What Do Game Developers Think of Supporting Linux? – Part 2

About 2 weeks ago, we published an interview wherein we asked various game developers about their current thoughts on supporting Linux. While the results are not all positive for Linux gaming, there are some game developers who gave enlightening facts. Here are some excerpts from that interview.

For several of our programmers, Linux is their preferred development platform. So we have Linux support “for free” essentially. We support OpenGL natively in our engine (as we do DX), so we are not hindered in any way on non-Windows OSes. The programmers’ argument is that by working on/for several platforms, our development culture is healthier, and our ability to find weird bugs is improved. So that’s our kind of business case to be on Linux. So in conclusion, we are not “porting” to Linux from Windows, we actually have developers working natively on Windows, Linux as well as Mac, so all these three platforms can be considered primary and native for us in a way.
– Pavel Sebor, CEO of SCS Software

I can’t see us releasing a PC game without Linux support at this point, the obvious answer being that there’s an audience to connect with there which means giving players what they want and us making more money – a win win. The not so obvious answer is that my experience with the Linux community has been very positive with Cactus, folks like Josh ‘Cheeseness’ Bush who I now consider a close friend helped us out whenever we ran in to issues and I don’t disagree with a lot of Linux players desire to see more open platforms offer real competition in the market.
– Sanatana Mishra, co-founder of Witch Beam

We tried to ask more game developers and, fortunately, we have more answers to share.

1. Do your sales figures coincide or agree with the Linux market share being reported by Steam Survey? May we know the Linux percentage of your sales?

Aquiris Game Studio: Our Linux market share has been much higher than what Steam Survey has reported. Horizon Chase Turbo has 4% of Linux players.

Frozenbyte: For Trine 2, the Linux sales are ~1.4%.

Milkstone Studios: Linux represents approximately 1.75% of our total sold copies and 1.5% of our total game revenue on Steam. So, I guess it’s a bit higher than the Steam hardware survey.

Wube Software: Our Linux users are about 0.01% of our player base.

2. Do you still plan to support Linux in your future games? Why?

Aquiris Game Studio: Yes, because they are very passionate players and are eager for new titles.

Frozenbyte: To be completely honest, I’m not very optimistic about it right now. It looks quite harsh from a financial perspective and we’d need to hire some people to do the Linux versions, as over the past couple of years our few Linux experts have left the company. That said, we do have a history of supporting Linux so it might make sense in the future if our new engine makes it easier.

Milkstone Studios: Yes, we’ll probably keep supporting Linux as long as it’s easy enough to do the port.

Wube Software: Yes, because many of our programmers use Linux.

3. Do you think Vulkan will help in making porting games to Linux easier?

Aquiris Game Studio: Not really. It’s good to have better graphics performance on Linux but not necessarily easier to port.

Frozenbyte: We don’t have Vulkan support yet on our engine so it’s not really something I can answer.

Milkstone Studios: I don’t know to be honest, we use the Unity Engine so all the graphics API issues are handled by it. Most of our problems with Linux come with the harder troubleshooting on that platform (read: Game not launching at all), given our lack of expertise and the high number of Linux distributions.

Wube Software: It is a step forward, but DirectX is still a strong benefit for Windows.

Related readings:
Newbie Friendly Guide to Using Linux for Gaming
Milestones of Linux as a Gaming Platform
A Look at the Statistics of Linux Games