath. Apple demonstrated what we could have done if we had gotten our act together and the market has rewarded them.
> Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and the Unity engine both have Linux versions already. So does Valve's (obviously). EA's Frostbite engine has an OpenGL version, so that's part of the way. There's no market. Not a significant one, anyhow. Most people that are in the market to buy games either have a console, handheld, or a Windows/OSX PC. The vast majority.
_...and which version to you think those MacOS users are going to be using? You seem to be casually lumping MacOS and Windows together here and seem to be forgetting that they are NOT THE SAME THING. They aren't the same thing at all.
That OpenGL port is needed first and foremost for MacOS because it doesn't run DirectX because this is a Microsoft only thing and THAT problem isn't a Linux only thing.
You idiots trying to lump Windows and MacOS together are conveniently ignoring all of the reasons that MacOS is more like Linux and if anything should be lumped with Linux and not Windows.
Linux ports are being done by MAC porting houses for this reason.
Blithering idiots.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't think it's that narrow. At least for myself, the description of the GP is more or less accurate. I run Linux because it's just so much more convenient for pretty much everything I do compared to Windows. I used to have a dual boot configuration, for games, but after I realised I hadn't booted into Windows for more than a year, I decided to just drop it. Once Steam started releasing games officially for Linux, I have taken up gaming again, buying more games than I have ever before. And for whatever reason, it has turned out that almost every game I have wanted to get so far has been released on Linux. I don't really care if the FPS is slightly lower because some developer haven't optimised something properly, and if it's ever a huge issue I'll just buy a more powerful graphics card. What I want is to be able to start and run the game at more or less decent performance, without jumping through hoops or rebooting the system, and I'll buy it. If not, I'll find some other way to enjoy my leisure time. I don't mind spending money on games if they are available, but I don't need them.
That's me. I'm a casual gamer. I use Linux because it simply works better for me. It's not worth booting into Windows to play a game, because I'd be locked out of everything else. I don't watch or own a TV, so I've never bought a console. So I simply didn't play games for years.
But Humble Bundle started making me aware of the Linux games available out there. Then Steam came out. A little over a year ago I spent several hundred dollars on decent graphics card to drive my 1440p display. I've spent hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours playing games.
I'm not too cheap to buy a Windows license. Money is not the issue. Booting into Windows is simply not worth the hassle.
Be relentless!
I built a steam box at about the time that Valve sent out the 300 steam machines and my experience has been one of constant improvement. Initially buggy and prone to crashes, Steam OS has improved to the point where it is very solid. The library of games that support Linux is continuously increasing, and the user experience is decent.
From my perspective the state of Linux gaming has never been better. The Humble Bundle and Valve/Steam OS have both contributed greatly to a massive increase in Linux games and are continuing to do so. It shouldn't be surprising that smaller developers are leading the charge: AAA developers are extremely conservative in part due to the massive amount of money they must invest in their games.
In conclusion: I have a Linux game box with the ease of use of a console and the power and customizability of a PC, with a large game library that continues to expand! I'm happy.
Some studios aside from Valve have given Linux a proper treatment, but most seem to do the bare minimum to claim they support Linux. I recently bought Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel on launch night (ported to Linux by Aspyr), and ran into puzzling behavior where the program stops before even writing a log file and just sits there waiting to be closed; Aspyr support took one look at my specs, saw that I use AMD (they only claim to support NVidia), and washed their hands of it. Why is it the entire Source engine portfolio, Interstellar Marines, etc. work so well on everything, but so many studios like Aspyr only bother to support an oddly selective token Linux configuration?
Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and the Unity engine both have Linux versions already. So does Valve's (obviously). EA's Frostbite engine has an OpenGL version, so that's part of the way. There's no market. Not a significant one, anyhow. Most people that are in the market to buy games either have a console, handheld, or a Windows/OSX PC. The vast majority. Then you've got the people like me, who dual boot all of their systems (so we're already customers, anyhow).
Of course there aren't a lot of gamers who run pure Linux systems, because there aren't enough high quality games to be a gamer on a pure Linux system.
But if SteamOS becomes more popular then some Linux gamers who dual boot start going pure Linux (and playing more games because rebooting is less of a hassle). And some current pure Linux users who do a little gaming, and have been satisfied with basic Linux games, start buying modern games through valve.
It's not a huge market but there's enough that I can see them being interested, particularly since it gives Valve a chance to corner the new market.
I stole this Sig
PC gaming is generally such an afterthought already (can you say, 'bare bones port?'), I don't know why anyone would expect anything at all for Linux.
From a marketing an pop-culture viewpoint, OSX is more similar to Windows. It's a larger market, and it's a mainstream product. It's actually available in stores and viewed as something that "normal people" buy. As an example, my fairly non-technical parents would consider (and have considered) buying an Apple computer. That is why I "casually lumped [them] together". The technical hurdles aren't the problem, IMO. Not the biggest barrier to seeing more games on Linux, anyhow.
Blithering idiots.
Glass houses, and all that.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I usually keep the desktop booted into Windows, and the laptop booted into Linux. Steam's network streaming feature comes in handy, with that setup. There's no reboot involved, but I *do* end up using two computers at once. Good thing the wife has her own laptop...
My point wasn't that your demographic doesn't exist, just that it's nowhere near low-hanging fruit. Being generous, it's the intersection of gamers and people who use Linux in any form. Realistically, the demographic is more nuanced, something like "Linux users who have an x% likelihood to buy a specific Windows-only game, and an increase of y% that they'll buy it as a Linux port". There's a point where the splinters of markets get too small for a lot of developers to worry about, where it becomes a question of spending 5% more in development to gain an extra 2% in sales, and it doesn't make sense any more.
I'd expect Humble Indie Bundle numbers to be fairly high, in terms of Linux user representation. I know that I've marked "Linux" as my OS of choice every time I've purchased one. Out of 4,998,506 purchases, 332,944 have been Linux (6.7%), 616,596 are OSX (12.3%), and 3,962,890 have been Windows (79.2%). Linux users generally pay nearly double what Windows users do, so there's that in their favor.
~20% of the market may be worth it, depending on how much more work it takes to get there. ~5% may not be, based on the same factors. Most of the large developers seem to be taking the gamble that enough of the people that are "Linux users" will still buy a Windows-only game (or buy the same thing on a console). And while there are exceptions, they seem to be mostly right. From the dev's perspective, losing a few percent of your market is bad; spending a disproportionate amount of your budget to pick up a few extra percent is worse.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
As someone who's been a linux user and admin on a daily basis since the late '90s, let me say I am entirely unsurprised. Our developer community is not great at doing accelerated graphics drivers and the vendors all turn out sub-par binary blob laden drivers. The linux gaming thing has been a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream for years, I pretty much knew valve wouldn't be able to make it happen. I was hoping I would be proved wrong, but it isn't looking good.
On the bright side, I don't have time to game anymore so I don't really care =)
"If you love someone, set them free. If they come home, set them on fire." - George Carlin
One difference between most PCs and most consoles is that most PCs are on desks, not in living rooms. If only more major developers would put out PC games that take full advantage of the larger physical surface area of a television monitor, such as making good use of the 2 to 4 USB gamepads that the OS supports, then a PC in the living room might become more attractive. But PC game developers instead want to sell multiple copies to a single household.
No sane (game) developer will stick their hands into the Windows Modern/Metro/Store development environment as it is a limited MS-controlled sandbox where you get to do what Microsoft decides you get to do.
Let's turn that around: "No sane (game) developer will stick their hands into the [Xbox/Xbox 360/Xbox One] development environment as it is a limited MS-controlled sandbox where you get to do what Microsoft decides you get to do." Yet there are plenty of games for Xbox family consoles from major publishers.
Can you imagine that? A console that can be upgraded as needed?
top kek
I'll guess this means "I find this most laughable, and I speak Korean or Horde Common." Continue:
Perhaps you don't understand the only remaining difference between a game console and a PC....
It can't be upgrades because N64 had a RAM upgrade, all consoles since the Xbox 360 have had storage upgrades (including the Wii, since Wii Menu 4.0), etc. So might the difference be monitor size? A far larger percentage of consoles than PCs are connected to living room TVs.
Um, I'm that guy too. These days there are more Linux games out there than I have time to spend playing them. Plus, my two biggest gaming time sinks got ported: Civilization 5 and Mount & Blade: Warband.
Gone are the days of fussing around with Wine or going through the hassle of discarding my workspace to boot Windows. Hence I don't bother considering buying games that are Windows exclusive.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
>
I hate however having to boot to windows to play games. It drives me nuts.
Which part? Simply the fact that you have to run Windows or that you have to wait for it to boot?
If it's an amazingly fast boot time that you want, then you need to get a nice fast SSD drive. I installed these in my desktop gaming system and it boots up faster than the consoles....
Linux...has been going downhill in the last 5 years precisely because too many people invite their friends and family, and they complain that they can't play games...
The world [needs] a platform where everything is infinitely configurable and simple enough for dumb robots to understand, and people are forced to become experts. And that platform is dying.
infinitely configurable
simple enough for a dumb robot to understand
[while] people are forced to become experts in the platform
and here I thought an OS was a means to an end and not an end in itself.
not something to be hugged chokingly tight and close like a child's teddy bear.
the modern computer game demands an affordable OS and hardware capable of translating endless streams of ones and zeroes into a richly interactive and immersive theatrical experience ---
and suggesting a practical solution to the problem of how to present and interact with massive amounts of data of any kind.
It's the part of having to close down things that I would like to leave running. eg chrome or gedit.
As I said I don't really tend to play the twitch reflex games anymore (eg. gnomoria has eaten a chunk of my life recently) so there is no harm in tabbing out to do something else. So I often have terminals running or conversations running in the background independent of the game. Having to reboot breaks all the other things I am doing.
The boot time is not really an issue, as I run an ssd.
I've been running Linux as my primary desktop for about 8 years now. 20 years ago I wouldn't have used it. Far too many rough edges for dealing with every day (YMMV).
I have found the last 2 years to have seen a big improvement in gaming support for linux. And I hold valve 100% responsible for that. Now I can spend about 50% of my gaming time natively in linux (the types of games I play helps) and using the streaming option means my main machine no longer dual boots.
So in the last 2 years I have gone from dual boot as a necessity to not having it. You cannot change something as ingrained as windows as the dominant OS overnight. But now a lot more people at least know there is such a thing as linux.
If the Xfce panel makes the system usable again, you might as well just dive into Xfce like I did. sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop and never look back.
Then implement the DirectX APIs on Linux.
Some DirectX APIs do work in Wine. But if Oracle defeats Google in court, watch Microsoft get an injunction against the Wine team for copying DirectX and the rest of the Win32 API for that matter.
You can use racing wheel, flight stick, keyboard, and mouse on console too.
Which Xbox 360 or Xbox One games support mouse and keyboard for something other than chat? And with PC, you can carry your favorite input devices forward from one "generation" to the next. Good luck doing that with any Sony or Microsoft console.
When "ports" of such games are released (e.g. System Shock 2), they are often just the Windows version packaged with Wine
An official Wine version does mean that the game's publisher has done any necessary "porting" work to make the game work under Wine and certifies that the performance under Wine meets the standard of the publisher's brand. So a Wine game running under a GTK+ desktop environment (such as GNOME or Xfce) is no less "native" than a Qt app running under the same environment.
But if a platform has only indie games and no major-label system sellers, what's to stop it from fizzling the same way OUYA did?
If I had to run those games on Windows, that money would have gone to paying for Windows
If you buy a laptop that isn't a MacBook, you'll probably have to pay for the Windows license anyway because it comes at no additional charge with the hardware.
If Windows 8 has become a utility OS for Steam and Valve is OK with that and is dropping Linux as a foundation - so effing what?
It means the Steam Machine has become $100 more expensive, making it $100 harder for Valve's manufacturer partners to compete with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
And from what I can tell, Android is going to be the next gen gaming OS.
OUYA tried that. It fizzled.
I agree that consumable IAPs are crap. But is a free first mission with the rest of the game as a single IAP expansion also crap? Say if Final Fantasy VII were free to play through the end of Midgar, and then Square Enix charged one price to unlock the rest of the game.
If an indie game was available for Windows and Linux but "OS X: Coming Soon" pending the next round of funding, would you still refuse to buy a license? If so, why?
Actually Sony has a fully supported OpenGL 4.1 implementation for the Playstation 4.
It's easier to make high performance games using the low level APIs, but quite a few games actually don't need that.
Actually Sony has a fully supported OpenGL 4.1 implementation for the Playstation 4.
They do? Thanks for the correction.
The one gotcha here is that iOS app publishers aren't allowed to use "demo" in the title or description (App Store Review Guidelines 2.9). Then the problem becomes how to express how much story is in the free portion without either using "demo" or spoiling the collapse of the city's roof. Would it be enough to use the following in the description? "This app contains the first few hours of the game, which take place in Midgar. The rest of the game is available as a one-time in-app purchase of $x.xx."
You must have been sleeping for the last 20 years, because that is exactly what I've heard numerous times in the 90s.
Then Linux started to dominate webservers. (late 90s)
Then Linux started to dominate supercomputers. (early 00s)
Then Linux started to dominate embedded systems. (mid 00s)
Then Linux started to dominate cellphones. (early 10s)
Now Linux is starting to dominate tablets.
Yes, Linux is not (yet) dominating desktops - but even without the desktop, the number of markets Linux dominates right now is pretty impressive. That's not hobbyist.
Um, I'm that guy too.
This site has an unusual demographic, compared to the general population. We're much more likely to be Linux users, for instance, so this site was the wrong place to take my hyperbole in that direction. I'm still not convinced that there's a sizable market for Linux games. I'd consider the Humble Indie Bundle packs to be the best-case scenarios, and there, you see Linux users paying more than anyone else (which speaks to a desire among the Linux users out there), but there're generally about 50% as many sales as Mac users, and closer to 5% as many sales as Windows users.
Plus, my two biggest gaming time sinks got ported: Civilization 5 and Mount & Blade: Warband.
Gone are the days of fussing around with Wine or going through the hassle of discarding my workspace to boot Windows.
And I wish that was true for me, as well. The last time it was, my time sinks were Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tournament 2003. Warcraft 3 worked passably in Wine without much futzing, and so did Alpha Centauri (I didn't know, at the time, that AC had a native Linux release). Ah, wait, that's not right. I played a fair amount of Minecraft a couple of years ago. Still, most of what I'm interested in isn't available on the platform I'd like it to use it on. I don't think that's going to change, because I just don't believe that a big enough market exists to justify the dev+support costs.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Then you've got the people like me, who dual boot all of their systems (so we're already customers, anyhow).
Then, over in a tiny little corner, you've got the Linux users with a gamer-grade PC, no OS but Linux, no console, and pockets lined with cash earmarked for games if only publishers'd release them on their OS of choice!
I think you've mis-characterised the demographic. I single boot Linux (because dual booting is a pain), but I still buy Windows games via Steam that work via WINE. If a game isn't playable under WINE (which is increasingly uncommon these days) and doesn't have a native Linux port, I simply don't buy it.
Valve knows exactly how many people are doing this, and my guess is its a small but non-trivial number.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
There's also a *slight* slice of demographic that doesn't fit so neatly. For about 7 years, I was "that guy in the corner".. I was *waiting* for a serious Linux Gaming happening. I finally broke down and installed Win7 on a box just to be able to play a couple games I'd been waiting for *years* to see if they got a proper Linux port. I'm still waiting, really.. despite having a Windows gaming pc..
But besides being "That One Guy".. I know probably close to 100 people who have a console, but really don't want to *play* on consoles... ("PC Master Race" sort of thing).. but who also really really *hate* having to run MS products to get any kind of decent PC gaming experience.. They're like me, except I don't have a console, and don't want one either.
Their gaming is kind of.. grudgingly done. Now, I can't actually *prove* this.. but with the amount of b*tching I hear about both Microsoft and Consoles from them.. I'm fairly convinced that were they to find a honest to god "Linux Gaming Solution" that had the support of the AAA's..They'd not only switch to it, but *ALSO* increase their general expediture on games as a side effect.
So there may be at least some people who would increase their consumption simply due to being happier with the environment they consume in.. like someone ordering more at a restaurant because the decor or service is especially pleasant to them. I am one of those. Nothing would make me happier than to be able to say goodbye completely to MS again, and still be able to play awesome games. I can't do that on Linux yet. At least not the awesome games I want to play.
Now, if I could do that on Linux.. my last reservation about "going heavy gamer" goes away, and significantly more of my income would get routed that way because I'm not hesitant about getting f*cked by MS down the line.
Just a thought though.
You and your friends aren't the "corner guy", you're another group, in between him and the group I'd consider myself part of. I'd *prefer* Linux games, but if they aren't available, I'll boot Windows instead. I tend to game in streaks of time on Windows and program in streaks on Linux (with "general use" being done on either), so I'll kind of switch off between primary OSes a couple of times per month.
The way I see it though, is that even with the assumption that *no* people that use Linux at all buy any games, and that they'd all represent part of a completely untapped market, they might make up 5% of the potential market (being generous, IMO). If there's already a MacOS port or the game was written in OpenGL anyhow, they may as well reach for that extra percentage. But of course, you've got the people that buy some Windows or consoles games anyhow (grudgingly or not), so that decreases the sales benefit of targeting that group.
I'm convinced that game developers will act in their own short-term best interests. 10% increase in dev costs to gain 15% of the market? Score! 10% increase in dev costs to gain 5% of the market? Even if there's a net profit, I think that they're worried about the percentage of the profit margin.
And all this doesn't even mention that "Linux" isn't exactly one platform. "Ubuntu" is several platforms, depending on the DE in use, and with frequent releases, it makes a kind of moving target. Add in all the people that want to use some kind of Redhat, Debian, SuSE, Arch, etc, and you've got a bigger mess than the dev issues deploying an app to Android. There are several fairly-solid reasons *not* to target Linux (favoring Windows, and Mac to a lesser extent), and comparatively-tenuous reasons *to* support it.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
So, Wine's decreasing the number of games that you can't buy, it's doing so without Valve or the other game developers having to do any work (or more importantly, pay any money), *and* it puts the onus of product support on the users themselves. You're not part of the demographic I've described. You're part of a demographic that still buys a percentage of the games that they would if native Linux ports were available, and where that percentage is growing on its own. They get sales, and you get the shaft because you don't really have any recourse for support from the company, if something goes wrong. "Ohhhh, we can't verify that problem's existence on Windows, and we don't support Wine. So sorry". As a software developer, support issues where I can say "That isn't a supported use-case" are quite welcome.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
If it's not supported on WINE, then it's completely random whether or not the WINE demographic will buy it, and MBA-types tend to prefer predictability.
Furthermore, if it does work well under WINE, that implies the effort needed to port it is minimal - simply bundling WINE (or a similar translation layer) with it would be sufficient. In my experience, there isn't much support available for games anyway, unless it's a game-breaking bug that affects a large number of people.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.