I love Linux, but lets stop pretending desktop is a gaming platform when it's not.
There is none. Microsoft won't exactly do a press release to confirm exactly that, but the timing of events is suspicious. Things like this do not just happen randomly.
Android mobile gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. Guess what isn't? Linux desktop gaming.
> I know plenty of people who maintain a Windows partition purely for games
Selection bias. I'm guessing you know a lot more Linux users than the average person.
> If Microsoft is actually buying studios intending to remove Linux support
My guess is these games need to be compatible with Xbox and Windows, considering that's Microsoft business. That sounds like a completely practical business move.
The name for this is platform politics (and I find it disgusting as a Linux user). Stadia came out having way less users than desktop Linux and game companies run to release for it, while continuing to ignore desktop Linux users. It's not about the size of the market like some like to excuse it with. It's about expected to be paid by "platform owner" or something of the sort.
Linux has no owner, so these companies are at loss from whom to demand extra money, even if they can make profit from actually selling games to Linux gamers. They don't grok open platforms. Better companies which aren't into platform politics release games for Linux fine.
So part of the blame is on those who are hung on platform politics. But it doesn't excuse anti-competitive behavior of MS in the least.
No, the name is business. As it's always been. You seem to have a grudge against companies doing what's best for their business.
> Stadia came out having way less users than desktop Linux
These are not even remotely related. Stadia is a service that is immediately available to a huge market share, and actually has legitimate business opportunity behind it.
> Linux has no owner, so these companies are at loss from whom to demand extra money,
Games is a business, and you go where the money is. Guess where it isn't? Surprise, Linux desktop gaming! Plenty of people are making money (billions) on Linux gaming, just not on the desktop. Because there's an actual market.
And yes, I find platform politics to be disgusting and anti-user in essence. Stadia isn't huge as desktop Linux, not even close yet. And potential is all abstract. Linux has also a lot of potential, if these would release games for it. They don't care.
It's not about potential or size of the market, it's about being paid extra incentives by the platform owner. I.e. dirty platform politics.
> and anti-user in essence
How is it any different that cars having different parts? Is Ford anti-user because I can't snap in Toyota parts?
> Stadia isn't huge as desktop Linux, not even close yet
The potential market size for Stadia is exponentially larger than Linux desktop, and is a safer risk for game developers and publishers to get behind than Linux desktop.
> It's not about potential or size of the market
Of course it is. What else is it about? Google is willing to make the investment to make Stadia successful, to create a thriving customer base which in turn needs content. That's good business. No one is willing to do that for Linux desktop.
Again, focusing on the current state and not what some eventual steady state might be if Linux were better supported.
> Selection bias. I'm guessing you know a lot more Linux users than the average person.
Definitely true (and I had already explicitly called that out), but the fact that those people exist at all lends plausibility to the idea that the set of people who want Linux but want Windows games might be non-negligible and points to the logical flaw in using the current count of Linux gamers to determine what that market might look like if Microsoft weren't interfering (if they are, not sure on that at all -- taking ancestor comments at face value for now for the sake of argument).
Can we stop beating a dead horse? There is no Linux desktop market. The year of the Linux desktop isn't here, unlike mobile. Microsoft isn't interfering in anything, there just isn't good business incentive for Linux desktop gaming. Linux desktop gaming will take off when Linux desktop usages takes off, not the other way around.
In fact, if you want to take aim at anyone it should be NVidia and AMD for Linux driver support.
I did, actually, seeing how I'm the only one of us providing any numbers or research. You're trying to appeal to emotion, and it's not working.
Businesses have decided not to jump on the Linux desktop market, despite you feeling entitled to their services and labor.
That's totally going to convince anyone who can look at actual stores that sell Linux games which supposedly shouldn't exist according to Linux deniers.
It speaks volumes, when to cancel such a product a new owner, who happens to own one of the competing plaforms, has to do that by decree, with no regards to business results.
1. Opt-in to stating your operating system(s), and
2. Put ONLY Linux, not Windows.
Otherwise, you are counted as a Windows gamer. Spelunky 2 developers just released their game without Linux support because of this same misconception.
Do you have a better source on the scale of Steam that can represent a accurate market share for Linux desktop? I'm willing to wager money this number is pretty close to accurate.