yea dependencies seem like a real issue here, I don’t think Linux supports side-by-side versions like Windows does, Windows will just install every version of DirectX and libraries like that
It’s not about compiling, it’s about testing and support. Each officially supported version needs to be tested - which means having yet another set of test systems sitting around - and supported by the support team. And not only is Linux a splintered market in its own right, making testing and support a significant operation, but there isn’t the same kind of single-point OS support that you get from Microsoft and Apple.
Linux is such a tiny slice of the market compared to Windows, it doesn’t make financial sense for dev studios to spend any of their budget in it, because they just won’t sell enough copies to make it worth their while.
As others have said, tiny market, but also that it often requires more development for the Linux port to get going, and even more development to actually make it run well. Like for instance, Civilization series usually release with Linux and Mac ports, but those are done by a third-party company which I imagine does add additional costs, and those suck regardless.
Not like it’s a bad thing necessarily, the vast majority of native Linux ports I’ve tried were either severely out of date, had significant performance issues, crashed a lot or had some quirks that would make it not worth playing anyway. It’s probably just easier if developers focused on proton compatibility instead.
On Steam store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/, all Linux operating systems combined have around ~2% users, compared to the MacOSX ~1.4%. This is only a recent trend, as for the longest run Mac had more Steam users than before. And building a native Mac game was more straight forward than on Linux.
Nowadays its completely different than before, thanks to Proton integrated into Steam. This means even though there is a higher percentage of Linux players on Steam, there is less reason to make native Linux games. That has some advantages: Windows binary through Proton has feature parity without the devs needing to understand the underlying Linux system and libraries, less work for the developers means higher probability of supporting Linux for longer time, thanks to Proton and the auto selection of Proton version for each game its also less worry for the end user. It does not matter what system libraries you have installed or what operating system you are using.
It would be nice to have, but in reality there is no real need for native Linux games from developers or for the end user / player.
Market share and yes, Proton/WINE ultimately lessens the need for a native Linux port.
In a fair number of cases, even when there is a native Linux port, Proton/WINE has worked better than the native game.
If Linux gets to 5-10% of the market, we’ll probably see them come back for platform specific optimization reasons. However, without a larger market share and with the translation being so good these days, there’s not a lot of need.
Civ games at launch are often a bit of a mixed bag, and the games improve over time with patches and expansions. That being said, the game isn’t even fully out yet, and early Steam reviews are notoriously unreliable and undifferentiated. For your first civ game, maybe look at earlier titles like Civ 5 or 6. They have aged very well, I still play 6 all the time.
I played 6 at launch and it was a huge downgrade from 5 but now it’s been updated so much it’s now unrecognizable from what was released as 6.
Every patch, update, and DLC will change it incrementally back into a similar experience as the others. They like to try to get real wild with the initial release but it tends to get back to the same sort of things eventually.
I am hoping that is the case, but I do have to say that this one boggles the mind just a little bit to be launching without significant features that the previous games had like hotseat multiplayer and limited era games.
I want to add on that Sid Meier had a philosophy called the one third rule, where on third of a new game would be kept from the previous, one third would be improved systems and one third would be new. I don’t think he is big into the studio at the moment, but i can see him still being a guiding light.
I don’t play many games, but civ patches will get the game polished and it will be a world better at some point. Until then, you can be the part that is booming the system or wait until the product is in a place that the community loves
I was playing Apex and any time there was a Playstation player on my team the framerate dropped down to like 5FPS for minutes at a time. So I think it’s still struggling
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