This absolutely happens. Team Fortress 2 Classic dropped Linux support outright a few years ago in favor of Proton support since it’s easier on the devs to do, and even as an avid Linux user I don’t blame them.
A few devs who did have commented that Linux users are like <1% of players but most of the crash reports or things like that. That was before the Steam Deck blew up though, so now you might have more Linux players, but those mostly use Proton, so why do you need a native Linux version.
I think it’s still nice to have just so that way if for some reason Proton suddenly disappears alongside Wine (alongside all their forks and other related things) in some catastrophically low odds event you can still play the game or use the program.
This was true, but a big part of that reason (as followed up on by some other devs) is that Linux users are usually tech-savvy, and frequently work on software. They contribute more bug reports because they know how to report a bug. You’ll have more bug reports, but not necessarily because there’s more bugs (though that too), and as a bonus the users reporting them will probably be able to help you fix those bugs a lot better than the average Windows user.
Most of my gaming time recently has been The Finals. Of all the new shooters released over the past couple of years, I feel The Finals has been the one that tried the most to be its own thing. And I think that is why its earned its own dedicated fan base. I normally try play a couple rounds a day and keep it casual.
There is also a !THE_FINALS community. It would be cool to see a Lemmy Finals community grow.
I started 1000xRESIST over the weekend and just can’t put it down, I should finish it in a few hours.
After that, I’ll likely pick up either Divinity: Original Sin 2 (I’m a couple of hours in) or the DLCs for Alan Wake 2 (since I finished the main game a few days ago), we’ll see.
I couldn’t put down Baldur’s Gate 3, again, but managed to beat Honor Mode for the first time. It felt like my characters were doing twice the damage, compared to my previous time in Act 3, so I just mopped the floor with pretty much all the bosses. There are a few more playthroughs I want to do, but I want to wait a bit. I’ve had like over 150 hours of BG3 this year already.
If anyone is interested, here are some more details of the run:
Honor ModeI died four times, and restarted twice in Act 1, before I beat Honor Mode. First Honor Mode try, I restarted shortly after the tutorial, I don’t remember why. Second try, I died to the three Intellect Devourers on the beach. Third time I died to the gnolls sieging the cave. Fourth try I made it to the end, but Ansur, last boss before the end, kinda bugged and killed me (game bugged and crashed as well). Fifth, I tried an all Fighters group, made it to Act 2, but messed up the Isobel fight in the Inn, and she got killed. I survived, ran to the ambush spot with the Drider, almost died, stopped before the battle was over (me and the enemy were very low, maybe I could have won, but I count it as a death). Sixth I restarted after failing in Waukeens Rest (went to camp for Wyll, after getting too close, and everything burned). Then I beat Honor Mode on this seventh attempt. Act 1 and 2 were three permanent party members and two that alternated. Fire Sorcerer (MC), Gloomstalker Assassin (Astarion), Life Cleric (Shadowheart) and switched between Berserker Thrower (Karlach) and Battle Master Fighter (Lae’zel). Act 3 I shelved the Cleric and just went full DPS. For some quest fights I took the appropriate companion (Wyll for Ansur, Jaheira for Minsc), but for the House of Hope fight I went full caster comp and just stacked AoE spells on the choke point and hid, while the enemies slowly died. I also found out that a thrower build with returning weapons doesn’t work for the very final fight against the Netherbrain, since the weapons just fall through the non-existent ground and never return. The rest of my party had more than enough damage, so it didn’t matter, but I should have kept some of the gazillion Daggers I got shortly before. As for progression, Act 1 I got halfway to level 4 with very little combat. Disguising as a Drow and skipping combat with the Goblins is pretty easy. At level 4, more fights like the Gnolls, Paladins in the Tollhouse and starting in the Underdark. Then, at level 5 with a big power spike, the game gets pretty easy. Clearing out the rest of the map, and get to level 6 for the Mountain Pass. In Act 2 I travelled with the Drider group to Moonrise, but joined the Harpers in the ambush. I made the Drider drop the lantern and picked it up in combat. The Harpers want the Lantern afterward in a cutscene, but you can just switch to another character to free the Pixie. So after like 10 minutes, the Shadow-Curse becomes a non-issue. The rest of the zone is pretty easy, I defeated the three bosses in the ruined town (toll keeper, doctor and dude in the tavern) just through dialogue. Then the Gauntlet of Shar. I like to open the door to Balthazar with Knock, so he has to fight himself, while I slink away, invisible. Before finishing the Gauntlet, I go back and clear out Moonrise Tower, so the Harpers don’t just get killed. Then just finish the Gauntlet and beat Ketheric. That fight was probably the hardest in the game. At the end of Act 2 I was halfway to level 11. Then Act 3. Made my way to the Lower City very early and bought all the gear you can. First boss was Lorroakan, since he’s pretty easy, and Rolan survived this time. Through some easy side quests and fights, I made it to level 12, then started on the rest of the bosses. I had to kill Ansur early, since he ended my Honor Mode run previously. With Globes of Invulnerability, it’s a non-issue. The next ones were also no problem. Ethel 2, Cazador, Sarevok and Orin went down easily. Minsc wasn’t a problem, but the fights are kind of annoying, and you have to be careful at the end and don’t kill him. Raphael, another easy one, then the House of Grief. I messed up the Iron Throne again, since I didn’t speak with Gortash and/or Mizora enough and the Duke was dead. Everyone else survived, I think. The Steel Watch was surprisingly easy, it was only my second time doing it, but my party just shredded it. Gortash was the last boss, before the finale, and it was pretty sad, since he and his helpers just continually slipped on ice, while I sniped them from a distance. At the end, my MC was turned into a mind flayer, and I went to kill the Brain. I quickly cleaned up the Dragon and Mind Flayers, before getting to the Brain itself. Inside it wasn’t a problem, but the reaction after your first attack is annoying, and I lost a lot of damage because of that. In the epilogue, I started to talk to everyone, almost ate Jaheira’s brain, and then peaced out. I didn’t want to risk losing the run at the very last moment.
Then, I continued Final Fantasy VII Rebirth today. I completed a quest, won a Chocobo Race and fought a boss. Not much progress, but with BG3 done, maybe I can focus on this one.
I’ll ignore the market share question and talk a little about history. The compatibility layer is what killed OS/2 back in the day.
See, IBM (with OS/2) and Microsoft (with Windows 2.x and 3.x) were cooperating initially. Windows was the new kid on the block, and MS was allowing IBM to make a windows application compatibility layer on OS/2 in the early days. Think Windows 2.x/3.x. This was a brilliant stroke on behalf of MS, since the application developers would choose the Windows API and develop against that API only. Soon, there were no real native OS/2 apps being sold in any stores. Once MS Office came about, OS/2 was effectively a dead commercial product, outside of the server space.
The parallel here is that wine allows developers to target only the Windows API (again). This means you don’t have to bother with linux support at all and just hope that Proton or whatever will do the work for you.
There are some modern differences though. First: Linux didn’t start as a major competitor to Windows in the desktop/gaming space. We’d all love the Linux marketshare to increase, but largely there isn’t a huge economic driver behind it. So Linux will increase or not and the world will keep on turning. We’re not risking being delegated to history like OS/2. The second: the compatibility layer is being made as an open source project, and this isn’t MS trying to embrace-extend-extinguish in the same way that their assistance to IBM implementing that layer was. (We could quibble about .Net and Mono and others though.)
So I don’t think it’ll play out the same way. Linux will be okay. It’s already a vast improvement from prior years.
Historically, there was nothing like a killer hardware situation for OS/2 – no equivalent of the Steam Deck – that was driving wide hardware adoption to encourage additional native apps. Valve has done more for linux desktop adoption in the last few years than anyone that came prior.
I remember it well. I think the biggest difference between OS/2 then and Linux today is that OS/2 wasn't all that much better than Windows in any easily understood way for the average non-technical user.
Idk, I feel that’s okay as long as the saves are incredibly frequent and reliable.
I’ve never lost progress in a From Software game for instance, and they have an only auto save system, but it saves literally everything you do as soon as you do it, so unless you deliberately alt-F4 instantly after doing something, you won’t lose any progress.
Can you reload old saves, or only the most recent? I think being able to reload an older save is important in the case of glitches (NPC walks through wall and is unreachable etc)
I also have never had any issues with game breaking bugs like that. I’ve encountered some glitches but nothing a save+reload couldn’t fix. Everything just resets to its normal spawn point.
There are game studios out there that don’t release broken garbage that needs the player to walk on eggshells, backup saves, and do arcane console commands to make the game playable.
There’s also a place in hell for devs who don’t include a “save and quit” in rogue like games because they’re worried people will save scum. As if honest people who can’t devote enough time for a full playthrough are less important than people lying about progress in a non competitive single player game.
I assume it’s more about the hassle of implementing a way of serializing the game state for storage in most cases but if people want to cheat in a single player game let them or better yet seed the rng so that the outcome is the same anyways.
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
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Aktywne