- cross-posted to:
- steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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Them not bother with Linux says all there is to say about their anti trust cases. Only thing that bothers them about monopolies is that they arent one, and even when there is an opportunity to enter into a market where there is no competitors they don’t want to bother investing in it. They don’t care about open platforms or investing in it first.
It’s why they were late to getting a hold of PC distribution. And in the unlikely event Linux OS takes off be complaining about Steam’s presence there.
Compare and contrast
You weren’t supposed to see this!
Apparently they have enough developers to add in crappy emotes and crossovers but not enough to support one of the most popular operating systems… makes sense
Saying “one of the most popular operating systems” when there’s only 3-4 serious, mainstream contenders doesn’t mean much.
Those are artists not developers
So he want the game to get to 10 millions player on steam deck only then support it, but without supporting it the game won’t get to 10 millions player. It’s not a linux problem Tim, it’s you.
No.
He wants the Steamdeck user base to be 10 million, so it’s large enough to support a player base that can generate revenue if targeted.
And frankly it’s not a him problem. Nearly every dev refuses to release on Linux (and Mac) because of its small user base.
It’s one thing to not release for Linux (thanks to wine and proton it’s no Biggie) another thing is to actively sabotage it to run on Linux which some Developers who can’t check a fricking Checkbox in EAC do.
Support for Steam Deck != support for Linux version. Steam Deck use Proton to run Windows game on linux seamlessly.
Their direct competitor, Apex Legend, is steam deck verified. Big games like Monster Hunter World/Rise, Cyberpunk, Baldurs Gate 3, Elden Ring, etc etc, all steam deck verified. Check out this page for more info
It’s not a Linux problem, it’s a Tim Sweeny problem.
10 million is just an arbitrary number he will not honor when it is reached.
Valve has sold ‘multiple millions’(source) already. The 10 million will probably be reached soon. Not even to mention all the Linux users.
And frankly it’s not a him problem. Nearly every dev refuses to release on Linux (and Mac) because of its small user base.
Yes it is. He does not have to release for Linux. He just needs to allow the anti cheat to run on Proton. This is a simple config change not more. Fortnite will probably run fine on Proton.
With that mind set explains why Epic was so late into trying to get into PC distribution.
Wuh? They started on PC.
ZZT was fucking amazing to play and make games with as a kid.
And look how late they were when it came to launching their own digital platform. I’m not taking about games being on PC.
This is a company that saw consoles more worth putting resources towards and didn’t see it worth it too start their own Steam competitor even back in 2008.
https://news.softpedia.com/news/Tim-Sweeney-Says-the-PC-Is-Dead-for-Games-80714.shtml
They had many chances to become the go to digital platform for PC.
Every gaming company basically thought the PC was dead for gaming, only to be relegated to nerd paying high prices for hardware to play niche nerdy shit.
Honestly I still don’t know what changed, even Japanese devs are releasing on PC again, it’s a weird time.
Well apparently Valve didn’t get the memo. By the time PS3 came out and the further into the Gen it got it became clearer that digital was the way forward. And you’d think a company with PC roots would have gotten their own digital distribution platform started once steam sales caught on.
The whole everyone thought pc was dead excuse is a poor one because Epic took until 2018 to bother with their own distribution platform. That’s a hell of a long time and too many years from the PC is dead excuse.
That’s what I mean by many many many missed chances. They had over a decade to enter as it became more and more obvious the money there was to be made from PC gamers.
PC gaming has only had a slow, steady rise since Steam entered the scene. But perhaps one other catalyst might have been the Games For Windows initiative (not “Live”) that standardized controller support, added some extra marketing oomph, and gave more incentive to make the same game on PC and console rather than making two entirely different games (sometimes with the same title, like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter).
Tim is not preventing people from using Linux. Linux is.
Linux is preventing people from booting up Steam Deck?
…what?
Exactly.
Ahhhhh BURN!
I think, people here look at it from the wrong side.
The code changes required for Linux support aren’t the issue.
But if they support Linux, they have to support Linux. This is not some student’s first indie game, but instead a massive game with up to 290 million monthly active users. That’s 3.7% of the whole world’s population! (And it’s also more than the number of total Linux users.)
So supporting Linux means they need to test on at least all currently maintained versions of maybe the top 20 or so distros on all sorts of hardware configurations. That would increase their testing costs by around a factor of 20.
They also need to support customers if they have problems. Considering the variability of Linux configurations, chances are high that this comparatively small segment of players will consume an aproportional amount of difficult support requests.
And lastly, if the Linux version of the game has some serious bugs on some setup, it might likely be that all these Linux users think the game is shit and start talking badly about it.
So it’s just a simple cost calculation: Does Linux support increase or decrease the total profit?
And if the variables change, the calculation changes with it. Exactly as Sweeny said in his post. People like Sweeny don’t care about ideals or about which OS they prefer. They only care about money.
And the revelation that a CEO likes money and dislikes risk isn’t exactly hard to figure out.
I’m not saying that it’s good, but top capitalists tend to be capitalists.
And in the end, I’m pretty sure someone who has all the business figures and frequently has to defend those in front of the shareholders probably knows much better what makes business sense than any of us. Someone like him goes where the money flows.
So supporting Linux means they need to test on at least all currently maintained versions of maybe the top 20 or so distros
It absolutely does not mean that.
Pick a steam deck, support a steam deck, 3 major releases. If the SD runs on enterprise Linux that’s a 10 year support window.
That’s a perfectly viable plan - much like “releasing on x box” - and with an understandable market clearly delineated. Everything else can be “hey try, but don’t call us” and we’d all still try.
The only thing stopping Fortnite from running on Linux is the anticheat. The anticheat it uses it made by Epic, and has a specific option for WINE compatibility.
If I remember correctly it actually uses two separate anti-cheat, and the second one not made by Epic doesn’t have Linux or Wine support.
But it’s still a weak excuse that they could just make a Linux version without that redundant second anti-cheat.
Unless they changed it, the other one is Battle eye which also has Linux support
Dude, steam ships with a bunch of libraries enabling cross distro support. It ain’t that complicated https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools/-/blob/main/docs/container-runtime.md
To be honest… Yes it’s that complicated. I’ve read that, Apparently valve had to spent massive ressource to figure out the load order of librairies and what to include for the steam runtime.
Granted, all they made is open source iirc. But it was a massive pita
Yes, their first attempt used load order overrides and search patch patching. Now, it uses linux containers to ship an isolated environment. Think of it as more similar to docker (or LXC/LXD). That said, I haven’t used it myself to so cannot comment on how difficult it is to use. Most people here are advocating for them permitting proton use without necessarily supporting it officially though. Which can easily be done by changing an option in EAC.
Did you read the second line of my post?
The code changes aren’t the issue.
Did you read my comment? They ship with libraries to unify distribution across distros
I said: Code changes are easy, all the other things in regards to supporting playing on Linux (anticheat, support requests, testing, …) is hard.
You said: But code changes are easy because steam has libraries to unify distribution.
Do you see the problem here?
What are you going to tell me next? That code changes are easy?
I’m going to do a hard disagree here - they don’t have to support Linux, just add compatibility in terms of anti-cheat for Linux. Proton is likely good enough to run the game itself but the anti-cheat sees Linux and just craps itself.
They don’t even have to provide support - League of Legends runs on Linux if you install the game using community scripts and custom proton, and while the client runs poorly nobody spams the Riot Games support about how the “Linux version” client doesn’t work the well because people understand that it’s a community effort. Riot themselves have only made a statement saying how they’ll try not to break the game for Linux users, and that’s pretty much it.
League of Legends is a massively popular game as well, yet Riot barely has to do anything to maintain it on Linux, let community fix issues that come up, let community provide support as it’s their tools.
And while I do understand that porting an anti-cheat to be more friendly to another operating system isn’t an easy task (such as for Rust, where they tried to make the anti-cheat compatible with Linux but it introduced other issues so it got shelved), I think you’re vastly overstating the amount of areas a company has to cover for a game to be playable on Linux.
There’s a difference though.
If the game doesn’t work for (some or all) Linux users, that’s not a big problem from Epic’s POV. They’ll lose a couple users that wouldn’t have been able to play the game without Linux support anyway.
But if the Anticheat faills on Linux, that is a completely different story. Then cheaters would all dual boot over to Linux to cheat all they want. That’s now a problem for the whole game’s user base and consequently for the publisher as well.
Something as low-level as an Anticheat would have to be rewritten almost from scratch to work on Linux and this one really needs to be tested with every possible permutation of installed relevant software. Because if one combination is found where it doesn’t work, you can be sure that the day after every cheater will be running this config.
(Just to check, do you have a background in game development and/or low-level Windows/Linux programming? I got all of that and I can tell you, nothing that looks easy from the outside is actually easy. I think you are vastly underestimating how much work goes into something until it “just works as expected”)
Speaking as a former game cheater…
Cheaters are going to cheat. Booting into Linux isn’t going to change that.
Anti-cheats just keep the filthy casuals from cheating. A broken anti-cheat on Linux would be fixed pretty quickly.
EAC has a check box for Proton compatibility. Battleeye is linux native. All they have to do is check a box, and test to see if they can break it. If they let it out in the works and there’s some influx of cheaters, they can check the box again. Halo Infinite, Apex Legends, Smite, Battlebit etc etc were all capable of checking the box and testing.
I suspect Sweenys hesitation over support is caused by a lack of control.
Upgrading EAC in an unreal engine game is trivial, it’s basically baked into the engine. They update EAC all the time.
If it can be made to run via Steam, then they only need to support it as far as getting it installed in Steam. Either Proton or native, it can be made an invisible issue from the user perspective. They have made a choice not to do so.
Right, no need to support 20 distros. One distro, known hardware. Anything else, you’re on your own.
If Steam can install on it, then it’s done. The distro doesn’t matter in this case. If Steam’ll install, then you’re done.
EA/Respawn somehow haven’t had a problem with doing that with Apex legends.
Apparently, their cost calculation is different. Also, Fortnite has about 50x active users compared to Apex Legends. That also changes a lot.
Sweeny said it doesn’t make business sense for them and if it will make sense in the future, they will support Linux.
I’m pretty sure that someone who does know their business figures and frequently has to justify them to shareholders has a better overview about what makes business sense for them than anyone of us.
I’m pretty sure that someone who does know their business figures and frequently has to justify them to shareholders has a better overview about what makes business sense for them than anyone of us.
Every time someone makes the business argument all I can think of Microsoft flopping with Windows Phone despite all their money. Google failing with Stadia and losing opportunity they had with hangouts to imessage. LG bowing out of smartphones. Blackberry and Nokia too late to enter smartphones despite prior dominance. Epic was so late into trying their hand at digital distribution until 2018 when doing it earlier over the past decade would have made entry easier.
Companies just because they have money doesn’t mean they know what they are doing. And sometimes even less than random people.
Companies just because they have money doesn’t mean they know what they are doing. And sometimes even less than random people.
Well, if half a million people are guessing on a choice of two options, some are going to get it right. But that’s not due to the insight of the people, but due to numbers.
Every time someone makes the business argument all I can think of Microsoft flopping with Windows Phone despite all their money. Google failing with Stadia and losing opportunity they had with hangouts to imessage. LG bowing out of smartphones. Blackberry and Nokia too late to enter smartphones despite prior dominance. Epic was so late into trying their hand at digital distribution until 2018 when doing it earlier over the past decade would have made entry easier.
These examples really don’t apply here.
- Windows Phone, Blackberry and Nokia were caught up in a massive market change where they where too little and too late.
- Stadia was a purpously risky gamble to be first at a potential “next big thing” and was scrapped when the global economy crumbled and cloud gaming showed no signs of wide spread adoption. If anything, this is the opposite situation than Epic and Linux.
- Hangouts was renamed and merged with other Google chat apps, but in the end they now have messages, which is the messenger with the highest install count worldwide.
- EGS is still a comparably new thing, considering that Steam is in the market since ~20 years while the EGS is here only ~5 years. They are growing steadily, so this is not an example that we can look at in retrospect, because it’s still unfolding. Also, sure it would have been great if they would have had to run a game distribution platform in 2003, but their money shower didn’t start until Fortnite exploded in 2017. And they pretty much immediately got into the business when they had the money to.
Also, there are some other factors in play that you didn’t consider.
Smartphones exploded between 2007 and 2010. It went from nothing to almost everything in just a few years, and those who got lucky and where ready at the right time managed to take the new market. Windows Mobile proves that it’s not enough to be super early. You need the right timing in both directions.
There is no indication that Linux will have >50% market share among gamers within the next 3 years. Yes, it nudged Linux over the 3% mark but at that rate it’s going to take a long while. Also, contrary to smartphones vs feature phones, the steam deck is an additional gaming PC for on the go. It doesn’t replace desktop gaming.
Also, when it comes to mobile gaming, the Steam Deck is a distant fourth between Android, iOS and the Switch.
And even if you limit the scope to x86 mobile gaming, they are by far not the only competitor. There are lots of others, many of them using Windows, who do the same.
And the biggest edge the Steam Deck is it’s value, because Steam subsidizes the Deck with their Store sales. Most people don’t care whether it runs Linux or not.
what’s fortnite’s anticheat like? my understanding is that a lot of games that would normally have no problem running on some flavor of linux or another but their anticheat software requires some ridiculous level of privilege that linux won’t (and shouldn’t) give it
Fortnite uses Easy Anti Cheat, which is made by Epic (that is, Fortnite’s own developer). EAC works fine on Linux; it just needs the developer to enable it.
Note
Epic bought Easy and made the Linux version for it. It’s there because of them
The issues are likely development related not anti-cheat
Excuse me? EAC is Exact Audio Copy. There can be no other.
I thought it had a combination, eac and something else.
My understanding is that it uses EAC and Battleye, but in an “either/or” arrangement. That is, both are installed but which one is activated when you boot the game is essentially random (or driven by some logic that is not readily apparent).
Battleye also claims to have native Linux support.
But even if it didn’t, it would be trivial to have a Linux version which only used (the Linux version of) EAC. Presumably Epic have enough faith in their own anticheat product to rely on it for their flagship game for a small minority of users.
also why the fuck does Lego Fortnite require anticheat? it’s a survival co-op, there’s no competitive element, and yet from what I’ve read it still kicks you out when you’re trying to play it on Linux.
Does it have a Funbucks store?
Its to prevent piracy thats why and also to prevent modders from adding mods
Piracy? The game is free?!
What if, and hear me out on this one, Epic Games really just love closed platforms for the built-in DRM of “secret sauce” and binary blobs to protect their intellectual property, even if the Steam Deck now has a TPM 2.0 equivalent. In fact, they would rather deprive the user of as much agency as possible to retain most of the control.
That might be a tinfoil hat take, but I stand by it.
If they do think that - and I absolutely do not claim you are wrong - Then it’s through ignorance. Developers can just as easily distribute compiled binaries for linux as they can for Windows, and even encrypt them if that’s what they want to do.
Because linux itself is free and open, it doesn’t mean you can’t run commercial software on it without it being ripped off. I mean, my work pays many tens of thousands of pounds for commercial software running on Linux, and it’s not just licencing that stops it being spread.
I mean we all know that, he didn’t need to say anything. They want to make billions and they think Linux doesn’t have enough users to get those billions going. Not worth it to them. But hey, fuck him, fortnite is a shit game anyway.
it’s just one checkbox in your fudging EAC. Why can so many windows only multiplayer games be played with EAC under Linux but not Fortnät?
Am I the only one that doesn’t actually give a fuck if fortnite is on steam deck or not.?
Hell I’m happier with it not.
It’s more that having a game like that support linux would do a ton to quiet the “You can’t game on Linux” crowd.
I bet Tim doesn’t even know how to use terminal
28 Sept 2023 — We are laying off around 830 employees, or 16% of jobs.
hmm…
Because fuck you, that’s why