Linux is a nightmare – only 0.8% of sales – over 50% of reported tech issues (2019)

https://sh.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/e2ww5s/mike_rose_linux_is_a_nightmare_only_08_of_sales/

by lopkeny12ko • 3 years ago

40 76 3 years ago

sh.reddit.com

smoldesu5• 3 years ago

Interesting, but also 4 years old. The stats on ProtonDB seem to reflect the majority of games running fine on Linux: https://www.protondb.com/

Also worth noting, the landscape of Linux packaging is much different than it was 4 years ago:

- Flatpak/AppImage allows you to statically-link all dependencies to avoid undefined behavior

- Steam and others can provide basic runtimes with necessary libraries (eg. Steam Linux Runtime)

- Proton, WINE and DXVK work together to map Windows APIs to your specific setup, regardless of your x11/Wayland/PulseAudio/Pipewire configuration

Indeed shipping a native Linux title is no cakewalk, but products like the Steam Deck kinda refute these outdated complaints. You could target Windows-native and probably get 'free' Linux support if you're using a popular engine.

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

The Steam Deck has the particular advantage of a standard configuration that game publishers are likely to test on.

smoldesu5• 3 years ago

It's a pretty huge advantage!

That being said, I run a "nightmare stack" of sorts on my main Linux gaming PC: Alder Lake CPU, Nvidia GPU. NixOS on root and Steam installed natively. For a while, it was Unsupported Driver city - Population: Me.

...that being said, games have "just worked" for as long as I have Vulkan drivers installed. Steam might complain about software acceleration, but Cyberpunk runs with DLSS and Raytracing like a charm. The underlying stack is incredible, and I think it proves that you can make Linux a reliable delivery platform if you put in the work.

That's just my experience, but look at the rest of the industry: Apple publishing Game Porting Toolkit based on DXVK code, Raspberry Pi GPUs playing Fallout: New Vegas, RISC-V getting Box86 support, the list goes on. Hardware diversity is great right now, the Steam Deck just pulls a lot of that technology to center-stage.

pjmlp8• 3 years ago

Why bother, target Windows, let Valve do the needful.

darknavi• 3 years ago

I am ignorant here but are there tips out there for things you can do (such as APIs to avoid or prefer) to help ease the Proton translation?

demurgos• 3 years ago

The main issue games on Linux games are invasive client-side anticheats. So I recommend making sure if it's really needed, and otherwise checking compat.

On the graphics side, I believe that Vulkan is better supported than Direct X.

smoldesu5• 3 years ago

I'm not qualified to give a complete list, but here's a few general tips I can offer:

- Launch options! They help everyone, but are specifically great for stuff that breaks often like fullscreen settings, DirectX versions and game launchers.

- Simpler stacks work better. You can run a browser-scale runtime if necessary, but a thin implementation around Win32 might run better for everyone. YMMV.

- Multiplayer stacks are a bit of a pickle, but there are a few options. Some games (eg. Overwatch 2 or Dark Souls) will queue you up as a normal PC player. Others (Destiny 2, Rainbow Six Siege) won't let you play online at all. A smaller-yet selection of games uses anti-cheat patched into WINE (eg. Apex Legends) and that seems to work great. Again, YMMV and it will depend a lot on the game you ship.

The super-low-level stuff is a mystery to me, though. Hopefully someone more qualified has tips on it written somewhere :p

uberduper2• 3 years ago

I've been half expecting Steam (or someone) to create a cross-platform runtime/vm for game developers and hardware vendors to target.

belthesar2• 3 years ago

They did. It's called the Steam Runtime, and it's still a pain to use. There's a reason the joke "Win32 is the most stable Linux ABI" is prevalent.

belthesar2• 3 years ago

It's worth noting that in 2019 (when the developer originally posted this message), Proton for the consumer was largely an experiment. There wasn't a whizbang portable Linux gaming computer to excite developers to target the platform. DXVK was still in its v1 era and, while quite functional in the Proton prefix, was still in the very early days. Today? Yes, it's fairly easy with minor considerations in library choice to deploy to Linux on Proton, where the majority of your work is ensuring you have good Xinput and virtual keyboard support, barring any client-side anti-cheat considerations.

severino• 3 years ago

So? Don't address issues coming from Linux reporters if you think it's not worth it. But note that those reports may be bugs affecting users from other platforms as well.

brucethemoose26• 3 years ago

Old post.

But still, this is why you target Proton. It seems "anti linux" and suboptimal, but its actually quite practical.

Whenever I do game on linux, I always use the proton versions anyway because they perform better than the native linux version, with the only exception so far being Minecraft.

k4rli• 3 years ago

CSGO linux seems to perform better than Proton or natively on Windows as well. In the past Linux version had an issue of not having useful anticheat but these days they seem to be able to detect cheats on Linux as well.

brucethemoose26• 3 years ago

Some games are quite dramatic, like Stellaris/Rimworld with TPS drops of ~30% or more.

And these are game ticks, so it actually affects the rate you play the game rather than just FPS.

sosodev4• 3 years ago

Proton is not a silver bullet. Starfield, for example, works with Proton but if you look at ProtonDB you will see that it does not work for many users.

crtasm• 3 years ago

I know little about Proton or if Bethesda targeted it - is it fair to judge it with an AAA game that's been out for <2 weeks? I see Steam doesn't list it as Steam Deck compatible.

brucethemoose26• 3 years ago

Did Starfield target/test on Proton? I would be kinda shocked if they did, as it is not even close to Deck compatible.

NoraCodes• 3 years ago

The traditional Linux-bashing post, which is effectively (to my mind) countered by the traditional response, which is that another indie dev found [1] that most of these issues were not Linux-specific. That is to say, Linux users don't report more bugs because there are a lot of problems running the game specifically on Linux, but because they're accustomed to reporting bugs instead of just ignoring them.

1: https://www.neowin.net/news/linux-gamers-are-way-better-at-f...

ramesh31• 3 years ago

Not to mention listing "Linux" as a supported platform is about as absurd as saying "Darwin" or "NT". Support Ubuntu LTS and SteamOS, and call it a day.

lvass2• 3 years ago

Not really, as Steam packs a full runtime or you could use something like AppImage.

mhh__• 3 years ago

Management: Does a bug really exist before it's filed?

xcrunner529• 3 years ago

The cases are high because people keep testing!

chongli• 3 years ago

I think this can still be thought of as a "nightmare" for some developers. The mindset may be that the developers don't want users reporting bugs. They'd rather the users passively tolerate the bugs. This way the developers don't need to put in the effort to fix them! These developers may prefer not to support Linux because they simply do not want to deal with sophisticated users.

nightpool• 3 years ago

Obviously when you frame it like this it sounds insane, but the fact of the matter is that responding to support tickets and triaging bugs have a real, hard cost in $$$ spent. If supporting Linux platforms doubles your time spent responding to support requests and triaging tickets—even if you never fix an additional bug, it could very well be enough to entirely tank the profitability of adding Linux support, well above the value that any additional minor bugs they find might bring.

mixmastamyk2• 3 years ago

Eliminating your main source of paid work sounds like a bad idea, if you like to eat that is.

ThrowawayR2• 3 years ago

Linux is a "nightmare" for some games developers since its fans will rush to ascribe malicious motives to them for the slightest suggestion that there are problems with supporting it; case in point.

MostlyStable• 3 years ago

Several comments addressing the likely change in the bug side of the statement over the past 4 years, but I'm also very curious how the Steam Deck has changed the sales side of it. While I doubt it's anywhere close to a majority, my guess is that it's a lot more than 0.8% these days.

fotcorn• 3 years ago

Interesting counterpoint: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav...

Spoiler: 38% of bug reports from Linux users, 400 in total, but only 3(!) are actually Linux specific.

Supermancho• 3 years ago

If a company could have the Customer Support ignore the 99% of the reports that are not really bugs, this might make linux seem more attractive.

grammers• 3 years ago

Also: Linus is very transparent with this. Who says other OS don't have many more bug reports, issues etc.?

Jefrodey• 3 years ago

Old post. Linux gaming has gotten so much better since then.

pjmlp8• 3 years ago

By emulating Windows userspace apparently.

cianuro_• 3 years ago

That's the current best alternative. Big studios are not going to invest development into a platform that does not directly translate to more money. Best they can do is make use of open APIs like Vulkan (Even tho DX11/12 work with the current tooling too).

belval• 3 years ago

I mean development on Windows got better by literally offering Linux through a subsystem. if you can't beat them, be them

gamepsys• 3 years ago

The word emulating has a very specific meaning when playing a video game on one platform that was designed for another. If you are using the word emulating to mean something close to the word "mimic" or "imitate" then you are correct, but the word emulation shouldn't be used to describe proton because it is not an emulator in the way most gamers will understand. This point is specifically drilled into the Proton history. Proton is a fork of the Wine project. In 1993 (!) it was declared Wine is Not An Emulator. Recursive naming is an open source tradition.

Aside from being an incorrect use of jargon, it hurts the project. Emulators have a reputation of not being able to handle the latest games. Proton is very good at playing many modern games. It plays some games better than Windows natively on the same hardware.

charcircuit• 3 years ago

Supporting various hardware combinations is already hard enough. The fragmented software stack, constant userland breakage and hostility towards proprietary games, and a userbase of people who except software to be free make Linux not an attractive platform to port games to.

SamuelAdams• 3 years ago

@dang needs 2019 in the title. Not really sure why a reddit post about a tweet is discussion worthy...

pvg• 3 years ago

4 year old reddit cross post of an out of context rage tweet quote. Just don't do this.

mixmastamyk2• 3 years ago

Depends on how you look at it. Some portion of those tech issues are probably useful, someone took the time to report them.

Also did they specify which distro(s) they support? Dedicated enough QA? Differences are typically not that hard to paper over, mostly a bunch of if-dir-exists, do this, else do that. XDG_* env vars help as well. Proton, flatpak, etc.

pxc2• 3 years ago

What this actually shows is that Linux users are more technically proficient and more likely to put in the effort to file a bug report when they encounter a problem.

It doesn't directly figure into the reporting rate, but Linux users also file better bug reports, likely due to the communal education and technical support that is so central to contemporary, personal Linux usage. Any newbie asking questions on a Linux forum, IRC, Matrix, or Discourse is bound to learn strong norms about including diagnostic info and other context in issue reports, as well as what asking useful questions looks like.

Linux users end up helping to identify a hugely disproportionate number of the bugs that affect Windows users because of this.

Past HN discussion of another indie dev's experience with this can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978086

This might be bad for you if your company over relies on metrics about the number of reported or open bugs in an unhelpful way. But in itself it's a decidedly good thing for your software quality and the experience of your users to include Linux users in your user community.

pdpi• 3 years ago

I’m curious what the introduction of the steam deck has done to these numbers.

With regards to sales, on the one hand, I expect that the number of players on Linux has spiked by at least an order of magnitude. On the other hand, I expect that the majority of people buying a steam deck are “hardcore” PC gamers who also have a windows desktop somewhere, so it’s hard to attribute game sales to Linux/Steam deck.

In terms of support tickets, somebody mentioned that a developer countered that the tickets they saw were mostly non-Linux specific, and likely the result of a savvier crowd who’s more proactive at reporting bugs. I kind of expect the number of issues per player to go down, both because of the qualitative change in user base and because the deck represents a console-like static target. On the other hand, I expect those support tickets to be a lot less actionable (because they’re coming from less technical users)

advisedwang• 3 years ago

I wonder whether flatpak/snap can reduce the support burden.

screye• 3 years ago

The older I've gotten, the less patience I've had for tools that take a couple of extra google searches. My time is valuable, and I don't want to be fighting my own tools to do simple things.

I understand that it isn't linux's fault per se , but I would never understand running your personal desktop on Linux for non-ideological reasons.

WSL and WS-Android both exist. They have allowed me to selectively ignore the worst of windows and touch Linux on a needs basis.

I used to root every android device and apply balance mods before starting any game. Now, I just wanna do the thing.

pjmlp8• 3 years ago

Same here, even WSL brings little to the table to me, other than reducing my costs.

Since VMWare exists and hardware has been fast enough, that the only physical device running GNU/Linux has been my netbook, from the netbook golden age.

As for Android, it is great that it isn't really yet another UNIX clone, rather its own thing, with a managed userspace, we need to move away from a fossilized OS designed for PDP11s.

Linux is a nightmare – only 0.8% of sales – over 50% of reported tech issues (2019)

Related Stories