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

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

#151

Post by jeffbax » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

antris wrote: post #51

rusk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agreed, have been a Mac user since 2004… and got the first Intel iMac specifically for the ability to boot Windows for gaming too. I think the only native Mac OSX games I had when I got that first 12" PowerBook were Q3, UT2004, Starcraft / WC3 / Diablo 2… and maybe Tux racer ;)

Have long given up on dual booting. Granted much of my gaming is also done on consoles, Mac gaming support is better than ever outside of still generally anemic GPUs (and who knows what will happen when they move to ARM… a great many games will be orphaned in x86 forever -- e.g. will Starcraft HD get ported to ARM?)

Thank you, to all the indies (and open source engine porters) who have supported Mac over the past 14 years!

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

#152

Post by mscasts » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #133

simias wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. The fact that "technically" it's not Linux's fault doesn't really matter, unless you're more interested in the moral concept of guilt rather that the practicalities of making a Linux port of a game. Why should they chan…

> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countle…

I have seen this claim many times, but wonder about it's validity.

It's easy to think that a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would make a lot of stir. But I used to play Heroes of Newerth years ago when Linux support were way worse than today. I also read HN then.

I never saw any special treatment for that even tho I loved the game and it worked really, really good on linux.

Searching on algolia just proves my point: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=heroes%20of%20newerth&sort=byP...

I simply do not buy the story that just because you release it on Linux, have good linux support etc it will spread like wildfire.

S2Games, which made HoN, made a superior MOBA imo but none of my friends play it anymore. They play Dota2 tho. I think the reality of the situation is that no one cares about if a game run on linux or not except extreme nerds that would never use Windows and go through the daily struggle that is desktop Linux.

I used to be one of them, nowadays I only use Windows.

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

#153

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

plq wrote: post #127

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…

> 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. If you don't want to depend on the libcurl provided by the OS, ship your own. If you don't want to depend on the glibc provided by the OS, ship your own, with your own dynamic linker. readelf -n will tell you the oldest kernel that will run your stuff. Put that in the…

This is not as easy as it sounds, because funny things happen if you ship your own libc - I remember last time I tried this there were problems with PAM and name services. But that was a number of years ago.

Can you ship with your own version of GNOME different from the currently running one?

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

#154

Post by bengarney » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #133

simias wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. The fact that "technically" it's not Linux's fault doesn't really matter, unless you're more interested in the moral concept of guilt rather that the practicalities of making a Linux port of a game. Why should they chan…

> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countle…

I've been in games and game middleware (including in many cases with Linux support) for fifteen years and I have never once seen this happen. Generally there is a tremendous amount of commentary like this from Linux folks and the port neither gets meaningful (or profitable) publicity nor sales that outstrip support. This comment is the stereotypical Linux game post.

When supporting a platform can mean debugging and submitting patches for a users graphics drivers in exchange for a shockingly low conversion rate, it's an easy no for me.

PS I built and maintain an Enterprise AWS GPU app on Ubuntu and the platform is great. But it was very non trivial to get working.

PPS if you spend less than $150/yr combined on all software purchases (including mobile/console) please don't make a case for Linux gaming. TuxRacer is your apotheosis.

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

#155

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

stratosmacker wrote: post #130

Why don't we just support the Steam version of Debian and be done with it? Anyone running custom things should be ready to make their custom fixes... Oh well, this guys sounds full of hubris. Just because something isn't immediately profitable doesn't mean the community as a whole doesn't benefit from you ironing out bugs.

> Oh well, this guys sounds full of hubris.

From a later tweet by the same person: Linux support was a passion for many on the project, and I was a proponent in favor of that support.

If the Linux community is going to bite the hand that feeds them, don't be surprised when other developers aren't anxious to support Linux in the future.

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

#156

Post by singron » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

FigBug wrote: post #122

hkt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concluded ages ago that no substantial applications should be integrated into an operating system. Dynamic linking if you're building something portable is just an awful idea because of how much variety you'll inevitably have to support (or choose not to support). Some people have written about AppImages, this also applies to FlatPak and similar techs too. Isolating anything more complicated than a command line too…

They are VST plugins and the are dynamic libraries. Call dlopen and call a specified function.

Confusingly, you can statically link a dynamic library (i.e. the dynamic library includes all its dependencies statically instead of recursively depending on more dynamic libraries). You can even link it in such a way that the dynamic library gets its own version of each dependency regardless of what the main executable is linked to (otherwise the main executable's links could override yours).

I did this once with a ruby gem that had particular c++ dependencies that kept breaking when the build machine had different library versions than the production machines. If you aren't integrated directly with the development of a linux distro, it's best not to use their packages as runtime dependencies, since they really only consider their own use before changing things up.

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

#157

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

erikb wrote: post #78

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…

I don't know why people say that. You don't support Windows XP and Windows 10 either with the same binary. In contrast to Windows you can provide or pay someone to provide libcurl3 if you want to continue to use it. MS will just say you can go F yourself. In contrast to Windows you can study the source code and write a wrapper that provides a central API point that you can use in your single code base. In contrast to…

> You don't support Windows XP and Windows 10 either with the same binary.

I think you picked a terrible example there, because quite often people do; certainly Vista upwards is quite normal (that was the transition point for lots of APIs).

Windows is much clearer about how you're supposed to solve "DLL hell". You have the OS libraries, which provide a stable API; COM, where interfacing is done at runtime dynamically; and for everything else you put it in your application's directory.

Theoretically if COM components aren't interchangeable - the API has expanded - they should have a different CLSID and therefore not clash.

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

#158

Post by Manozco » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

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.

The Humble Bundle statistics reject your affirmation ;) http://cheesetalks.net/humble/

Linux users are paying more per bundle than other OSes users

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

#159

Post by Deathcrow » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

I'm sure those statistics are entirely real and not pulled out of his ass at all.

Also didn't Planetary Annihilation have that awful chromium based UI?

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

#160

Post by y4mi » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #133

simias wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. The fact that "technically" it's not Linux's fault doesn't really matter, unless you're more interested in the moral concept of guilt rather that the practicalities of making a Linux port of a game. Why should they chan…

> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countle…

You're either underestimating revenue from Windows purchases or overvaluing that publicity bonus. There are already a lot of indie games with Linux support, and triple A developments already sell millions of copies. If that added publicity made another 1000 people buy the game, it still won't be a financially sounds decision.

Heck, I'm mostly on Linux but boot into Windows for gaming... I'd probably continue to do so, even if the games were released for Linux just for that extra performance and significantly less chance too run into an obscure issue with my setup.