Survival Horror Game Sees Linux Sales Around 1%

[CrystalGamma]

I guess I'm one of them, since I only have Linux computers and I bought SOMA (but couldn't play it, because my laptop GPU is too slow; that's not tragic though since I watched a stream from one of my friends and mostly bought the game for the soundtrack). Good to hear their commitment to making games for Linux systems.

[puleglot]

The game is supported on Windows, OS X, Linux, and PlayStation 4. This game saw close to half a million sales, but just over 1% of them were from Linux gamers.

So.. More than 1% with taking PS4 into account? Very nice! Just curious how this converts to PC gaming numbers (without PS4).

[Holograph]

There is no such thing as a Linux sale on Steam. Almost any Linux Steam gamer would have a Windows machine as well. If I buy it while I am using Windows with the intention of using it in both Windows and Linux, it is downright unacceptable for Valve to tell the developer that they sold it to a Windows user. That makes no sense. They should keep track of time spent playing the game in various OS, not what OS you were using when you bought the game.

[Kemosabe]

There is no such thing as a Linux sale on Steam. Almost any Linux Steam gamer would have a Windows machine as well. If I buy it while I am using Windows with the intention of using it in both Windows and Linux, it is downright unacceptable for Valve to tell the developer that they sold it to a Windows user. That makes no sense. They should keep track of time spent playing the game in various OS, not what OS you were using when you bought the game.

For some reason I doubt that this has a significant influence on the market share.
BTW: I won't even think about installing Windows just for games anytime soon.

[wizard69]

5,000 sales @ $30 a pop is $150,000. That should be enough to handle paying a full-time dedicated developer to handle linux specific things. It's not like they are losing money on this, unless they design their engine in the most linux un-friendly ways.

Actually that is barely enough to support one developer. A rough estimate from the small business world is that your company has to pull in 2X what you want to earn as wages. So if you want to take home $75,000 a year you need to pull in $150,000 gross. Taxes and overhead a re big killers to earning a decent living for a small business. For a corporation it isn't much different there is still a lot of overhead over employee. $150,000 a year might support one developer if you are lucky.

Also, 5,000 out of 450,000 is 0.011.. which is 1.1%, not 0.011% ... This is roughly on par with what they should be getting based on linux overall marketshare.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. I'm still of the opinion that Linux users are for the most part too cheap to buy games.

[wizard69]

You made an exaggeration and immediately claimed it was a fact... I'm surprised how easy it was for you to contradict yourself in less than 15 words. Non-existent means 0%. This game has 1% sales from Linux users. That's 4500 people. The game is $30. That is $135,000 made by Linux players. Even if the game was only sold for a sale price of $10, that would still be $45,000. You can buy a lot for that amount of money.

Assuming your numbers are correct the game doesn't support that mystery "Linux developer". $45,000 for example wouldn't even pay the wages of an entry level developer in most countries. That however assumes that you can apply most of those earnings to a developers wages, you can't so the reality is there is less than $45,000 available for wages for a developer. This doesn't even include overhead for an employee, some of which never shows up on the employees pay stub. Even at the other end of the scale $135,000 will barely cover a single developer making decent wages.

In a nut shell the only reason for a company to support Linux gaming is if they have a personal interest in doing so. From the standpoint of economics it doesn't make sense.

[Holograph]

For some reason I doubt that this has a significant influence on the market share.
BTW: I won't even think about installing Windows just for games anytime soon.

I'm looking to ditch Windows as soon as a few remaining games work better under WINE (or get native ports), but keep in mind that there are lots of Ubuntu users out there who are not dedicated to Linux. I've got other friends who don't care about Linux becoming their main OS like you and I do, but who have a Ubuntu install as well as Windows. My point is that if the statistics given to developers are not collected in an intelligent manner, it will not be an accurate representation of the market, and could make Linux look less viable than it may actually be. You may be right that it would be an insignificant difference, but if Linux keeps gaining traction, it will eventually become more of an issue.

Also, to the people talking about paying a developer for a year... porting a game to Linux does not take a developer - even a single person - a whole year... not sure what you think you are arguing about there.

[devius]

I'm still of the opinion that Linux users are for the most part too cheap to buy games.

When Humble Bundle was decent and offered cross-platform games it was possible to see the opposite, where Linux users were the ones willing to pay more for games.

[bisby]

Actually that is barely enough to support one developer. A rough estimate from the small business world is that your company has to pull in 2X what you want to earn as wages. So if you want to take home $75,000 a year you need to pull in $150,000 gross. Taxes and overhead a re big killers to earning a decent living for a small business. For a corporation it isn't much different there is still a lot of overhead over employee. $150,000 a year might support one developer if you are lucky.

Yes. You shouldn't need a full time developer dedicated to Linux changes. and it shouldn't cost you a full time developer's wages in order to get your other developers to start coding in more Linux friendly ways. If you need more than that, youre probably writing the core of your engine in such a way that your game is never coming to linux anyway.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion. I'm still of the opinion that Linux users are for the most part too cheap to buy games.

That conclusion is math? 5,000 out of 450,000 is 1.1% there was originally a typo that said 0.011% in the article. 1.1% is roughly in line with what Steam HW survey reports (a bit higher actually). Whereas 0.011% is not. That was my point. Also, when all the games are available on Linux, Humble Bundle's generally have Linux users as the highest average. Many people use Linux not because they are "too cheap" to buy windows, but simply dislike Windows and/or Microsoft, or perhaps prefer Linux. Most of the "too cheap" crowd will wind up just pirating Windows.
Linux gamers arent cheap, theyre just statistically insignificant in most cases.

[r1348]

Question: how do they know on what platform the game is actually played? With SteamPlay it's buy once, run everywhere. I bought SOMA from the Android app, go figure...