Isn’t part of the original point not just that Wine is a perfect (dubious, imo) compatibility layer, but that distributing a native port is cumbersome on the Linux ecosystem?
Many of the games bundled by HumbleBundle as downloadable setups have Linux binaries. Some are re-built as 64 bit binaries and updated long after the bundle has closed.
I still play Darwinia on my 64 bit Linux system occasionally.
Most of these games are distributed as .tar.gz archives, too.
I can accept and respect not creating Linux builds as engineering (using Windows only APIs, libraries, etc.) and business (not enough market) decisions, but cumbersomeness is not an excuse, it's a result of the other related choices.
In my book, if a company doesn't want to support Linux, they can tell it bluntly, but telling "we want to, but it's hard, and this is Linux's problem" doesn't sound sincere even remotely.
They'd need to do some learning and don't want to. They might have superficially read something about distributions and think that a software cannot run on two different distributions.
I've read this excuse time and time again. And saying it tells me that the person never actually tried to compile anything on linux.
Yet porting to GNU/Linux is not worthwhile.
No gamer uses that OS. If you think it's hard on linux, it's much harder on osx.
android is not posix, that is completely hidden from the developer.
chromeos is just linux + google tracking.
consoles are a complete separate world.
Please let's try to have a serious conversation. Game developers that use frameworks such as unreal are often unaware of how the underlying system works.
You are conflating "gamer" with "game developer". Don't forget that millions of game devs successfully build and launch games for iOS.
>consoles are a complete separate world.
The PS4 is literally FreeBSD.
With XCode, and tons of visual tools which abstract the OS and device to a great extent, making it almost invisible.
> The PS4 is literally FreeBSD.
Which is also shipped with nice SDKs for everything and anyhting related to PS4.
Win-Win for Microsoft and NVIDIA.
Again, it's just market powers and path of least resistance. It's not technical.
Even the Linux binaries of then AAA titles are ported by some talented developers, sometimes out of the studio.
I remember porting of Unreal Tournament to Linux was an official effort, but a work of a single guy.
So, I don't expect studio-wide POSIX knowledge on game studios.
In January, HumlbeBundle removed Linux support from their Trove [1].
HumbleBundle support points out that it's not simple [2]:
> While it is entirely possible to install and run games and programs from the Linux GUI, implementation across distros can be wildly different. For this reason, this guide will explain how to install and launch games using the Terminal.
And, usually, only a small list of distributions are supported, like Ubuntu or Mint. For example, Bundle 9 [3].
All of the above seems to supports the "cumbersomeness argument for Linux games".
1. https://kotaku.com/latest-humble-bundle-change-leaves-mac-li...
2. https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en-us/articles/219377857...
3. https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011722...
Yet, I have downloaded all new builds for a couple of games for amd64 from one of their oldest bundles.
It's not as clear cut as it seems.
Their contribution easily made up to half of all sales money wise.
I'm not sure I can find the charts now (they were live and per bundle), but I track Humble since day 1. I remember it well.
Yep, and if somebody made your game work under Wine/Proton or Bottles/Heroic, just pay them to support it or create an AppImage/Flatpak and that's the easiest way to get compatibility.