I was part of the efforts of putting The Division 2 on stadia and it really is “just Linux” for the most part.
The elf binaries ran essentially flawlessly on my linux machine (although my machine was under powered for the game.)
Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.
> Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.
That's an improvement over not having a Linux port at all, as it reduces the investment needed to publish the game to Linux eventually. Once the Linux gaming market is big enough, studios might consider to release the game.
That said, I wonder if being low-key not released multiplatform might actually mean there's likely less compatibility issues when playing with wine/proton.
This is a real-world Linux game production story: https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760. Note that the developers tried hard to release the native Linux port.
Crucial excerpt (from https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080214424474906624):
> We eventually laid out a guide with known good versions of Linux and graphics drivers, but it didn't matter. Part of the allure of Linux is the customizability, so few actually stuck to it, and generally wanted to run the game on older hardware we didn't support.
In order for Linux games production to be economically viable, there should be a Linux gaming standard, but because of the Linux culture, there will never be (there's nothing wrong; it's just its nature). Even if somebody came up with a gaming standard... xkcd explains what would happen: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/927:_Standards.
I'm not considering adhoc Linux gaming distributions like SteamOS, as they would have to be treated as an independently installed, separate, operating system.
Even my recent purchases on GOG where there's plenty of native Linux to be found, I usually download the Windows version because WINE is a more stable platform in the long run, in my experience.
The Beamdog Client no longer seems to work (pango lib issue), but GOG installs just fine. I like Beamdog and appreciate their ongoing support for Linux and have in turn purchased NWN gift keys for many people, but man - fix the Linux client please.
(Beamdog, feel free to contact me and I'll fix the broken client for free - seriously).
On another computer I had, with the supremely buggy nVidia Optimus, SimCity 4 and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura both worked correctly only with Wine DLLs on their folder, preventing them from using Windows normal APIs.
because if you don't keep your game up to date, it would not run. in windows you basically can run games for way longer because libraries are way more binary compatible. for running webservers/cloud whatever a breakage doesn't hurt and removes old crud, but sometimes the old crud is used in xyz in a way that nobody tought and without it the game would crash, that's why you would need to target a specific runtime.
the same thing more or less did windows up to 7 relativ well, via the version selection. unfortunatly windows 10 broke some games even with the version selection.
Games stand alone and don't need this integration.
CG programs and renderers need to have subdivision surface data be the same and image filtering be the same. They may be able to architect their way around standard library versions, but games don't need this same treatment because they stand alone.
Yes. Steam already supports multiple Proton runtimes, why not multiple Steam runtimes as well? With the latter, native Linux games could say in their metadata which one they need and the user wouldn't even notice.
Not entirely, it still relies on some system libraries, and you will see there are times where games do not run on Arch despite using the steam runtime. It is known.
As bizarre as it sounds, it is looking like the "Linux gaming standard" is really the Windows API. And that's where we are.
> auto reported crashes and support tickets (most gfx driver related)
I wonder if open-sourcing the game would see those same support tickets come in with patches.
Part of linux has always been about patching it up yourself. Rather than being a time sink for the developer, these linux bugs could actually be a way to crowdsource code improvements.
I know there are intellectual property concerns that prevent open-sourcing commercial products, but maybe there's some sort of hybrid solution to be found.
I hate that Linux philosophy for a daily driver. I remember being age 16, 17,18,19 23,26, and 27 and being told to figure it out. Every time I'm vastly more fluent and the community is just as unhelpful.
There's nothing intuitive about computers, a human came up with the rules. The negativity is cancerous.
It's curious that Wine outperforms Windows on some CPU-intensive tasks, but is far slower for certain others. The article just gives the numbers, but doesn't give a deep analysis. Perhaps cache issues?
ISO C, ISO C++, OpenGL/Vulkan, OpenMAX and OpenSL ES are certainly available on GNU/Linux.
https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis
Just as Cocos-2dx, Unreal and Unity are, the main engines used on Android games.
However, having 2% of users responsible for 50% of support requests + extra development effort, is what puts GNU/Linux off their plans.
If you're referring to [1], you might be interested in reading [2] as well.
Check out the game 'Duskers'.
Look at the people and works that founded the genre, they looked at REAL stuff and extrapolated, not because the real stuff was boring, but because it was cool as hell and the future stuff would be even cooler as heller. ;-)
Success in such a setting is not determined entirely by the luminosity of ones hair, the gnarliness of ones implants, but also the deep technical understanding of all the boring stuff, it's so deep, and so understood that one can do it swiftly and make it look both easy and cool. What we get to "see" in cyberpunk novels, movies and games, is mostly an abstraction sice we're not that cool dude or dudette, we don't have that deep deep understanding or those amazing skills, maybe we just lack the right implants, but nevertheless, the author is forced to portray some hybrid between the "concept of what's going on" and what observers would see.
Also, Duskers is a great game. Ps I'm a Linux user and I'd love to see more native games for my platform of choice, but I also know that there's a reason I can't always have nice things, and I don't blame anyone for that.
Cyberpunk is superficially about technology, but I think Noita is a much geekier game. Made in Finland, the country that added demoscene to Unesco. Every pixel is simulated, lots of tinkering, emergence; you craft your 'weapons' all the time. The game's requirements say: "The more cores the better".
Note it's common among reviewers to say Cyberpunk is NOT about technology but rather about capitalism in overdrive. The game's technical themes are all old cliches: Johnny Mnemonic, brain machine interface, computer viruses.
Do you know why? Linux is my primary OS and it always breaks my heart when companies decide to not support it.
Basically your testing coverage explodes exponentially. That's why in a former gig the team I was part of decided to go from Linux to only Windows since it way easier to test only for ~3 majors OS versions.
Feral and Paradox for instance only support one (1) distribution. If you fall outside that, you're on your own for support, but you get runnable binaries.
[0] https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/pull/646 ; yes, LOCALE_* env variables make games crash; also, yes, Feral has been totally unhelpful.
Linux does have a stable ABI. The kernel ABI is stable. The glibc ABI is stable. The OpenGL ABI is stable. The Xlib ABI is stable.
What you can't do is link with a random libpng or whatever that you found on your system and then expect that to work for others. But that's the same on Windows.
Win32 is the only solution for a usable, stable, application-level ABI on Linux. I don't like that fact either.
[1] See CLSID_WICPngDecoder here, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/wincodec/...
Anecdotally I've had great success with it on Fedora and Linux Mint (Mint being a spin-off of Ubunutu).
Package formats are mostly irrelevant for Steam. The only thing that is packaged is a tiny bootstrap script with the proper dependencies to make sure you have stuff like 32-bit system libraries installed. You don't even need to use that.
That is plain wrong. I don't know who started with that line of reasoning, but it is very wrong.
The only good reason for not supporting linux are the drivers. And they will change more with time then with distro.
And no, solution is not flatsnaps. If there even is a problem, the solution is much simpler.
Looks at old Linux binaries not running because of glibc incompatibility or dependency version mismatch.
There is a mountainful of valid complaints for Microsoft, but SXS is one of those "its the least worst but realistic solution" to dependency hell. Someone saying that they are running old Linux libraries (without recompiling or patching) are either lucky to not use dependencies (usually terminal-based programs) or plainly lying.
Not really. (Also older games can also stop running on Windows. It's not really Microsoft's problem except in the XP to Vista transition where several APIs were emulated but in general games (on any platform including consoles) tend to poke everything and use APIs they shouldn't touch at all.)
Though I agree with you that binary compatibility itself is/was not that stable on linux as it was on windows.
you can buy an expensive GPU from nvidia that technically supports linux, for some values of "supports".
> Basically your testing coverage explodes exponentially.
well.. not really? i guess it's the difference between unit & integration testing. all i'm trying to say is that if you need to test out 50 different hardware & software configurations to feel confident that some character interaction happens in some obscure part of the game.. that's obviously untenable :)
in any case, i expect the linux crowd are far more likely to grapple any with issues that may arise, than the windows lot.
It's one thing to do it like idSoftware used to, with silent releases done by one guy that were accepted as unofficial and you'd buy the windows release to get the missing files, and another to make a proper purchase of a game for linux with all kinds of expectations about it actually working.
What was the justification of ignoring Linux gamers, when you already went through all the trouble of creating the Linux version? Are support costs so high that Linux sales won't cover them after that?
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Cyberpunk sold more on PC than the consoles combined!
Also, Gambiting is right, the blocker was Ubisoft Connect (Formerly Uplay) as it uses a lot of Microsoft technology internally, it would have to be completely rewritten to support linux.
Ironically; I had raised this concern when I started working at Massive. I am a heavy linux user myself.
PS4 (OpenGL) is possible because there are shims provided by Sony which make OpenGL have similar behaviours to DX11.
Smaller studios don't have a legacy, usually they're highly targeted or they're using an engine provided by someone who can produce builds on multiple platforms.
Engines are simultaneously the most liberating and the most restricting thing in game development.
Obviously the Engine was ported to Linux to support Stadia, which is where the major investment would have been if we ever saw a Linux release of that particular game. Since that's done the only conclusion I can come to is financial back-pressure (PC sales are honestly not worth the headache, cheating, piracy, support issues; but are still provided, Linux support would likely be many times that effort again), and there's also Ubisofts platform distribution systems (which is intermixed with entitlement and authentication systems) and does not provide linux support.
In all, it makes me sad, because I'm a linux enthusiast and adamantly refuse to use Windows. But I've seen how the sausage is made and I have high sympathy for people making games.
By the way, are the new consoles Vulkan-native?
That is a bummer indeed :/
I'm so sorry to hear a bunch of gamers on Reddit are having issues getting this thing to run well on their systems. There appears to be an older Nvidia driver issue that's limiting utilization to low tens causing weird glitches in the rendering for people. But I tested it on my aging AMD card in an eGPU on my MBP i9 at 1080p with all the settings turned to Ultra. Even there it runs well for the complexity and liveliness of the city; about 30-40fps.
Comparing the GeForce NOW remote rendering with ray tracing against my locally AMD rendering, I much prefer the GeForce NOW version with ray tracing. The game makes really good use of lighting and seeing subtle reflections throughout the game as they would be in real life makes me prefer the GeForce NOW version.
NOTE: I went with GeForce NOW because it supports ray tracing. Stadia does not, so just be aware of that.
The only downside I see is that there is no Linux client (or a browser one, which they promised) and I need to do a strange setup of:
1. Starting game on Android
2. Connecting bluetooth mouse there (so it won't kick me out because I'm not doing anything on the phone)
3. Starting Steam and using Steam Remote Play
(Thank you a anonymous user on reddit for letting know that Steam Remote Play works there)
(with each step cursing Google for not enabling video out on Pixel 4 USB-C)
It is a bit of PITA, but I'm glad it works (other option of using a VM was even worse).
A couple months ago though (if that), they did say Linux support was coming in the form of a browser client, though that's already a thing, you can already use GFN on Linux w/ a chromium-based browser.
The downside is that if you have a non 16:9 resolution you will have to change your desktop resolution to support fullscreen with black borders, otherwise the content renders off the bottom of the screen.
I tried it just now (with 16:9) and unfortunately mouse doesn't work in game and I see a window bar at the top (half of it actually, I can double click on it and then I see full bar + game inside this window).
I'll need to experiment with it more, I'll try to make it work in Firefox as it has better codes under linux.
Pro tip: I thought my Stadia stream was having issues, turns out that motion blur and lens flare just make the game look like ass. Turn those off and it's gorgeous.
I'm an absolute Stadia fanboy. I wasn't really interested in Cyberpunk, but they offered a free controller/chromecast if you preordered, so it's kinda hard to say no. Let me know if you have any questions.
I'm horrified of Stadia. Google does not need to be in the games business.
I'm a twice-burned Google Play Music user with thousands of dollars in music purchases.
Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I'd be willing to bet money that Stadia is going to be shut down and all of your purchases, saves, etc. will be deleted.
I don't get the appeal of Stadia and I'm wondering what am I missing.
I have no doubt they will redeem themselves, but right now, I'm not excited about supporting them.
(Yes, my $10 a month doesn't have an effect, but meh)
So it doesn't fit either side in your analogy since it cherry-picks the bad parts of both alternatives.
.. in theory. In practice, I like most other people don't have access to most of the games I ever bought, or no convenient way to access them, or no desire to.
This goes for almost all of what I consume to be honest with the exception of some LPs I actually take very good care of.
All that said, sure it could be shut down. But so could PS5, or XBOX. Sure it's probably less likely, but I've come to expect nothing is forever and to enjoy what's here while it's here. And personally speaking, this is probably easier for me since the number of times I go back to play an old game is essentially zero. I'd imagine most console folks are similar.
From speaking to devs who engage with Google on Stadia, it appears to be a tire fire, in that the Google people don't appear to care about how much work the gamedevs need to put in to keep up with their API changes (much like lots of Google services, actually).
Because of the poor devrel, I will be incredibly shocked if Stadia survives another two years.
Without a financial incentive, I'm not sure Stadia would have any games, and financial incentives don't fix the extra work needed when google change things for no reason (or not for a reason that gamedevs are likely to accept).
> What I can tell you is that we’ve built a roadmap of about 400 games in development right now from 200 developers. So when those games land, whether it’s in the calendar year of 2021 or beyond, is something that you’ll hear more from us in the future. Will there be more developers and more games on the platform? Absolutely. But frankly speaking, my team is almost done with 2021. We’re thinking about 2022 right now — that’s our focus. 2023 is really kind of where we’re aiming our sights. 2021 is in incredible shape. Hopefully, that gives you a sense of the scale of where we’re moving.
https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/11/19/google-stadia-jack-buser-...
And Stadia Games and Entertainment, the publisher arm, mentioned "special bonuses" for RPGs coming in 2023 and beyond.
https://9to5google.com/2020/11/16/stadia-games-entertainment...
And they are charging. I have no idea how many Stadia users exist, but let's use 1 million since I've seen that number thrown around. If even a quarter of those are paying for pro, that's >25 million a year in revenue. A drop in the bucket to Google, but not something you'd just throw away. I expect this number to at least quadruple next year, based on their recent uptick in advertising and hardware giveaways.
$25mn is probably a small(er) advertising client. And note that the Stadia revenue mostly gets sent to game developers, and developers only build for Stadia because they are paid a lot of money by Google.
I actually think the purpose of Stadia is to demonstrate that this can be done, and it will be dropped by the end of 2023.
Come back and prove me wrong then :)
I’m expected to pay retail for the games i want but in effect i only get to rent them. Nah, no thanks.
They were also transferred over to YouTube Music (and I think can be downloaded from there also), and I believe are/were accessible through Takeout as well.
I think that offer is still active for a bit. I'm tempted to buy it at 60€ and then sell off at least the Chromecast to offset my Stadia rental. Google has a data center in southern Finland (about 150 km away), so maybe I won't even suffer that bad of a latency.
If you make sure you’re using vp9 hardware decoding then you shouldn’t notice it- I didn’t (and I’m right in the middle of the two main European DCs and nowhere near a google PoP)
With 600mb fiber the UX is outstanding in my experience. The library was really limited at the beginning but it's slowly starting to take off. It's been a great low-cost entry point to a bunch of games that I was interested in. I can seamlessly play at home on my big screen or even sneak in a quick game at my desk in the office.
Why would anyone desire that it dies? If you don't like it you can ignore it.
Your comment is very low-effort. It's borderline disrespectful to the parent, a dev who has kindly shared some insider knowledge, in that it contributes nothing to their point and merely goes off on a petty tangent.
It is subscription based like Stadia, but allows you to play games from our Steam account (assuming that game devs haven't blacklisted it from GFN).
You don't need special hardware or premium membership.
> Why would anyone desire that it dies? If you don't like it you can ignore it.
Because it's everything wrong with games industry wrapped in a neat shitty package.
Subscription - checked.
Buying games on that subscription - checked.
DLC on top of that - checked.
Doesn't allow you to transfer games - checked.
Only thing it's missing is a lootbox system.
I have a new (2020 model) Philips Android TV, and unfortunately GFN has an experience-breaking audio bug on it, and I hazard that it probably won't be fixed anytime soon, if ever, because "it's not supported hardware" despite them developing the Android TV app and it having a really common MediaTek chipset. Don't really want to fork out more money for a Shield after buying a brand new TV!
I tried Shadow last year and I really liked that, despite it being a little pricier. Regretfully cancelled my subscription, so I can't get it back until NEXT JULY according to the preorder page!
What I've tried so far:
- Moonlight (so, local streaming): Best experience, hands down... For local network, and assuming you have a decent computer anyway. So, great if you want to stream from a PC in your office to your living room. If you're lucky enough to get fiber to the home in your city, latency might be low enough and upload speed high enough that you can stream games outside your home. My cable ISP tops out at 10mbps though, so not for me. I use it as proof that there's nothing wrong with my Android TV's hardware though, since it's happy to stream at 4K HDR 60fps H265 from my PC with only ~30ms latency.
- Shadow: Good quality, good virtual PC specs (GTX 1080 baseline), surprisingly little latency, lets you play any game that runs on PC. My friend even managed to play through all of Half-Life Alyx on his Quest using Virtual Desktop streamer on my Shadow instance. Unfortunately your subscription can take _months_ to become active -- might improve in future if the company scales up?
- Stadia (sideloaded to Android TV): Playable. Played a bit of Destiny 2 and Borderlands 3. Both in 4K and HDR. Picture quality a little muddy at times. Latency a bit too high to comfortably play first person shooters, but probably okay in other games.
- GeForce NOW: Playable, but the picture quality was also a bit muddy and the latency was higher than Stadia, and on my TV it suffered from the audio glitch (distorted audio, like the buffer chunk's being played back at 44100 when it should be 48000, or the bit depth is wrong, or something). What really stops me from using it though - disappointing absence of most of my games from its library.
- Parsec, Blacknut: OK, have a bunch of free to play games in their respective libraries. The streams are only like 720p though.
Counter backlash then. You don't have to support people that don't support GeForce Now over Stadia. GeForce Now is no different than renting some server and streaming to another device.
> - Shadow: Good quality, good virtual PC specs
From what I've heard people are able to play Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX on using GFN (GeForce Now).
> Moonlight
That's interesting, I'm surprised you can't use Steam to stream games. But interesting nonetheless.
Can't really backlash considering I already own the games of those publishers who initially supported GFN and then pulled their games from it :P I already paid for the Mafia trilogy, Fallout & Elder Scrolls, GTA, Red Dead Redemption series, DOOM, Wolfenstein, Borderlands series, .....
FWIW I paid for Stadia for a month but I wouldn't sink much money into it, either. The games I want to play are mostly missing on Stadia too. Wouldn't pay for either GFN or Stadia at this point.
> From what I've heard people are able to play Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX on using GFN (GeForce Now).
Yup, CD Projekt Red are one of the publishers of AAA games that seem to have no beef with GFN.
> That's interesting, I'm surprised you can't use Steam to stream games. But interesting nonetheless.
Oh, I forgot about Steam Link actually. I've used that too. It was... okay, but I experienced more bugs and couldn't get the same quality I got with Moonlight. Moonlight has higher framerates available (90fps, 120fps) and is more actively maintained than the Steam Link app (the Android TV version, anyway). Moonlight does depend on you having an NVIDIA GPU though.
I'm sure they have data analysts that will notice the pattern if enough people are doing this.
I was very sceptical at first but when I tried Doom 2016 over the wifi on my tv I was realy impressed.
Just think about it for one second, the game runs over the wifi on 30$ Chromecast on my 10y/o TV and it looks great with almost no lag, I'm an avid FPS player and it's really ok lag wise to play on Stadia.
You have no physical copy, no downloads option and no recourse; you're effed.
And it doesn't have to be the end of Stadia scenario either. You lose access to your account and you are similarly effed, the algorithm decides you are suspicious and, you guessed it, you're effed too.
The idea that you pay for a game and get a video stream is a scam.
It's impressive and way better than I thought it would be when they first announced the product.
I recommend people try it out for free and judge for yourself.
I think FPS and reaction type games are not it's strengths, but some third person action / adventure games have been super fun. Sometimes I forgot it was not running games locally. Impressive tech.
The big players are already doing all they can to convince you you don't buy the game when you buy the game. This will make the situation much worse.
You don't own your game even if you buy a physical disc. On steam, or any pc digital distribution platform you are paying for a license to play said game. You are always effectively renting the game. Same goes for consoles. In this regard you are getting the same deal on Stadia.
Another thing you seem adamant to impress on anyone who dares suggest they like Stadia is that if the other streaming platforms go down then you still have your pc games available on other services. This is true, but one of the primary benefits of a streaming service is that you no longer need expensive hardware. If a user decides to use only streaming services then they are unlikely to maintain a decent gaming rig. So over time this becomes a moot point. If you have and maintain a good gaming pc then why would you even bother with ANY streaming platform as they will always be somewhat inferior.
I go mainly to the festivals, premieres, sometimes there is a prelection before the screening, or Q&A with the director.
As an aside, this year I enjoyed an Asian film festival at home and was able to see more movies than any other year... 2020 is weird.
I recognize that streaming has its place in the world, but I'd hate it to be the only option, like it is in Stadia model. Also, if you don't buy the game then you shouldn't have to pay like you'd be buying one.
There was a lot of bad feedback after W2 was released on Linux. It was full price, but full of glitches, bugs, crashes, unexpected dying, invisible sword... and this list can go on. A lot of users released anger on CDP who took offence and said they're not doing anything for linux any more.
From what you're saying, CP2077 is more closer to native desktop Linux than W2 is now after years, so CDP could drill into this market of fanboys and try to regain trust of the community.
I have seen no such statement by CDProjekt RED. Only employees of the porting company decried the criticism they got.
What controller should I buy?
Test them both and decide for yourself.
I personally prefer nvidias service because I actually play games in my steam library. Stadia has few games and you're always forced to use their services. No way to play locally even if you have decent hardware
As of today, you can also buy on gog.com and stream from Geforce Now. Gog releases DRM-free versions of games, so that's worth supporting.
Best solution is cloud streaming, geforce now seems more capable.
Then sadly I won't purchase it at full price. I expect a full experience at full price.