They don’t have to release on Linux at all!!
All they have to do is click a checkbox in the EAC SDK & contact Battleye to support Valve’s Proton & that’s it!! It is a Tim Sweeney problem.
Also, Unreal Engine, which the Epic Games Launcher was built in for some reason also has a checkmark for Linux, and they refuse to tick it. It’s to the point that while it is possible to do development for Unreal on Linux, they had to build a completely different way to get it up and running since the launcher doesn’t support Linux.
They consciously make efforts not to support Linux, it would literally take less effort to do it.
To be entirely fair this is much less of a “tick the Linux box” solution, you actually have to program thing differently to work on Linux in that case. They obviously have the resources to do it but it’s less infuriating than the literal single click it would take to enable EAC on Linux on $game.
Yes, generating a Linux build wouldn’t require a lot of changes to the code.
But if they support Linux, they have to support Linux. This is not some student’s first indie game, but instead a massive game with up to 290 million monthly active users. That’s 3.7% of the whole world’s population! (And it’s also more than the number of total Linux users.)
So supporting Linux means they need to test on at least all currently maintained versions of maybe the top 20 or so distros on all sorts of hardware configurations. That would increase their testing costs by around a factor of 20.
They also need to support customers if they have problems. Considering the variability of Linux configurations, chances are high that this comparatively small segment of players will consume an aproportional amount of difficult support requests.
And lastly, if the Linux version of the game has some serious bugs on some setup, it might likely be that all these Linux users think the game is shit and start talking badly about it.
So it’s just a simple cost calculation: Does Linux support increase or decrease the total profit?
And if the variables change, the calculation changes with it. Exactly as Sweeny said in his post. People like Sweeny don’t care about ideals or about which OS they prefer. They only care about money.
And the revelation that a CEO likes money and dislikes risk isn’t exactly hard to figure out.
10 million is just an arbitrary number he will not honor when it is reached.
Valve has sold ‘multiple millions’(source) already. The 10 million will probably be reached soon. Not even to mention all the Linux users.
And frankly it’s not a him problem. Nearly every dev refuses to release on Linux (and Mac) because of its small user base.
Yes it is. He does not have to release for Linux. He just needs to allow the anti cheat to run on Proton. This is a simple config change not more. Fortnite will probably run fine on Proton.
It’s one thing to not release for Linux (thanks to wine and proton it’s no Biggie) another thing is to actively sabotage it to run on Linux which some Developers who can’t check a fricking Checkbox in EAC do.
Not preventing Linux use is implicit support, and it opens up another platform for cheaters to exploit. So if it works and your entire game is based on the online, MP experience, you need to QA on all possible platforms to stay on top of cheaters.
Support for Steam Deck != support for Linux version. Steam Deck use Proton to run Windows game on linux seamlessly.
Their direct competitor, Apex Legend, is steam deck verified. Big games like Monster Hunter World/Rise, Cyberpunk, Baldurs Gate 3, Elden Ring, etc etc, all steam deck verified. Check out this page for more info
It’s not a Linux problem, it’s a Tim Sweeny problem.
Yes that’s correct. They seemed dismissive of it even back in 2008 seeing more cons than potential in the market. It’s like the Windows approach to smartphones entering in after Android and iOS established themselves. Except even later with years and years passing as it became clearer PC gaming was becoming more accessible and it’s own formidable market. They missed a lot of earlier chances to enter.
And look how late they were when it came to launching their own digital platform. I’m not taking about games being on PC.
This is a company that saw consoles more worth putting resources towards and didn’t see it worth it too start their own Steam competitor even back in 2008.
Every gaming company basically thought the PC was dead for gaming, only to be relegated to nerd paying high prices for hardware to play niche nerdy shit.
Honestly I still don’t know what changed, even Japanese devs are releasing on PC again, it’s a weird time.
PC gaming has only had a slow, steady rise since Steam entered the scene. But perhaps one other catalyst might have been the Games For Windows initiative (not “Live”) that standardized controller support, added some extra marketing oomph, and gave more incentive to make the same game on PC and console rather than making two entirely different games (sometimes with the same title, like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter).
Well apparently Valve didn’t get the memo. By the time PS3 came out and the further into the Gen it got it became clearer that digital was the way forward. And you’d think a company with PC roots would have gotten their own digital distribution platform started once steam sales caught on.
The whole everyone thought pc was dead excuse is a poor one because Epic took until 2018 to bother with their own distribution platform. That’s a hell of a long time and too many years from the PC is dead excuse.
That’s what I mean by many many many missed chances. They had over a decade to enter as it became more and more obvious the money there was to be made from PC gamers.
Why should they have a distribution platform? Pretty much every game except Gears of War had a Windows release, and at least I never considered a digital distribution platform as a kid since boxed games worked just fine. I didn’t have a Steam account until Steam came to Linux, yet I played plenty of PC games in the meantime on both Windows and Linux. I bought a mixture of boxed games and online downloads, I didn’t need a launcher to do that for me.
Yes, they missed the boat, but it wasn’t obvious that the boat was going where they wanted to go. Valve took that risk and won big, but other large studios didn’t and were absolutely fine focusing on game dev, and it wasn’t until recently that they wanted in.
No.
He wants the Steamdeck user base to be 10 million, so it’s large enough to support a player base that can generate revenue if targeted.
And frankly it’s not a him problem. Nearly every dev refuses to release on Linux (and Mac) because of its small user base.
They don’t have to release on Linux at all!!
All they have to do is click a checkbox in the EAC SDK & contact Battleye to support Valve’s Proton & that’s it!!
It is a Tim Sweeney problem.
Also, Unreal Engine, which the Epic Games Launcher was built in for some reason also has a checkmark for Linux, and they refuse to tick it. It’s to the point that while it is possible to do development for Unreal on Linux, they had to build a completely different way to get it up and running since the launcher doesn’t support Linux.
They consciously make efforts not to support Linux, it would literally take less effort to do it.
To be entirely fair this is much less of a “tick the Linux box” solution, you actually have to program thing differently to work on Linux in that case. They obviously have the resources to do it but it’s less infuriating than the literal single click it would take to enable EAC on Linux on $game.
Pretty sure you’re wrong, got any source on that info?
To be fair, you don’t look at the whole picture.
Yes, generating a Linux build wouldn’t require a lot of changes to the code.
But if they support Linux, they have to support Linux. This is not some student’s first indie game, but instead a massive game with up to 290 million monthly active users. That’s 3.7% of the whole world’s population! (And it’s also more than the number of total Linux users.)
So supporting Linux means they need to test on at least all currently maintained versions of maybe the top 20 or so distros on all sorts of hardware configurations. That would increase their testing costs by around a factor of 20.
They also need to support customers if they have problems. Considering the variability of Linux configurations, chances are high that this comparatively small segment of players will consume an aproportional amount of difficult support requests.
And lastly, if the Linux version of the game has some serious bugs on some setup, it might likely be that all these Linux users think the game is shit and start talking badly about it.
So it’s just a simple cost calculation: Does Linux support increase or decrease the total profit?
And if the variables change, the calculation changes with it. Exactly as Sweeny said in his post. People like Sweeny don’t care about ideals or about which OS they prefer. They only care about money.
And the revelation that a CEO likes money and dislikes risk isn’t exactly hard to figure out.
They don’t even have to support Linux. They just have to stop actively preventing the game from launching on Linux platforms.
10 million is just an arbitrary number he will not honor when it is reached.
Valve has sold ‘multiple millions’(source) already. The 10 million will probably be reached soon. Not even to mention all the Linux users.
Yes it is. He does not have to release for Linux. He just needs to allow the anti cheat to run on Proton. This is a simple config change not more. Fortnite will probably run fine on Proton.
It’s one thing to not release for Linux (thanks to wine and proton it’s no Biggie) another thing is to actively sabotage it to run on Linux which some Developers who can’t check a fricking Checkbox in EAC do.
Not preventing Linux use is implicit support, and it opens up another platform for cheaters to exploit. So if it works and your entire game is based on the online, MP experience, you need to QA on all possible platforms to stay on top of cheaters.
Support for Steam Deck != support for Linux version. Steam Deck use Proton to run Windows game on linux seamlessly.
Their direct competitor, Apex Legend, is steam deck verified. Big games like Monster Hunter World/Rise, Cyberpunk, Baldurs Gate 3, Elden Ring, etc etc, all steam deck verified. Check out this page for more info
It’s not a Linux problem, it’s a Tim Sweeny problem.
With that mind set explains why Epic was so late into trying to get into PC distribution.
Wuh? They started on PC.
ZZT was fucking amazing to play and make games with as a kid.
I think stardust meant Epic Games was very late in opening their own storefront, to become a distributor on PC.
Yes that’s correct. They seemed dismissive of it even back in 2008 seeing more cons than potential in the market. It’s like the Windows approach to smartphones entering in after Android and iOS established themselves. Except even later with years and years passing as it became clearer PC gaming was becoming more accessible and it’s own formidable market. They missed a lot of earlier chances to enter.
https://news.softpedia.com/news/Tim-Sweeney-Says-the-PC-Is-Dead-for-Games-80714.shtml
And look how late they were when it came to launching their own digital platform. I’m not taking about games being on PC.
This is a company that saw consoles more worth putting resources towards and didn’t see it worth it too start their own Steam competitor even back in 2008.
https://news.softpedia.com/news/Tim-Sweeney-Says-the-PC-Is-Dead-for-Games-80714.shtml
They had many chances to become the go to digital platform for PC.
Every gaming company basically thought the PC was dead for gaming, only to be relegated to nerd paying high prices for hardware to play niche nerdy shit.
Honestly I still don’t know what changed, even Japanese devs are releasing on PC again, it’s a weird time.
PC gaming has only had a slow, steady rise since Steam entered the scene. But perhaps one other catalyst might have been the Games For Windows initiative (not “Live”) that standardized controller support, added some extra marketing oomph, and gave more incentive to make the same game on PC and console rather than making two entirely different games (sometimes with the same title, like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter).
Well apparently Valve didn’t get the memo. By the time PS3 came out and the further into the Gen it got it became clearer that digital was the way forward. And you’d think a company with PC roots would have gotten their own digital distribution platform started once steam sales caught on.
The whole everyone thought pc was dead excuse is a poor one because Epic took until 2018 to bother with their own distribution platform. That’s a hell of a long time and too many years from the PC is dead excuse.
That’s what I mean by many many many missed chances. They had over a decade to enter as it became more and more obvious the money there was to be made from PC gamers.
Why should they have a distribution platform? Pretty much every game except Gears of War had a Windows release, and at least I never considered a digital distribution platform as a kid since boxed games worked just fine. I didn’t have a Steam account until Steam came to Linux, yet I played plenty of PC games in the meantime on both Windows and Linux. I bought a mixture of boxed games and online downloads, I didn’t need a launcher to do that for me.
Yes, they missed the boat, but it wasn’t obvious that the boat was going where they wanted to go. Valve took that risk and won big, but other large studios didn’t and were absolutely fine focusing on game dev, and it wasn’t until recently that they wanted in.