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Comment by ethelward | Hacker News Reader

> It's literally the same thing as asking application-oriented developers to code and test their apps for every major compiler out there.

Not at all, the build step is not supposed to be done by the user in the native world. A more apt comparison would be that outside the occasional hiccup, video games run on all GPU, you do not see e.g. AMD-only games.

> There are standards

Most of the problems IME stem from web developers not thoroughly following the standard, but rather implementing a “it works on my Chrome, so it should work everywhere”.

> why should we (web developers) be the responsible for making everything work with every browser?

You do whatever you want. But if you propose a service, expect potential users either to leave or complain if it does not work on their setup.

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I see games that are only for 1 OS. And most of the games won't behave the same way running on AMD than on NVIDIA. Also, most of the games require at least XYZ version of DirectX. So, yeah, I'd say your argument is kind of flawed.

And sure, I'll do whatever I want, or whatever my limited time allows me to do. And if that means supporting only the browser with major quota (like games running only on Windows, because that's what has major quota; using your argument), so be it.

Nobody's saying you can't do whatever you want. Pissing on the common lake is, in the short-term, better. What everyone is pointing to is the long-term effects, which are really so obvious you can only ignore with conscious effort.

> And most of the games won't behave the same way running on AMD than on NVIDIA.

I see you must not have played a lot of games recently – granted, you will notice some problems form time to time, but they are rather the exception (and often fixed by post-launch drivers updates) than the norm.

> Also, most of the games require at least XYZ version of DirectX

Also, most of webapps require at least version XYZ of browser ABC. What is your point exactly, that developers use new features of APIs/libraries?

> that's what has major quota; using your argument

No it's not my argument. In my argument, Windows + DirectX is a standard akin to the web standards, and this standard is implemented by multiple controller makers, GPU founders, screen producers, etc.

Thankfully, I can play Il-2 or Rainbow 6 as well with my GTX1070 and ASUS than my friend with is Vega GPU & LG screen.

> What is your point exactly, that developers use new features of APIs/libraries?

Exactly. We use whatever new standard makes our live easier. If Firefox or Edge don't support that standard (because they are always lagging behind), there's not much we can do (except going the hard way and implementing workarounds for each browser, which is a no-no most of the time, because of lack of manpower/time). "My website requires Flex support" is pretty much the equivalent of "My game requires DirectX 11".

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