The Problems Right Now For Gaming On Linux

[garegin]

when the first full featured game runs on linux also runs under wayland I will take linux gaming seriously. i'm by 2014 the'll have xwayland up and running.

[elanthis]

Users of Arch (or other "advanced" distros) don't really require hand-holding. Chances are, someone within the community will add Arch-specific packages to AUR or write a guide to make it work.

Except for when they can't get it to work. Because really, 99% of "advanced Linux users" aren't nearly all that advanced. In either case, when they can't get it to work, this costs the company money, in two ways.

First, the wanna-be elitist users just go around bad-mouthing the company's "crappy" products and poor "Linux" support, which costs the company sales from other potential customers.

Second, the company has to process refunds, which has overhead. Overall, an unhappy customer costs more than no customer, which is why successful companies try so very hard to both make their customers happy and target advertising and sales only to demographics that they know they can keep happy. And in the world of software, that often means only targeting one major OS.

I mean,I have no problem paying for software and games. They put a lot of work into it. They deserve to make money on it if they desire.

I'm sure that you are a good person. I know I am. Our personal behavior unfortunately doesn't mean anything regarding larger trends.

Linux user have both an image problem and some actual, real evidence working against them. The image problem stems from the fact that they're using a free OS instead of just up and paying for another OS. If the user is so against paying the "Microsoft tax" to get an OS that already runs a game company's products, it stands to reason that the user might be against paying the "fun tax" to get a legal copy of the company's product. That is just an image problem; I know of no proof that's true. But it's a common sentiment, both in the games industry and the larger software industry as a whole.

The actual evidence stems from stats back in the Loki days. The one that actually did Loki in was the Quake 3 boxed copy sales. They made a mere 50,000 boxed copies of Quake 3, in the collector's edition tins, which they planned to sell out and then release regular boxed copies. They sold well under 50% of that stock. Stats of players online showed a couple hundred thousand people playing on Linux.

Now, Windows games have a ridiculously high piracy rate too (which is why bitching about DRM is a dead-end; DRM is a symptom of the problem that most people are selfish little fucktards, not the problem itself). However, when you both have a huge piracy rate and can't even sell a pathetic 50,000 copies of a product, your target market (Linux) is pretty much entirely dead. Sure, these days Linux users would likely easily buy 50,000 copies, since Linux has more users today than it did 10 years ago. Whether that increase is users has been offset with an increase in _ethical_ users is as yet unknown. The only real data we have to go on, despite being very old, is not very flattering to Linux.

Yeah, i wonder. In HIB Linux users always pay clearly the most, so this myth should be put to rest already.

Linux users have paid the most individually... of those who paid. You'd have to show stats of how many Linux users just pirated the games. (And yes, piracy amongst HiB is ridiculously high, especially given how cheap you can get them. It's freaking pathetic.)

You have to be careful interpreting the HiB stats without further data anyway. At face value, they would also indicate that 25% of all gamers are Linux users, which even the single most fanatical Linux believer would admit is completely untrue. There's more going into those numbers, and that makes them suspect when trying to evaluate whether a real AAA game is going to see the same kind of sales turnout from Linux users.

The total sales of all the Humble Bundles combined, on all platforms, still falls a whole order of magnitude short of the budget of just Call of Duty 2, and a whole two orders of magnitude below the profits on CoD 2. If you're a sales analyst, that's going to stand out a hell of a lot more than the average Linux sale price on the HiB.

#3 There needs to be a better way to manage these repositories. I know that Ubuntu has a way to manage them but there has to be a better way. Like putting hotlinks in websites that you can click on and have it added to your system. Cause right now I keep bookmarks for repositories I want. I also ran an update and accidentally got Wine 1.5.20, which doesn't play World of Warcraft anymore. So I gotta downgrade to 1.5.19, which is not a straight forward process.

Most distros are outright hostile to that idea. Get your software from their central repository or go away. That's their feelings on the subject.

They have identified a legitimate problem -- dumb users download random crap off the Internet, install it, and then blame the OS when their whole computer stops functioning properly -- but have completely missed the target on the proper solution.

I am used to games sometimes crashing, in all the years of gaming, I never had a game that never crashed.

... what games exactly have you been playing? The _Vast_ majority of games I've played have never once crashed on me.

Obviously, anything from Bethesda is not on that crash-free list.

Also keep in mind that many, many game crashes are actually video driver bugs. Video drivers are both the most complex and more fragile software running on your computer besides the kernel itself. There's a reason Windows moved to a micro-kernel design just for WDDM; they got sick of having their OS called crashy and fragile just because AMD/NVIDIA/Intel couldn't deliver a stable driver.

I _hand_ write_ "GNU/Linux" on all my paper money to let developers know we actually pay for things. When I converse with developers about Linux, one of the things I ask them is if they've seen this written on their money. So far, 2 (of hundreds) have said yes. Lets keep it up until they all answer yes.

... aside from that being totally illegal in most countries (defacing legal tender), and paper money also being extremely rarely used to buy software anymore, having defaced cash doesn't actually mean anything. I've received dollar bills in change from stores with all kinds of weird crap written on them. Much of that weird crap clearly was not targeted at the store (or me), but was originally written for some other hapless individual who then spent the money, circulating meaningless nonsense into the system.

Even more importantly, anywhere other than little one-man shops, the developers are not ever going to see any actual paper money from customers. Developers (and artists, and advertising folks, and executives, and producers, and so on) get paid via check or direct deposit from their company's payroll departments. The sales agents are the only ones likely to see any actual cash, and then only in the increasingly rare case that payments aren't collected and processed by an outside firm.

This is just a horrible idea. Don't do it.

[e8hffff]

Linux for home users is only coming together now. In the last few years work has been addressing gfx drivers, desktop and other UI to make controlling a Linux platform and its functionality, much easier.

If companies in the past tried Linux game sales they need to return and be with the community as it grows. They also need to bring unique titles and games that will promote the platform, example Role playing games. There has to be a reason someone would move from a console or Windows to Linux regarding games.

Linux needs game makers that will code and make great titles only for Linux. It needs to prove itself.

[blackiwid]

I think for steam the thing that in fact I belive today most linux users dont want drm, even widows users at least on their mp3s dont want drm, they even take action against it, in not buying this stuff at all... and extremly many did this, so its finaly gone... and thats windoof users we are talking about...

So yes there is a bit more acceptence in drm for software in the windows world. But I believe most Linux users dont want that. But I think that that does not matter valve dont target primary the today linux geeks... they target 99% the new linux users.. like in android its not the many many linux users that used it because its a linux... its 99% windows users that use it...

Personaly I think a company has the change to sell under linux much if they release the sourcecode of the game but keeps his righs on the artwork. The only thing they loose with that is the ability to build in drm... nobody can play the game without the artwork... and any drm and shit cna be cracked anyway...


And I see it coming... the documentary guys of the documentary about minecraft released by themself its movie to piratebay, because they know you cant force people into paying you money for some bits...

you have to make the people happy to give you money beause you did make something great and because people want you to have money so you can build something new great... because you profed you did something great...



ok not giving a fixed price goes even further than the "release sourcecode + sell for a fixed price your artwork". But at least its not nasty to do that... and people do not have beg you to fix bugs or something... if many users have this issue and the company is very slow to fix it... someone else will fix it.

And yes if you dont want extremly high amounts of money for your game... many will just buy it than... and even if you ask for 50 or 60 euros aka 80-100 dollars for a game some people will buy it even than... that would maybe not bought it if it would not be opensource...


so opensource != giving it up for free...

but again they target not the linux users... they target primary for new linuxusers... and a minoraty who use linux but dont care about freedom like defined in gpl lisense at all...


another question would it be possible to release something gplish over steam... I mean some companies will shure like the drm-shit from steam... but others maybe just want to use it to easily port and package stuff for linux... and they port their stuff not to linux because it would be maybe to hard for them to build several packages... so does steam have a kind of wrapper-api around linux or does the games run directly on linux and only steam is a installer that communicates sometimes with the programm...

[Vadi]

Fragmentation is unfortunately an issue. See Steam's thread on better package compatibility...

But I myself am on Ubuntu, with proprietary drivers, and an awesome computer - and gaming, as it was, is good and getting better.

[zerothis]

I _hand_ write_ "GNU/Linux" on all my paper money to let developers know we actually pay for things. When I converse with developers about Linux, one of the things I ask them is if they've seen this written on their money. So far, 2 (of hundreds) have said yes. Lets keep it up until they all answer yes.

[moilami]

Would love to use open source driver, but that's for now not an option.

Um, that is great option for me with Ivy Bridge Intel graphics.

Very playable frame rates, no crashes, no nothing. TF2 Works just perfectly.


Edit: Thinking about buying another Ivy Bridge box as a living room media center. Intel and Steam deliver so much!

[moilami]

I am used to games sometimes crashing, in all the years of gaming, I never had a game that never crashed.

Well yeah, the day will come when TF 2 will crash on my comp. That said, I have "played" 42 hours of it (the number!), and no crashes so far means that many people has done excellent job.

People always report bad stuff, wanted to report good stuff.

[Gps4l]

I am used to games sometimes crashing, in all the years of gaming, I never had a game that never crashed.

[moilami]

I have it running on open suse 64 bit

Played for over 10 hour of teamfortress 2

Some problem I see

freedesktop org, and I have to start the game with a command to have sound.
Both problems come from ubuntu and suse not agreeing on the right name of things.

I am confident opensuse or valve will get it sorted.

I also get an gl error, I might need to try the latest beta amd driver.

I am happy because its still a beta, and there are already arch, mint, suse, fedora en gentoo repo's.

My teamfortress 2 sometimes crashes, but I can see it sending reports to Valve.
I fully agree with the topic starter, but I am hopeful amd and nvidia, because of steam get the closed driver part fixed.

Would love to use open source driver, but that's for now not an option.

Team Fortress 2 has never crashed in my comp. Have played it only on Trisquel GNU/Linux. Life is good!