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Comment by DizzyDoo | Hacker News Reader

I suppose I can only speak for myself but I don't see that as an attractive option, and what you're describing is mostly what I did do for the game release I mentioned.

If I sell on Windows (I do) and Mac (I do) then I have to support a certain range of OS versions and ongoing OS releases - even if that means (for example) I have to figure out how to 'notarise' a Mac executable so that a user doesn't have a big scary Security Warning pop-up. Not ideal, but fine. The challenge with Linux is that I would have to communicate against expectations - that I would have to make it clear that when I 'support Linux' it looks different to the support for Windows or Mac. I do genuinely think that 99% of Linux people get this, it's just the 1% that's maybe less forgiving of different standards.

For me, just personally and selfishly, passing the buck to Photon or Wine is an easier sell for my business.

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You're looking for the Steam Runtime, not Ubuntu for future projects - it bundles the dependencies into a container similarly to Docker so that no matter what distribution a user is running it'll work for them.

I wonder - what's wrong with supporting just the Steam runtime and that's it? Why deferring to Photon/Wine at all?

Do you mean just support SteamOS? The biggest problem is, as a few other commenters have mentioned, there's no further break-down in categories other than "SteamOS + Linux" (and the url is .../linux). So you can't tell the Steam Store "I only support distro x, y and not z". I can't hide it for those who I am not actually supporting, Steam will advertise it to them regardless.

But Steam only really supports the latest stable Ubuntu. It works on most distros because package maintainers put a bit of work into make it but it isn’t officially supported on them,

That doesn't stop people from making support requests, though, which is the entire problem OP is talking about.

TBF isn't this going to happen no matter what? As a linux user I have absolutely no problem with the OP saying "we don't support that distro, sorry" and closing the ticket.

I don't think so. If Linux isn't natively supported, even if it runs fine via Proton, you're much less likely to receive bug reports directly, because there's less of an expectation that things work without issues. And closing tickets doesn't help with negative reviews—in fact, some users may use that as a reason to give you a "thumbs down" on Steam.

Maybe but he’s talking about having to deal with the requests. Since Steam only supports Ubuntu LTS you can push the blame on them and say something like, “Sorry we develop for Linux via Steam and they only support Ubuntu x.04, feel free to open a ticket with them if you have further trouble.

Which is the sane thing to do.

Valve should just partner with Canonical and release Ubuntu support.

Let the other distros figure out how to get it working there.

Please not Canonical. OG Steam OS was Debian, which was a wiser choice.

Ubuntu is the most common, most widely used Linux based OS. It's the "Windows" of Linux, for good or ill.

Most hardware and software vendors primarily target it.

It might not be hip, but it's what everyone knows.

From the company that leaked data to Amazon through ads in your search? Yeah, no, pass.

Valve could probably buy Canonical outright if it wanted.

No, Steam runtime: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime

When your game runs under Steam runtime, the real distribution is (almost) irrelevant - everything in your address space is supplied by the runtime, the things you get from the host system is the kernel/kernel modules and services you talk to via IPC (i.e. X11/Wayland, Pulseaudio).

It solves the problem of what version of what library is installed (if at all, maybe user removed it as "bloat") on the host system. You get known set of binaries that you can test against / coherent SDK target like with Windows or Mac.

Doesn't "X11/Wayland, Pulseaudio" include almost all the surface where my game's bugs will arise? It certainly includes the full-screen bug described by the GGGGP.

That bug would be there with Wine/Proton too. They would run the same display server.

I believe that GOG.com doesn't accept games that rely on the steam runtime; I know some games which have Linux ports aren't available on GOG.com because of this.

Whether this matters is up to the developer. But it's a potential downside.

Yes, this is downside.

Gog is quite contend with just Ubuntu being supported; they are not that different.

Not sure whether that is the only reason why some games are not on Gog though; often Mac ports are missing too. It seems more like missing rights for the ports than technical reasons.

> Not sure whether that is the only reason why some games are not on Gog though; often Mac ports are missing too. It seems more like missing rights for the ports than technical reasons.

I don't know; probably not. But this was the response I got back from the devs of "Expeditions: Conquistador" when I asked if they could release the Linux version on GOG (when I bought it originally I still had a Windows machine).

Could you say "supports Ubuntu" instead?

Not only did I say that but I also gave the specific Ubuntu version as well!

That's too bad :( As a Linux user, I love it when game studios support Linux and make a point to buy their games more often.

Steam for example has a "SteamOS + Linux" filter so exposing your game as Linux compatible means exposing it to all Linux users.

Almost everything that works on steam works everywhere. Letting the dev specify a supported distro would be a huge misfeature not unlike websites that used check user agens and refuse to work outside of Internet explorer.

People would start pretending to be Ubuntu to install games.

Yes it seems better to whitelist specific explicit Linux-configurations (version, window-manager, sound-setup, etc). Like we officially support this, if you are using something else use the forums to discuss with other users but we will not investigate your issue.

The emails are likely bug reports?

This is unfairly downvoted IMO, because I think you're actually hitting on a very important point. Linux users tend to be enthusiasts, people who love software, and also primarily interact with a community where the "developer/user" is the most important figure, the one whom everything is designed around.

In the Linux community, at least unless a project has a toxic developer (there are a few), bug reports are Always Good. They're how we make the software WE use better on the systems that WE use it on. Even if a report isn't fully actionable (e.g. it's a problem with graphics drivers), the report is often helpful because the bug tracker is probably public and we can try to find workarounds, or at least flag the issue for others.

For closed source commercial software, especially cases where a tiny number of developers are working on the code, bug reports are Always Bad. They represent more work, work that you don't want to have to do, because at the end of the day these are people who already bought the game. You've gotten as much out of them as you're going to get out of them. If they're more trouble than they're worth (someone else in this thread claimed 90% of bug reports out of 1% of purchases), then it's obvious you should just ignore them or not port your game to their platform at all. You'd think this attitude would be different for issues that affect a lot of people: a good bug report can help you fix widespread problems that are hurting your players, but actually even this is rare. See the story of this guy fixing a bug causing 6 minute startup times that affected at least thousands of people using reverse engineering, when the developer ignored the problem for years: https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times...

So I think you're right, these are mostly people enthusiastic about a piece of computer software instinctively trying to collaboratively improve it for everyone. But because development is so limited (there's only one person reading bug reports and working on the code), those reports are experienced as frustrating rather than helpful. Worse still, because the software is commercial there may be an unspoken feeling that support is owed for the software because the user paid for it.

While I agree with the spirit of what you're saying (as a linux user myself) the problem is that we have to recognize that developers have limited bandwidth. Windows is also generating more revenue for them, so it is going to take priority.

Though for an indie game it probably isn't crazy to make the code open sourced and then put those users to work for you. That can really help reduce the burden. But of course opens you up for people stealing your software (which let's also be real, happens anyways).

No, I agree totally with that. I think that the situation that exists, while unfortunate, is pretty understandable from all sides.

> They represent more work, work that you don't want to have to do, because at the end of the day these are people who already bought the game. You've gotten as much out of them as you're going to get out of them.

This is such a bad attitude. The game is supposed to work correctly without any bugs. People who paid money for the game deserve continued support. It doesn't matter how much time and money the developers have to spend, that's their problem.

If the software is defective, consumers should be entitled to a refund. That ought to motivate companies not to release shoddy work.

Which is why developers don't release on Linux, since they would have to test for so many strange driver setups to ensure things works correctly. The bug reports you get from linux are not "this gameplay is bad", but stuff like "my mouse cursor isn't displayed correctly here" which works fine in windows but somehow their setup screws it up. Trying to get graphics to reliably work in all linux versions is a lot of work.

> The game is supposed to work correctly without any bugs.

This is not real-world software engineering :)

Pretty much any software has bugs; maybe surprisingly to non-programmers, games are especially complex (in primis, architecturally).

In real world, one can realistically talk about, let's say, an acceptable threshold of bugs.

> People who paid money for the game deserve continued support

And this is not real-world (game) business. Whether one likes it or not, there is a per-unit profit, and the corresponding value in terms of support is very limited.

An ideal solution to this is open sourcing games after a certain time (Id Software used to do it), but this is not realistic. I wish it, though!

> That ought to motivate companies not to release shoddy work

One can't really force a company not to do shoddy work. The gaming market is a radically free one, unlike other constrained markets, like internet providers. Customers are actually entitled to have the money refunded, at least on Steam. Gaming journalism actually has been including bugginess in games evaluation for a while, so buyers can decide in an informed fashion.

its Proton, not Photon.

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