Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 415 posts

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#51

Post by antris »

rusk wrote: post #44
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #13

While I love Linux, I think this is a totally fair "state of the union". At the end of the day, gaming or kickstarters or similar... are a business. You need to figure out your ROI (Return On Investment). It doesn't many any logical sense to spend a huge amount of time on a platform that nets you tiny amounts of sales (and gains you a huge amount of support costs). This is why gaming on the Mac is only now starting t…

> This is why gaming on the Mac is only now starting to be a real thing. Is it? I mean, there's a good amount of support for gaming on the Mac, but I think it's always been so ... I wouldn't call it "a thing" though ... not in comparison to PC or Console ...

I remember when major games being launched on Mac was worth a mention, or even a full feature in an Apple Keynote. Nowadays games are being released on the Mac constantly and nobody bats an eye. It's a better time to be a Mac gamer than ever before.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#52

Post by Phenix88be »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #34
projectramo wrote: post #22

The conclusion I draw is that we should raise linux game prices by 200x

Except Linux users want all their software to be free.

Many Linux user would pay for games, and they would pay more for a Linux version than a windows version.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#53

Post by rkido »

Linux is the perpetual scapegoat.

They selected a middleware, Coherent UI, that didn't work properly on anything but Windows. They also didn't make proper use of the Steam runtime, a mistake that continues to cause issues. Most games don't make these mistakes, so this isn't really representative of the larger state of Linux gaming.

It's worth pointing out that the devs did make a legitimately good attempt at making Linux/Mac support first class, by making a purely OpenGL engine for the game. But it seems they weren't aware of some other best practices.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#54

Post by antris »

wil421 wrote: post #39

>There is no denying that there are plenty of issues with some parts of Linux, but still I believe it will become predominant gaming platform, especially in the more "appliance" space. It is worth investing in the know-how early. Bold claim to make. I doubt Linux will ever be a predominant gaming platform.

Umm... Phone games? All Android devices are based on Linux. Android is a major player in the mobile gaming industry.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#55

Post by basilgohar »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #43
jenscow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is the perfect example of how there's an "invisible" demand demand for gaming on Linux. Nobody can see it, because those who want it will mostly make do with Windows.

+1. Personally, I spend 98% of my time in Linux, but I dual-boot just for the sake of the few games I like that need Windows to run. If not for that, I'd have dropped Windows years ago.

I haven't logged my hours, but substitute 98% above with whatever my number is (90+%). I don't even have Windows installed on my main, but older, desktop. I just have it on my newer laptop, which is where I do any gaming of significance (when I have time nowadays).

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#57

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

Slaul wrote: post #41
SteveNuts wrote: post #3

Gaming is the #1 reason I haven't fully switched to Linux on the desktop at home (at work I exclusively run Linux). A lot of my Steam games work flawlessly with Linux but others will just silently fail to launch and it takes hours to properly diagnose and fix, which isn't what I'm after when I get some time to play games.

I'm in the same boat. I'd love to be done with windows but since I spend a large amount of my free time playing games with friends I need to be on windows.

Despite the problems and shortcomings, I'm actually pretty impressed with how well Valve has managed to make Linux gaming work over the past decade. Of course, a lot of credit is also due to other contributors to the WINE project, but Valve used Steam to create a targetable set of dependencies for native games in addition to their WINE contributions. I'm frankly a bit amazed that they solved that part of the problem. And a bit disappointed in the people blaming them for not somehow solving the GPU problem by continuing to push Steam Machines no one was buying anyway.

For me, the gaming situation on Linux has become tolerable enough that, in comparison to Microsoft's Windows 10 bullshit, it is no longer a barrier. However there are several other barriers that are unlikely to be dealt with any time soon.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#58

Post by pbhjpbhj »

kosievdmerwe wrote: post #28
mrspeaker wrote: post #15

This is just an out-of-context tweet (well, the context is there - it's a reply to another tweet, which is out of context)... so perhaps it was just auto-crash reports, but I wonder if you get more tickets from Linux users, because Linux users are more likely to file tickets? When something crashes on my partner's computer she yells at it and restarts it. When something crashes on my computer I spend an hour trying t…

They still represent a vastly disproportionate amount of work for how much extra money they get you. They get you 0.1% extra sales, but they cost you 25% (= 20/80*100) extra support work. And this is nevermind the extra time spent during development. Your point would hold if the issues reported by Linux users would also fix issues on Windows. Some issues would occur on both systems, but I bet the vast majority is wei…

>They still represent a vastly disproportionate amount of work for how much extra money they get you. //

(With a sarcastic tone ...)

So you spend 1000 man-years developing your AAA title, which you release for MS Windows only.

Then someone makes a WINE wrapper on their w/e off and you start selling on Steam as being able to run (but not supported) on Linux.

Now you find so many more Linux users filing bug reports to help you fix your game ...

Bloody Linux users, eh, who'd have them.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#59

Post by jermaustin1 »

jgtrosh wrote: post #31
jermaustin1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it is measured by number of installs or downloads. Either way the statistic is still very telling. If 0.1% of installs/downloads/purchases created 20% of the bug reports, I can understand the developer's frustration.

The stats might be measured differently: Steam might not report a Linux user as such if they played on Windows at first (or something like that), while the tickets might be correctly labeled as Linux-specific by the user.

For sure, it's harder to understand what platform people WANT to play it on based on an action they performed at checkout.

I know personally, when it comes to purchases on Steam, I've bought ~200 games/applications, and I've probably only installed a third of them.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#60

Post by fooker »

swish_bob wrote: post #33
warmwaffles wrote: post #24

Also I wonder how many of those crashes would have happened in windows or mac. I suspect the code is shared and would have happened.

"gfx driver related" code is unlikely to be shared between Windows, Linux and OSX ...

Nvidia shares a huge chunk of it's (proprietary) driver code across operating systems.

I suspect the crashes are coming from bad OpenGL usage since he mentions the same thing happens with Mac.

Post reply on HN