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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

#231

Post by kosievdmerwe »

kurtisc wrote: post #204
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…

Why do they have to do the work? If someone releases a game and I play it, maybe I get a Linux-only bug where the audio sometimes becomes static-y until I reset (real world example). If I file a bug for that, they probably won't fix it and I probably will (and did) continue playing. I lose nothing, they lose the time to triage a bug. If I can't launch the game and I file a ticket, it's probably because I either want…

Because having a buggy game on any platform is a reputational risk. If your game is buggy, people will complain and people on other platforms might reconsider buying even though the version they'll get might be bug free.

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

#232

Post by derefr »

selectodude wrote: post #218
ajvs wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not seen Steam Play these last few months? Because of Proton the majority of the top 250 highest rated games now run fine on Linux. I've been playing Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, Castle Crashers, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, etc all of which are Windows-only but now WINE is so good it runs like it's native. Linux gaming doesn't suck anymore and it's coming to eat Windows lunch. Check out ProtonDB to s…

Why should I get excited about decent compatibility when I can stick with perfect compatibility? Linux gaming doesn't suck compared to linux gaming 5 years ago. It's still crap compared to Windows.

You’re coming at this from the perspective of someone who wants to set up a PC primarily in order to play games, and probably wants to try out every game under the sun. Of course, you’ll install Windows.

Try instead coming at the question from the perspective of someone who already has a Linux workstation (e.g. for work) and wants to do as little as possible in order to play a few games—maybe the ones their friends are trying to get them to play as a member of a team. Windows isn’t worth it here: you wouldn’t use it for anything else (so every time you boot into it, you probably have to spend two hours installing updates), and booting into Windows would also prevent you from multitasking to the Linux apps you rely on. Compatibility shims, if decent, are far more interesting to this audience.

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

#233

Post by fixermark »

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…

But if the set of best practices that works for your target hardware platform is narrow-band, that set itself can severely constrain the set of game houses that can develop for that platform.

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

#234

Post by mackal »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #171
angry_octet wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-important idea police?

That is completely ridiculous. Pointing out that statically compiling dependencies or shipping them with a game can solve many so called compatibility problems is directly related to games working on linux.

It is also the solution they currently use on Windows ... And what games are doing on Steam that support Linux.

I won't comment on shipping your own glibc, because that probably could cause issues.

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

#235

Post by deathanatos »

wtracy wrote: post #148
bryanlarsen wrote: post #45

Part of the problem in 2019 is that the vendor with the best drivers on Windows is the vendor with the worst drivers on Linux. (aka Nvidia).

Care to elaborate? Nvidia used to be the only discrete GPU manufacturer that had Linux support worth mentioning. I know that AMD/ATi has made a lot of progress, but is Nvidia really the worst at this point?

I just went through the process of getting NVIDIA drivers working on my brother's dual-boot Ubuntu. Here's the issues we hit:

1. You don't don't get drivers out of the box. The NVIDIA driver is non-free, so Ubuntu's (and other Linux distros') hands are tied here: they're not permitted to distribute it. Getting it is relatively easy (check a box, install a package), but you need to know that you need it, and then figure out how to get it.

2. (For laptops) You need to install optimus/primus/bumblebee, s.t. the system isn't using the integrated GPU. This is another package that you need to know you need, and install. Ubuntu here is particularly bad: it apparently installs the drivers in the wrong spot, so even with everything correctly installed, you have to find a config in /etc, edit it to what a couple of comment on a GitHub issue that you found after Googling the error indicate. (Other distros, in particular Arch, do not have this issue.)

3. (For laptops) You need to configure the game in Steam to take advantage of primusrun. Steam does not do this automatically.

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

#236

Post by fixermark »

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 added complexity that neither the Windows nor Macintosh runtimes demand of their developers.

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

#237

Post by sneakernets »

EamonnMR wrote: post #226
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…

Music software's dependance on Windows is such a mess. Tons of cool plugins are stuck as windows-only VSTs! I was really hoping that Propellerheads would use the fact that it can ship on any platform to ship Reason and all associated REs on linux or in-browser, but instead they gave in and added VST support.

A historical lack of low-latency audio is likely why you haven't seen many music software releases on Linux. For years, you had to have a custom kernel to get "decent" performance.

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

#239

Post by bartread »

ajvs wrote: post #182
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…

Have you not seen Steam Play these last few months? Because of Proton the majority of the top 250 highest rated games now run fine on Linux. I've been playing Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, Castle Crashers, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, etc all of which are Windows-only but now WINE is so good it runs like it's native. Linux gaming doesn't suck anymore and it's coming to eat Windows lunch. Check out ProtonDB to s…

> Have you not seen Steam Play these last few months? Because of Proton the majority of the top 250 highest rated games now run fine on Linux.

Whilst this is cool I think it may also, sadly, be commercially irrelevant. Why bother worrying about Linux compatibility when only a tiny (i.e., somewhere between 0% and 1%) number of players/purchasers will run your game on Linux?

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

#240

Post by Pica_soO »

ajvs wrote: post #182
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…

Have you not seen Steam Play these last few months? Because of Proton the majority of the top 250 highest rated games now run fine on Linux. I've been playing Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, Castle Crashers, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, etc all of which are Windows-only but now WINE is so good it runs like it's native. Linux gaming doesn't suck anymore and it's coming to eat Windows lunch. Check out ProtonDB to s…

The real reason why Linux gaming might get a fighting chance once more is PBR. With PBR large swaths of the old driver mess goes out of the window- and with that break of backwards comptatability of concepts, every system gets a second chance to outshine directx3d and the nvida cathedral of pain.
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