Comment by insraq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by insraq | Hacker News Reader

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I recently did exactly this for my game (Industry Idle) on Steam. I added Linux build but pinned a post that says "Linux and Mac support are considered experimental and are supported on best effort basis" (https://steamcommunity.com/app/1574000/discussions/0/3122659...)

Most people are very helpful and quite understanding that as a sole indie developer, it would be hard to support all the configurations. But occasionally I get angry emails and negative reviews about game not running on Linux.

Given the sales (Linux is 1% of the total sales, Mac is 3%), I would say for an indie developer, it makes more sense to put Linux support on a low priority. It is unfortunate for Linux gaming community but it is what it is.

Also even though Proton has come a long way and has become relatively stable - occassionally there are some strange issues (like Steam Cloud sync fails, etc) here and there. But overall the effort is much lower compared to maintain a separate Linux build.

This is partly the fault of Steam. They simple have a single "supported" boolean. It would be nice if you could provide a warning or "partial support" label so that people had these expectations when buying the game.

Right now the flow for the user is 1. See store page 2. Buy 3. Play 4. Hit bug.

This is the moment when they find out that they bought a game that was not in fact supported. That is super frustrating (and possibly legally requires a fix or a refund). If there was a 1.5 step of "This game offers no support for Linux" or "This game offers no support for any distribution except Ubuntu 21.04" then it is much more acceptable, because I accept that detail before purchasing.

Recently stumbled over a game that did that a bit differently. On the steam page there is only support for Windows listed. But it actually downloads a Linux version. That version worked just fine for me, but they say they can't support it, that's why it's not listed. So there is more than single "supported" boolean (and games can list required Linux version in the requirements section I think).

https://steamcommunity.com/app/378720/discussions/0/49012573... is their explanation, https://store.steampowered.com/app/378720/Thea_The_Awakening... the store page. Great game btw.

I don't disagree that this would be beneficial, but I also don't think it would do anything to prevent the additional support burden and negative reviews in aggregate. If you need proof of this, see the amount of negative reviews on some Early Access games that are very up front about the lack of polish in their current state.

The most obvious solution imo is to offer a free trial mode. If it fails during the free trial then don't buy it.

Steam is quite generous about refunding games, either because you purchased them accidentally or they didn't run correctly or any other reason, as long as you don't have more than a few hours in the game. I think that's a much better approach than having to implement what's effectively a DRM system in software, or a completely separate trial binary containing only part of the game.

> as long as you don't have more than a few hours in the game.

Last I checked the limit was the minimum of "2 hours playtime" and "2 weeks after purchase"

> Steam is quite generous about refunding games, either because you purchased them accidentally or they didn't run correctly or any other reason,

Again, last I read, Steam is quite generous but will probably flag your account if certain patterns emerge (probably through some ML-alchemy).

> This is partly the fault of Steam. They simple have a single "supported" boolean. It would be nice if you could provide a warning or "partial support" label so that people had these expectations when buying the game.

You can have Linux builds available via Steam without listing Linux support on the store.

That is interesting, but too far the other way. I wouldn't even think to look around to see if they have an unsupported Linux version available. But maybe I'm just too picky.

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