the business case for a Linux version

We see in an Announcements thread that Grinding Gear Games doesn't see any "business case" for a native linux program.

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What about a Linux build of the game? I know this is frequently asked, and I also know you use a full Microsoft stack, but I'd like to know how this has changed on the last year - are we closer or farther from a Linux build comparing with January 2015?

This would be cool, but we don't have a business case for it. We need to put these senior resources toward systems like trade.

So I suppose I'm looking for evidence of the linux gaming population that would entice them to reconsider. The only thing I know offhand is this thread at Good Old Games asking for the linux client for Galaxy, their game management program. Not a game itself, just their downloader and social interaction client. And it has over 10,000 votes from their paying customers. Does GGG want 10,000 happy customers devoted to their own product? If that many people spent some money just on inventory expansion, wouldn't the development costs be covered?

Plus, if they ever intend to develop a newer client, switching to Vulkan API seems to be the way to go. Star Citizen (the enormous albatross of game development these days) has announced that they will switch to Vulkan and eventually ditch DirectX altogether, because of the obvious benefits it offers. And they'll offer a Linux client too.

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Years ago we stated our intention to support DX12, but since the introduction of Vulkan which has the same feature set and performance advantages this seemed a much more logical rendering API to use as it doesn't force our users to upgrade to Windows 10 and opens the door for a single graphics API that could be used on all Windows 7, 8, 10 & Linux. As a result our current intention is to only support Vulkan and eventually drop support for DX11 as this shouldn't effect any of our backers.

If you know any other objective evidence for the size of the linux gamer community or the industry trend toward native linux support, please post links here.

the business case is that there are not enough users of non windows OS's to justify the tens of thousands of dollars, there was a mega thread that got a few hundred pages long but there are people posting there multiple times...even if the all paid to have a linux version it wouldn't be enough

Your only hope is that the xbox version dose so well that they'll try to go for a PS4 launch and as such will be coding the game closer to linux and are able to port it from there.

There isn't enough linux users to justify the effort.
Just check a steam survey -> OS versions.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Linux is 0,76% popularity among users of the biggest game distribution platform out there.

I'm pretty sure people are reacting only to the title and not reading the content of the post. :(

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the business case is that there are not enough users of non windows OS's to justify the tens of thousands of dollars

Didn't I already provide math showing how exactly this number could be justified?

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Linux is 0,76% popularity among users of the biggest game distribution platform out there.

And given that Steam has at least 125 million customers (as of 2015, if that number is to be believed), then 0.76% of the population still amounts to 950,000 people. People, as in customers, as in money. Macintoshes never gained a majority of the market either, so it must be terrible to be Apple. How awful for them. The popularity argument always misses the point.

The point of this thread is to provide the math (as I've done in the original post and this one) that catering to the linux gamer population could indeed be profitable to Grinding Gear Games. The counterarguments are already well known and growing increasingly outdated. Please reserve this space for the topic at hand. If no such supporting documentation exists, then the thread will die a lonely death of obvious neglect.

being free with just Mtx is the challenge.

Lets assume you have 1 million potential linux customers. Lets assume 30% of them would enjoy POE. So you have 300,000 potential customers.

On average only 1 in 30 people who play free games will ever donate atleast 5 bucks.

So you have around 10,000 potential people that will donate at minimal 5 bucks.

So they can be sure to get $50,000 grand for the attempt at it. Assuming you will need to remake a large core of the game engine, redo a ton of the models and graphics to work with different shader technologies, etc.

you are going to at minimal need 3-5 people working on the code, 3-5 QA testers, more server admins to manage the backbone servers.

Pretty sure even in zealand dollars they making that much as game coders each.

so lets assume a team of 8 people at $40,000 a year salary and 1 year to do the port.

Thats $320,000 in salary, they are for sure going to get $50,000 from average user trends.

So that leaves 270,000 left to come up with over the remain years.

Now here are a few unknowns, will linux players pay out more cause well its one of the few games out there for them possibly. Will they being a group that tends to use open source and free software galor, just eat up the aspects of having a free game to play.

So you start to get into those challenges, and risks. So GGG is looking at a 270,000 dollar gamble, OR...... they can focus on keeping their core game moving long and progressing at a super fast pace, launch Xbox to pick up a few more million players, and call it a day.

I doubt we will see a big shift to PS4 anytime soon as that would take a bit more rework than just a simple xbox port.

Still doable though, and if anything it would be the more marketable move.

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keeperofstars wrote:

Now here are a few unknowns, will linux players pay out more cause well its one of the few games out there for them possibly.

That seems to be the case usually:



And I wouldn't trust the steam numbers too much, I know quite a number of penguin fans who won't touch Steam with a stick and some of them not even GOG.

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Masharab wrote:

There isn't enough linux users to justify the effort.
Just check a steam survey -> OS versions.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Linux is 0,76% popularity among users of the biggest game distribution platform out there.

You run games on Playonlinux, not steam. I play borderlands 2 on linux in steam and it runs perfectly, but Poe is impossible to install on steam.

Steam needs more linux compatible games. 1% is pretty fair when you look at their list of games.

They should just spend a little time and put a working installer in the playonlinux list of games, the old one doesnt work.

They could preload all the junk and settings you need. Would be easier.
As you see, this one is from beta. 2.7 staging really helped poe and other games.

the way this application displays (fonts without padding, distorted menus etc) is one of the reasons gaming companies avoid directly supporting linux. there are just too many damn setups to care for VS too few actual users

the day you 'support' linux platform the day you have to solve a myriad of problems caused by users to over-did the customisation and are left with a system that noone recognises. solving these issues is costly

thats why consoles are so 'cool' with producers (1 HW setup for consolet == less headache), PC not so much (several windows versions, fluid hardware) and linux.. well.. if it runs on it, they wont put effort to make it stop. but do not expect a serious effort to make it run if it doesnt.

currently - and most likely in the future as well - it costs too much to gain too little

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sidtherat wrote:

the way this application displays (fonts without padding, distorted menus etc) is one of the reasons gaming companies avoid directly supporting linux. there are just too many damn setups to care for VS too few actual users

Nah, thats just my fonts. My living room computer scales fine, can take ss if you wanna see how its supposed to look.

Linux uses generic drivers (open source) for the most part (i use nvidia driver though, but thats the only 3rd party), there arent many different setups for the common user.

They would just have to make it win10, 2.7 staging, csmt and some other junk by default. It loads in win xp with no staging (need csmt to turn on your video card).

It would be a simple click, install like in windows.

but there are so many different linux versions out there that have totally different setups

you have rpm based, openSUSE-based, Fedora based, rhel based, mandrake, debian, ubuntu, the list goes on and on.


Hell just packaging the game up for patching on "linux" would require about 10 different patchers.

So the only thing you can do is pick a few versions / diviations that come from the same core, and pray it works, but then you piss the rest of linux off etc.

point being, aiming for linux becomes a huge challenge because it's forked so much.