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Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

I only play two games at the moment and neither of them are viable on Linux. Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is a non-starter even with Proton. Assetto Corsa Competizione will work, but not with my Thrustmaster wheel.

Both of these are deal breakers on their own, but the real deal breaker is the uncertainty that comes with running Linux as a gamer. For example Cyberpunk 2077 comes out this week. Will it work? I have no idea. With my Windows machine I don't even need to check - of course it will.

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Both of the latest COD games have absolutely enormous stability issues on their supported platforms. Infinity Ward (and possibly Treyarch to a lesser extent) seem to be only just in control of their games - rampant size on disk, instability, etc. When the game works it's rather good, but it really seems like COD's time out of the spotlight hasn't kept its developers sharp.

Cyberpunk is DRM free so it should be OK on launch and only a matter of time if it's not.

BOCW was in development hell and the developer was switched very last minute (with only a year until release IIRC).

Of course it was going to be a mess. They had to recycle and hack-and-slash assets to pull something together to meet the ambitious release date.

According to rumor, Sledgehammer Games was essentially unable to produce the game and has been demoted to a second tier support studio as a result.

In fairness, Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War crashes constantly for me on Windows. It's not a polished game on any platform.

I agree though, the uncertainty is definitely an issue. Maybe if enough games start to get played on linux, this will be the push that's needed for game devs to start supporting games on linux (even if that means it's through wine).

The game may be unpolished and unstable but I can still boot it up and play it with my friends, which is more than I can say about Linux gamers.

It is not that Linux is not a viable gaming platform. It is just developers not publishing games for Linux.

Why? because:

1. Windows comes preinstalled on many computers.

2. People do not install Linux because they cannot play games on it.

3. Game developers won't publish on Linux because there are not enough users.

Is 3 the real problem, or is it 2? 2 is the real problem. If everyone committed to use Linux, game developers would follow immediately.

If you use Windows only for gaming then just buy a console, it is cheaper.

"If you use Windows only for gaming then just buy a console, it is cheaper."

It's cheaper to spend money on a console, controllers, games, and a yearly online subscription than to use my existing pc? I find that hard to believe. Especially with games routinely going on sale and overall costing less on pc. Even on my Switch, games are more expensive on average.

I game as much as I can on linux (debian bullseye) but dualbooting to windows for specific games is rather easy. Unrelated, but I would not recommend debian for gaming purposes. Steam didn't even start correctly due to some static dependencies until about a month ago.

> It is not that Linux is not a viable gaming platform. It is just developers not publishing games for Linux.

As a user this makes it a non-viable platform.

Cyberpunk, like any other single player title is much more likely to work than games like COD, Apex or Fortnite. Most multiplayer games use some additional components like the EAC that explicitly is made to not run on Wine AFAIK. IIRC, EAC did work on Wine until Epic games patched it so it wouldn't anymore.

Every anti-cheat is hit or miss with Wine depending on the methods they use. Even Valve's own VAC continues to have issues with Proton: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/3225

Like VAC, EAC does have a native Linux version, but that does require a native Linux port of games.

>With my Windows machine I don't even need to check - of course it will.

Anecdote: I've bought games at launch that failed to boot. I've bought many games that required fiddling with settings (locales, drivers, etc.) to get them working. Linux is a more extreme afterthought but PC is also rarely a first-class citizen.

It will probably run it, but better be prepared for a bumpy/glitchy experience: https://www.pcgamer.com/how-buggy-is-cyberpunk-2077-really/

its just part of being a simracer i think. doubt any of the big games; iracing, ac, rf2, will ever get proper multimonitor/peripheral driver support linux

ACC uses Unreal Engine so they really should.

rf2's tyre model is almost awe-inspiring for a game, the game itself is not, sadly.

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