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from the keeping-playtime-alive-for-tux dept.
Engadget posted a look at the state of Linux gaming in 2019, and it's not that positive. The writer posits that Valve's Steam is solely keeping Linux gaming alive.
Fast-forward nearly six years. Steam Machines puttered out as an idea, though Valve hasn't dropped its support for Linux. It maintains a Linux Steam client with 5,800 native games, and just last August, Valve unveiled Proton, a compatibility layer designed to make every Steam title run open-source-style. With Proton currently in beta, the number of Steam titles playable on Linux has jumped to 9,500. There are an estimated 30,000 games on Steam overall, so that's roughly one-in-three, and Valve is just getting started.
However, the percentage of PC players that actually use Linux has remained roughly the same since 2013, and it's a tiny fraction of the gaming market -- just about 2 percent. Linux is no closer to claiming the gaming world's crown than it was six years ago, when Newell predicted the open-source, user-generated-content revolution.
[...] The industry's lack of Linux love is just one reason Epic Games felt free to launch its new digital store -- the first true competition to Steam in about a decade -- without support for open-source operating systems. When the company unveiled the Epic Games Store in December, Linux fans immediately had questions: Would the marketplace work on their distros? If not, were there plans to support Linux down the line?
The most concrete answer came from Epic Games director of publishing strategy (and a creator of Steam Spy) Sergey Galyonkin on Twitter in late December: "It really isn't on the roadmap right now. Doesn't mean this won't change in the future, it's just we have so many features to implement." Epic Games didn't provide an update on its plans for this story.
[more...]
[...] "The pro of supporting Linux is the community," Super Meat Boy Forever creator Tommy Refenes said. "In my experience, Linux gamers tend to be the most appreciative gamers out there. If you support Linux at all, the chances are they will come out of the woodwork to thank you, offer to help with bugs, talk about your game, and just in general be pretty cool people. The con here unfortunately is the Linux gaming community is a very, very small portion of the PC gaming market."
Refenes breaks it down as follows: "If I were to list how Super Meat Boy has made money since the Linux version dropped, starting with the highest earner, the list would be: Windows, Xbox, Playstation 4, Switch, various licensing agreements, Mac, Playstation Vita, WiiU, merchandise sales, NVidia Shield, interest from bank accounts, Linux."
[...] "My hope is Steam's Proton project really takes off and Linux support is invisible to me," he said. "In an age of three consoles, PCs with millions of different configurations, and a market that is getting increasingly crowded by the day, the last thing I want to do is take time and money to support Linux when historically this has offered no marketing or financial advantage. But if Steam does the heavy lifting, then that's a win for everyone."
I've seen several video game developers outright cancel native Linux ports of their video games since the announcement of Steam's Proton over the past few months. Does this mean that there will be even fewer new native Linux video games in the near future?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by richtopia on Wednesday March 06 2019, @04:22PM (3 children)
Proton is based on Wine, and my understanding is Proton is not a big change from the main branch. However, the integration with Steam was seamless. You need to opt-in, then you can install the game like normal via Steam (assuming the game runs correctly). This workflow makes Linux more approachable for the layman.
What I have not tried yet is if this workflow can be applied to non-Steam applications, but I suspect it cannot be. Steam may be the most popular game distribution system, but it lacks some of the most popular titles (Fortnite... why is it so popular?). Steam may not be perfect, but I applaud Valve for making efforts towards open source. I'm particularly disappointed in Epic Games: the newest Unreal Tournament running the UT4 engine supported Linux and looked to a more open distribution model, but that game has been abandoned and Fortnite (also UT4) has no Linux support.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday March 06 2019, @05:13PM (2 children)
Epic Games is now competing with Steam with its own Epic Games launcher. It has lower fees for publishers than Steam, but it also allows publishers to disable user reviews, so it can be pretty anti-consumer even if some games end up $5-10 cheaper. For those reasons, it has attracted various exclusive titles. Also, Epic Games is the developer of Fortnite, so there you go. I'd say Fortnite is popular due to it being free and fun, the memes surrounding the game amplifying awareness of it (like the dances, some of which may be violating copyright), and having low system requirements (runs on iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch).
I expect that Steam will eventually lower its cut from 30% to 10-15% to compete with Epic Games' ~12% (there's also a deal related to use of the Unreal Engine by the developers). Of course companies are going to migrate to Epic if it's 30% vs. 12%, but 15% vs. 12% would be reasonable.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @12:43AM (1 child)
Point of law, dance moves are not copyrightable.
Otherwise, you are basically right about pricing, and its correlation with competition. Platform lock-in app stores charge monopoly rent, but there's no reason for this to persist on the PC, where there is competition.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 07 2019, @01:02AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/arts/fortnite-floss-dance-lawsuits.html [nytimes.com]
https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/16/18227557/the-carlton-fortnite-dance-copyright-lawsuit-rejected [polygon.com]
I don't think the matter is settled until all of the lawsuits are dismissed. Maybe the question will reach the Supreme Court one day.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]