ticho writes:
"Followers of the Penguin, Marcin Iwiński, one of the founders of CD Projekt RED, has spoken out about why the developer of The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 has not yet shown any support towards Linux.
Marcin says: "You know, one of the reasons we have not released The Witcher on Linux is that we most probably have to address five different versions of Linux and this is always terrible to support the quality of the games afterwards. The patches, the updates, and everything. If Steam will deliver a constant Linux environment, call it SteamOS or anything like that, we would love to have our games there because, you know, the more people play our games, the better for us."
Entire podcast (in MP3 form) here."
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So, as I write this, day one has officially come to an end. I'm still somewhat in shock over it. Last night when I was editing the database to change over hostnames and such, I was thinking, man, it would be great if we got 100 regular users by tomorrow. Turns out I was wrong. By a factor of ten. Holy cow, people. I'm still in a state of disbelief, partially due to the epic turnout, but also because our very modest server hardware hasn't soiled itself from the influx (the numbers are, well, "impressive" is a way to put it). Anyway, I wanted to do a bit of a writeup of where we stand now, what works, and what doesn't. Check it out (and some raw numbers) after the break! Warning, it is a bit lengthy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Blackmoore on Sunday February 16 2014, @08:18PM
That really doesnt sound like an interest in supporting linux to me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by combatserver on Sunday February 16 2014, @08:55PM
"That really doesnt sound like an interest in supporting linux to me."
To me, it sounds more like an attempt to drive interest in Steam-on-Linux. Article title should read "CD Projekt RED Considered The Witcher 3 For Linux--Requires Steam Integration".
I hope I can change this later...
(Score: 1) by Jameso_ on Monday February 17 2014, @04:53AM
And what's so bad about that?
Full disclosure: I like Steam. I understand if people don't, but I think it's beside the point here. Valve's push for Linux support is really getting the attention of hardware vendors, and compelling them to get their driver story together. This can only benefit Linux in the long term, and thereby everyone who uses it, regardless of their opinion of steam.
I desperately want to excise Microsoft from my life, and anything that increases the volume and variety of software I can choose to run (or not run) on Linux is a good thing. Windows 8 was the final straw, and I'm done. The more attention Linux receives, the more people will use it, and the more people use it, the more attention it will receive. Would it be better if there were a Steam-independent version as well? Absolutely. But at least Steam versions will allow people to run it on Linux at all, and that's a huge win as far as I'm concerned.
(Score: 1) by CoolHand on Monday February 17 2014, @09:09AM
Oh, yeah, sometimes they also have some really nice sales... :)
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by clone141166 on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:05PM
Just sounds like excuses from someone who has never used *any* flavour of linux.
The underlying APIs are pretty darn consistent... ALSA/OpenAL, OpenGL, Qt/Gtk/WxWidgets... As for having to supply updates for packaging systems across multiple distros... It would take less than half a day to write a CMake script, and CMake pretty much handles packaging any updates in whatever package format you want from tarballs to debs and rpms. Though tbh a much better solution would be if they actually tried to finish and test their game properly before releasing it so they wouldn't have 2,000 micro-updates to distribute post-release...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Blackmoore on Sunday February 16 2014, @09:22PM
pretty much that - and a small does of "we dont want to release our game as open source" if he thinks everything on linux is GPL
(Score: 1) by ticho on Monday February 17 2014, @02:38AM
Indeed, there are more and more smaller indie developers who have no problems supporting their games on Linux. With good practices, you don't even notice there is fragmentation.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:34PM
The fact that there is any amount of fragmentation, real or imagined, will cause support stress simply because of how your average user operates. I know people who call anything with a mic and a speaker an iPhone, others who think "my computer is broken" tells me everything I need to know about the problem and a really special batch who have literally caused fires. If I so much as change the volume on their computer they start looking for smoke. I really hope CDPR gets their goods onto Linux, and if SteamOS is the way to make it happen so be it.
1087 is a lucky prime.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by glyph on Monday February 17 2014, @05:14AM
I don't think CDPR are deliberately perpetrating of FUD. Rather they are victims of it.
If wrapping all those native API's up and marketing it as "Steam" makes decades of FUD go away, then I for one am happy to call it a win.
(Score: 1) by saramakos on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:22AM
It also seems pretty consistent with their view on supporting games from GOG.com on Linux. They have always said they aren't opposed to the concept but fear having to support multiple different "standards" (distros I guess).
(Score: 4, Funny) by similar_name on Monday February 17 2014, @01:36AM
"we most probably have to address five different versions of Linux and this is always terrible to support the quality of the games afterwards. The patches, the updates, and everything. If Steam will deliver a constant Linux environment, call it SteamOS or anything like that, we would love to have our games there"
There are 5 standards, but if there were a 6th one, we'd use it. xkcd [xkcd.com]
Where can I vote for ACs to be Anonymous Cows? It should always be plural
(Score: 1) by githaron on Monday February 17 2014, @10:29AM
I know this sounds oddly like the XKCD situation but I really do think that if Steam is successful, it would really start unifying some of the distros behind more common standards. Users will follow gaming. Even if game developers only officially support one Linux distro, it will encourage other distros make their environments compatible in order to attract more users (and the contributors those users bring). In the end, if Steam wins, we all win.
(Score: 1) by everdred on Monday February 17 2014, @04:33AM
We don't take no shit from a machine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Jameso_ on Monday February 17 2014, @05:06AM
Yes. Specifically, Steam on Linux uses what they call the "Steam Runtime" (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime) which is just a collection of consistent versions of libraries they expect to be in common use, that any software can simply use via LD_LIBRARY_PATH or such.
(Score: 1) by githaron on Monday February 17 2014, @10:21AM
Isn't it just for Steam related services like chat, achievements, and etc? You still have to worry about all the game related stuff like graphics, audio, platform optimizations and so forth.
(Score: 1) by Jameso_ on Monday February 17 2014, @02:30PM
Steam integration features are provided by the "Steamworks" API, which I believe requires a partner agreement before you can use it. The "Steam Runtime" is separate and intended merely as a consistent set of base dependencies to avoid any kind of dynamic linking issues across distros using different versions/patchsets/etc.