Not that their offerings are that great or partly already not included to others...
This sort of thing smells of vicious downward spiral.
The Windows power-gamers can do the marketing as well, by pointing where to get cheap games when there is great deal around.
I really think that Linux crowd is more vocal on forums than in reality.
Let's say I am a power user, and I have 10 friends. I rave about a service because it serves me so well, my friends follow my lead, and now the service sees 9% users on Mac an 91% on Windows. A Linux power-user does the same, and now the service has 4.5% users on Linux, 4.5% on Mac, and 91% on Windows. Our friends then "recruit" their friends, and so on and so forth until the numbers are overwhelmingly pro-Windows - but the chains didn't start there.
Scenario 2: a Windows friend tells me a service is great, he's seen it on this video and blablabla. I check and it's just for Windows. Not only will I not sign up, I will probably badmouth it whenever the subject comes up. So chances are that at least some of our common friends will follow my lead and not sign up, even just because "what if I buy a Mac tomorrow? Their laptops are so nice, I just can't afford it right now but once I get a new job..."
You can't see these stories in a spreadsheet, because virality and clout are undocumented, so to speak, but they are often the difference between a healthy growing business and a dying MBA-driven shell of a company.
Some devs have even said that it's not worth it to release game on EGS and GOG due to overhead for keeping it up to date there...
Secondly that second point seems entirely vengeful and needless. If one of my linux using friends said as such to me I'd think they were being overly rude and spiteful, but worst of all I think such habits taints the view of developers and maintainers about the userbases. Why would developers want to support a userbase (if indeed the linux userbase all felt this way which I believe they do not) who would " badmouth it whenever the subject comes up" simply because they received a recommendation from their friend(?) that didn't support their preferred operating system? Also "maybe I'll buy a Mac tomorrow?" seems disconnected from reality by and large.
Finally virality and clout are absolutely documented. Is that not the premise of... every single social media platform these days? Every algorithmic recommendation engine is trying to represent virality and clout, since those terms directly tie in to user views, and thus profits!
It does, if you read what I wrote. 1 mac + 10 win + 1 linux + 10 win = 1 mac + 1 linux + 20 windows = 4.5% mac + 4.5% linux + 91% windows.
> this would almost seem to be in favour of windows users since they're relative userbase increases enough to outset surges
If you read it as numbers, yes. But the point is that certain things cannot be expressed in numbers. Because the mac/linux userbase is composed disproportionately more of power-users, who have disproportionately more clout among their network of acquaintances when it comes to IT and games, their overall influence is much higher than the numbers convey. They start the chains.
Your statement on not feeling this or that, btw, is directly negated by the very history of HumbleBundle.
> Why would developers want to support a userbase
We are not talking about developers here, but distributors.
> Every algorithmic recommendation engine is trying to represent virality and clout
That doesn't mean they succeed, and regardless, we are not talking about social media here.
You seem to have gone off on a series of rants without actually reading what I wrote.
IMHO, somebody should milk this market.
The warcry of uberfans of this or that IP the world over. I don't buy it anymore. That group can help, but they're not necessary for an IP/service to move forward. Worse, they have higher demands and expectations and feel personally offended when you do wrong by them.
Whether it's Humble dropping Linux or Marvel not lampshading a character detail, I'm moving closer to the perspective that a sold ticket is a sold ticket. But a sold ticket that doesn't result in a swarm of complaint emails is worth its weight in gold.
Now everybody and their mom knows what video games are + they're an accepted component of life and there's a huge gaming market, so uberfans aren't necessary for growth.
There were no games available on Linux in the '90s.*
* Except for those specifically written there.
Indeed. Before 1998 there wasn't even a proper full-blown desktop.
> But a sold ticket that doesn't result in a swarm of complaint emails is worth its weight in gold
What? Service sucks but we're not supposed to complain? We're supposed to just pay quietly and shut up?
It's comments like these that makes me glad piracy exists.
If you're trying to recruit hardcore gamers to proselytize, Windows is a great place to find them
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28978086
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav...
If true, that just means that a small spreadsheet is dangerous. Not that going by numbers is bad by itself.
I had Humble Choice for a year and loved it, then last Feb I skipped a month because there was nothing I wanted. I haven't paid since because the Choice options were getting less and less valuable to me. (As in interesting games, not price).
I almost purchased another year in their sale last month, but I'm glad I didn't I'd feel very ripped off now.
I wouldn't call moving from a single lump sum to a subscription model a simplification. What they are doing is replacing one-time payments with a slow trickle of multiple payments. With interests rates where they are, that slow trickle is worth more than the lump sums.
With 12$ grandfathered tier offering the most. Then having crappy lite tier, that is access to some DRM-Free games and 10% discount. A 15$ tier which allowed you to choose 3 games of 9-12 with 20% and 20$ tier which at the beginning offered single game less than grandfathered classic tier. Later they moved giving all the games to 12 and 20 dollar tiers.
I would say going from 4 prices to one is simplification.