Carmack: Supporting Linux isn't worth the hassle at the moment | Hacker News Reader

Carmack: Supporting Linux isn't worth the hassle at the moment

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10 pointsspeeder11 comments

> "You probably can't even get an email returned if you are offering less than six figures to a top ten publisher," he noted. This may sound ridiculous - 'Who would turn away $20,000?' - but the reality is that many of the same legal, financial, executive, and support resources need to be brought to bear on every single deal, regardless of size, and taking time away from something that is in the tens of millions of dollars range is often not justifiable."

Valve is investing in the long tail with Greenlight. It might be that there's more money to be made from platform agnostic indie games than from the best offerings of the top ten publishers combined.

I think the other concern is that Windows isn't a sustainable platform for gaming, since it's hard to predict what the platform will look like in any given future iteration.

It may be hard to predict some things about future windows versions, but one thing MS has been very consistent about is maintaining backwards compatibility for the bulk of the software written for it. They've been acutely aware since Day 1 that that is how an OS is made or broken, it's in their DNA, and I don't think they're going to kill that golden egg-laying goose anytime soon.

Then why several XP era games already don't work properly on 7, and many things don't run at all on 8?

90% of the xp->vista compatibility issues stem from not running default as administrator.

I didn't say 'all', I said 'bulk', meaning 'most'.

You're right, backwards compatibility has been a hallmark of Windows.

To paraphrase Gabe (and devs like Alen Ladavac) more precisely, I should have mentioned that I think they're most concerned about the certification requirements on launchers in the main UI of the new OS, and flagging adoption of 8.

The first concern is probably a little melodramatic.

As to the second, I think if you run a giant content delivery empire that lives or dies based on Windows on the desktop in the home, then you have to get a little panicky when you read all those apocalyptic "X is killing the desktop" stories. Even if they're all overblown, even if there's only a 6% chance that we all drop our computers and start using smartphones exclusively, Gabe HAS to hedge for that. If Windows releases any OS without groundbreaking adoption numbers, it's got to give him minor palpitations.

The best way to hedge is probably to push cross platform development and consider building a Steam box. Even though it seems a little kooky, it might be the best hedge of the alternatives.

Meanwhile, Carmack's radically different approach (wait until the market shifts out from under us) isn't really irrational for him either. He could switch to developing smart phone games any day, but the best day for him to do so is after they're the dominant ecosystem, not before.

Though Alen's in the same boat as Carmack, so he's probably overreacting.

http://www.vg247.com/2012/11/06/serious-sam-developer-rails-...

My impression is that Valve's Linux investment likely has more to do more with politics and sticking it to Microsoft.

True; while I welcome Steam's Linux support wholeheartedly, I am not naïve to Valve's motives. They may learn good things about Linux in their endeavours, but it was hardly motivated by these things.

Politics will be politics, we all just have to hope that some good happens now and then, even if the intent was not necessarily to do good. Ethics and morals; I think ends can make reason irrelevant. I am sure Kant has a problem with that view.

The strange thing to me when it comes to game development on Linux is that whenever the topic comes up, the discussion never seems to focus on whether Linux is a good platform for game development, it's always that Linux is the easiest answer to "If not Windows, then what?".

Too bad how they changed.

In the past Carmack and his agressive OpenGL coding and engine open source has been one of the biggest reasons games on Linux became more possible and better.

The efforts of the community to run his games, specially Quake iterations (like ioQuake) were important to improvement of drivers and user space usability.

Several companies dipped their toes in Linux gaming in the 90s, and the market just isn't there to justify the effort.

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