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Comment by offtop5 | Hacker News Reader

Unity actually exports Linux binaries so most developers could do Linux natively.

The issue ends up being support cost vs sales.

If 1% of your fan base runs Ubuntu, but they're 50% of your big reports, it's cheaper to not worry about them.

It's also not as trivial as just flipping to "Linux" in a combo box and re-exporting. Getting the game to run well requires work, from writing additional platform dependent code, through fixing issues caused by changing the graphics backend (unless you use OpenGL on Windows, which you probably don't) to a lot of additional QA needed to make sure your Linux build still runs after the latest changes.

I'm a solo game developer (working on [1] right now) and while I get many more requests for a native Linux version than I expected, I'm still reluctant to invest the necessary development time. It's ironic, but the very fact that Proton is so solid makes it even less likely that a Linux build will exist, since I'm fairly certain people will be able to play Slipways under Proton with hardly any issues if they want to.

[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1264280/Slipways

For your game did you open an LLC to publish it.

I'm debating doing that now, but it comes off as a ton of work where I don't particularly think I'll make money .

Admittedly I think it’s not a ton of work with there being things like Stripe Atlas (I think there are others as well) that automate a lot of it: https://stripe.com/atlas

You still have to legally file taxes for the LLC and stuff. Feels a bit silly if I'm ultimately not planing on making money

> Unity actually exports Linux binaries so most developers could do Linux natively.

It'd be great if it was that easy, last time (been over a year to be fair) we tried we had weird unexplainable shader errors and graphics glitches, windows build via proton works fine

Sadly not worth the dev time to investigate that more thouroughly at the moment

The bugs are probably still there on the Windows version but those users are less accustomed to filling bug reports.

Which means higher quality bug reports, e.g. logs.

Or Unity Linux is less stable ?

Like if y'all really want I can upload the Linux build and make it clear it's not going to work as well. I can't support every single distro after all

I think that's better than nothing at all. But I'd make it absurdly clear, all tickets regarding Linux will be selectively completed at my [devs] whim.

If steam would give me the ability to make it so that reviews from users on "unsupported" platforms didn't impact my score I'd be a lot more willing to do that.

Yeah I would imagine Unity Linux gets a lot less attention within Unity than the Windows version.

I honestly think that some game developers should seriously consider cutting off their games feet and open sourcing them. Nothing interesting e.g. just the parts that do the slow stuff that talks to the OS.

Especially in very niche games with small teams, there is 0 IP in the boring parts of the game. If your code isn't too much of a clusterfuck, I will happily try and fix the bug myself and make a PR.

That and I firmly believe that open source is by far the most efficient way to ensure a reasonable code quality.

Not really possible for many of us as we don't have the rights to distribute all the code.

Wouldn't make much sense from a commercial pov

Both of those were true for DOOM, but Id did it anyway. It did take 4 years for the initial source release and an additional 2 more for GPL though. It is worth noting that DOOM is still selling today.

Not that I'm saying any developer should feel compelled to do it.

And with Quake 1, 2 , 3 and Doom 3

If you do decide to support Linux, keep in mind you don't have to support every distro. As long as you support Ubuntu it'll probably be good enough for most people. I say this as someone who doesn't use Ubuntu, because I run Steam (and games) in an ubuntu:20.04 docker container precisely because of how many games and direct-from-manufacturer software equates "supported on Linux" with "supported on Ubuntu".

(I don't have any problems, and I get the benefit of compatibility, not cluttering my host OS with 32-bit libraries, and controlling what information the software can access from my system - no worry about it stealing my browser cookies, for example. The only problem is I have to use the Proton runtimes instead of the new "Steam Linux Runtime", because the latter requires cgroups and thus would need a privileged container, but it's very rare to find games that don't work with Proton - recent examples I came across being Chip's Challenge and Hardspace:Shipbreaker.)

Isn't the Steam Linux Runtime supposed to handle the distro support problem? Or are there issues with that too? I was under the impression that Valve had essentially solved the distro support issue for Linux games distributed on Steam.

It provides a runtime which developers can link their games against, but there is nothing which enforces or mandates this. You can ship a binary that makes 0 use of the steam runtime, and this binary could be blatantly broken on various distros (though Valve does have some testing in place to make sure games actually launch, but this testing might be limited to Windows)

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