Rich Geldreich On The State Of Linux Gaming

[prodigy_]

See, kids? The great thing about being a software developer is that if your job sucks you can quit and then you'll get paychecks from MS just for posting nonsense in your blog.

[BreezeDM]

Well, I don't think a developer can live on the 1.5% market share that Linux currently has. Except for some very popular titles.

I think in the long run the ROI is not enough to justify a port. I doubt we would see as many Linux games without the promise of Steam Machines being released in the near future.

OS X has 7% of the market share. Once your port to OS X, porting to Linux is much easier. Porting to OGL you can gain 8.5% of the market. I am sure the sales are higher for OS X/ Linux because there aren't many games out there.

[Awesomeness]

OS X has 7% of the market share. Once your port to OS X, porting to Linux is much easier. Porting to OGL you can gain 8.5% of the market. I am sure the sales are higher for OS X/ Linux because there aren't many games out there.

And PlayStation 4 runs FreeBSD, although I don't know if PS4 games use OpenGL or some form of Mantle.

[Awesomeness]

sooner or later you either have to release something or admit it was a bluff.

Valve does release Linux games. They work on improving the ecosystem (contracting LunarG, hiring the SDL guys, etc.).

[OneTimeShot]

Hmm... Worrying stuff!!!

It wouldn't surprise me if a number of people would stump up $$$$ or mafia-style threats to kill SteamOS. There are some entrenched "closed source driver" companies as well - although they aren't the major players IMO and their motives are pretty silly from anyone else's perspective.

This is all par for the course, though, and we've seen it many times. You can't pay off everyone. The position for creator of the "Android-of-Games-Consoles" is available for the taking. If it's not Valve, it'll just be Amazon FireTV instead...

[Luke_Wolf]

And PlayStation 4 runs FreeBSD, although I don't know if PS4 games use OpenGL or some form of Mantle.

Playstation uses it's own proprietary graphics API (GNM, GNMX) and shader language (PSSL)

[Temar]

Valve does release Linux games. They work on improving the ecosystem (contracting LunarG, hiring the SDL guys, etc.).

Well, let's hope they will also release their SteamOS powered Steam machines. Without Steam machines, Linux Gaming is a dead horse.

[blackout23]

See, kids? The great thing about being a software developer is that if your job sucks you can quit and then you'll get paychecks from MS just for posting nonsense in your blog.

That's a bit far fetched, but he does seem to be a bit bitter about Valve.
It's probably that not everyone fits into Valves corporate cultue. They say they have a flat hierarchy, but that's just the formal hierarchy. The informal hierarchy is probably not flat, since humans are humans.

https://twitter.com/richgel999/status/519722992704577538

[Michael_S]

Not necessarily

OS X has 7% of the market share. Once your port to OS X, porting to Linux is much easier. Porting to OGL you can gain 8.5% of the market. I am sure the sales are higher for OS X/ Linux because there aren't many games out there.

But it's not really a potential 8.5% of the market. You can bet:

1. Most people likely to buy games already own Windows. So OS X and Linux might collectively control 8.5% of the market, but a significant portion of that 8.5% do not play games more graphically intensive than Candy Crush or Farmville.

2. Some significant portion of that 8.5%, especially the portion that is interested in games, dual-boots to Windows or owns an Xbox or Playstation. So even when a game they like is released for OS X or Linux, they may own a copy on one of the other platforms already.

See, kids? The great thing about being a software developer is that if your job sucks you can quit and then you'll get paychecks from MS just for posting nonsense in your blog.

Which parts are nonsense? Clearly the guy is angry, but from what information is publicly available it seems that most of what he posts is accurate. Steam OS hardware keeps getting postponed, Linux game performance still generally sucks compared to Windows, game studios lack sufficient financial incentive (i.e. a large target audience) to put heavy resources into Linux game ports, and AMD, Intel, and nVidia are making only token efforts to provide top notch open source device drivers for their graphics hardware. What is there to dispute?

[johnc]

That's a bit far fetched, but he does seem to be a bit bitter about Valve.
It's probably that not everyone fits into Valves corporate cultue. They say they have a flat hierarchy, but that's just the formal hierarchy. The informal hierarchy is probably not flat, since humans are humans.

https://twitter.com/richgel999/statu...22992704577538

It's very naive on Valve's part to think that a "flat hierarchy" is anything other than a completely unworkable pile of nonsense talk. It might work in super-small companies, but give me a break. People are designed for hierarchy. Show me a "flat" military structure that doesn't look like a bumbling cluster-f.

"People only work on what they want to work on." Wow... that makes sense. Until one remembers that there's a whole bunch of stuff that really does need to get done for the sake of credibility, but nobody wants to do. Like fixing bugs in L4D2.

If Valve were a company that depended on sales of manufactured products like cars or washing machines, they'd be bankrupt in a month because they have no focus on quality control... or customer service. Imagine if there was a "Ford Time", when fixing problems with cars would be done... eventually... maybe... okay not really.

What's concerning is that this is all very basic stuff I'm talking about here, yet seems to go over Valve's head.


As for office politics... it's everywhere. And the bigger the company gets, and the more power that is in play, the worse it's generally going to be. Smallish companies can mitigate this a lot. It's one of the reasons I'm self-employed. I just don't have patience for BS anymore.