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

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

#61

Post by detaro »

antris wrote: post #54
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.

What skills/tech you use for Android games is "Linux" specific and would transfer from/to a desktop Linux system or other Linux platform? (instead of being Android-specific, or specific to an engine etc)

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

#62

Post by FigBug »

I work for a small company that produces a DAW and VST plugins. Supporting Linux is a huge amount of work compared to Windows and Mac.

The main issue is that 'Linux' is not a thing you can support. You have to pick the distros you want to support, and then once you've picked a distro, what versions you want to support.

And you need to use the C++ version that ships with that distro, so if you want to support old versions then the entire project is held back from using latest C++.

And distos aren't backwards compatible. ie when libcurl4 is released, they remove libcurl3. So you can't have one binary for Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04.

So it means for every product, have a build for every distro / version combination you want to support.

So now the solution is AppImages where you bundle up your app with all dependencies like a container. Haven't investigated this yet, not sure it will work for plugins.

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

#63

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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.

There are Linux users who buy MS Windows just to enable them to play games. Win10 is £120.

I'm building a PC now, that's going to be about 20% added to the cost; I'd rather spend that on games.

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

#64

Post by zeroname »

rkido wrote: post #53

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 L…

I think you're in denial.

If developers need to get this, that and the other thing right specifically for Linux, but it's still only 0.1% of sales, then it's just not worth doing - even if there aren't any bugs.

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

#65

Post by chme »

FigBug wrote: post #62

I work for a small company that produces a DAW and VST plugins. Supporting Linux is a huge amount of work compared to Windows and Mac. The main issue is that 'Linux' is not a thing you can support. You have to pick the distros you want to support, and then once you've picked a distro, what versions you want to support. And you need to use the C++ version that ships with that distro, so if you want to support old vers…

Proprietary software on Linux is a bit of an alien there.

But there is always static linking, is it not? (And now flatpak+snap+...)

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

#66

Post by p0nce »

jenscow wrote: post #17
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.

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.

Invisible demand is undistinguishable from no demand, as far as B2C is concerned.

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

#67

Post by antris »

detaro wrote: post #61
antris wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What skills/tech you use for Android games is "Linux" specific and would transfer from/to a desktop Linux system or other Linux platform? (instead of being Android-specific, or specific to an engine etc)

Anything from Android can be forked into any number of Linux distros you want to make. So none of it is Android-specific, really.

For example Android software worked on Jolla's Sailfish OS.

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

#68

Post by learc83 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #58
kosievdmerwe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not what happened in the article (tweet). They released a native Linux version.

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

#69

Post by mitgraduate »

FigBug wrote: post #62

I work for a small company that produces a DAW and VST plugins. Supporting Linux is a huge amount of work compared to Windows and Mac. The main issue is that 'Linux' is not a thing you can support. You have to pick the distros you want to support, and then once you've picked a distro, what versions you want to support. And you need to use the C++ version that ships with that distro, so if you want to support old vers…

Why use not Electron? Take a look at vscode it has plugins and it seems to work everywhere.

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

#70

Post by dejaime »

I was one of those who for every problem I had I would go out of my way to reliably reproduce the problem, then I would create a detailed description of it, with full system specs, terminal output (on both Windows and Linux) and all log files I could find.

Today, I still do that on Linux. But if it excludes Linux as a platform, it must be rock solid on windows, right? If it isn't, all it gets is a negative review going about the "crashes all the time", "glitchy" and "is unplayable". That saved me a lot of time.

Being an indie GameDev myself, I personally love well written tickets. But the passive aggressive responses I often receive from big devs makes me wonder if I'm actually the only one.

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