Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by forrestthewoods 1088 days ago
> So I'm not sure it makes sense to categorize their users as anything other than "Linux gamers".

It depends on what you’re using this data for.

If you are a game developer deciding what platforms to support then Steamdeck is fully distinct from Linux, imho. Support Steamdeck, it’s likely worth it (depends on type of game)!

However supporting Steamdeck may not require a native Linux port. It turns out the best way to support Linux May infact be to simply use the Win32 API!

And even if you do support Steamdeck with a native Linux port it may not be worth your time to try and support Ubuntu and a billion flavors of Linux that are each broken in different ways.

Supporting Linux clients beyond Steamdeck is likely not worth it for most games.

Source: have shipped games with Linux support. Was extremely painful and not worth it.
2 comments
pengaru 1088 days ago
"Linux Gamers" all have access to Proton/WINE. It's not some Steamdeck exclusive capability...
link
forrestthewoods 1088 days ago
Steamdeck is a device with one hardware configuration, one set of drivers, one operating system, and one local environment. "Linux" is an infinite number of combinations derived from an a large and unbounded set of hardware, driver, OS, and environment choices.

The reason that "supporting Linux is hard" is the combinatorial matrix of broken ass shit. Supporting a single configuration is easy.

Proton/WINE works well on Steamdeck. It gets updated regularly by Valve for specific games when it doesn't. It is not as reliable for random gamer's random ass frankenstein setup.

link
vcxy 1088 days ago
It's a funny thing. I think what you're saying is exactly right from the standpoint of a dev. As a mere consumer, if you support Steamdeck via Proton, then it sure feels to me like you're supporting Linux, but I get why you wouldn't officially say that.
link
forrestthewoods 1088 days ago
Yup. I think you get it.

If I were shipping a game today I would say “I support Steamdeck”. If any users complained about it not working on their particular Linux machine I would say “you’re on your own, good luck!”.

I would proudly advertise “Steamdeck support” and I would definitely never claim to “support Linux”.

IIRC for my Linux project something like 40% of support tickets were from the 1% of Linux users. Give or take. Never again!

link
rowanG077 1087 days ago
Damn, so you are saying you get free testers from the small share the linux users are? That's actually a great incentive by itself.
link
PaulDavisThe1st 1088 days ago
> "Linux" is an infinite number of combinations derived from an a large and unbounded set of hardware, driver, OS, and environment choices.

So, sort of like Windows?

link
forrestthewoods 1088 days ago
Not really, no. In practice Linux is radically more fragile and roughly an order of magnitude more expensive to support for two orders of magnitude fewer users.
link
PaulDavisThe1st 1087 days ago
The opposite of my experience (I write, build, maintain and distribute a cross-platform DAW).
link
forrestthewoods 1087 days ago
Games may hit a different set of pain points than a DAW. A lot of the Linux pain is graphics driver related. Which you could say is not a Linux problem but an AMD/Nvidia problem. But from a game developer perspective that distinction doesn’t matter.
link
Scramblejams 1088 days ago
Just curious, what engine did you use for the games you shipped on Linux? And any differences in how well they did(n’t) work that corresponded to which store you shipped on?
link
forrestthewoods 1088 days ago
Custom engine. Store made no difference.

FWIW Linux is easy to support if all you want to do is run a headless server on a single distro. Supporting more distros may require a little bit of dependency hell bullshit, but it's doable.

What's a bloody nightmare is graphics and sound and the infinitely large matrix of janky environments gamers have.

link
Scramblejams 1088 days ago
My current plans are Godot, Steam, and for Linux packaging the client to run in Steam’s container environment (“sniper”). Will be interesting to see how many problems that doesn’t solve.
link
adgjlsfhk1 1087 days ago
The good news is you mostly don't have to support the graphics/sound/environments variations. If you test it on stock Ubuntu (and maybe SteamOS), it will probably work for almost all the noobs and everyone else can probably figure it out without much help.
link
forrestthewoods 1087 days ago
My experience is that this is not the case.
link
throwaway2037 1088 days ago 

    the infinitely large matrix of janky environments gamers have.
Raymond Chen ("The Old New Thing" blogger) would agree with this from the perspective of Win32 API!
link