I remember a gamedev complaining about this on Twitter but the outcome he came to was that he hated that Linux users submitted bug reports, stating the OS itself was broken and he refused to help any of them.
I remember threads like this from back when Valve was pushing Steam Machines. Won’t name names, but there were very successful developers throwing tantrums once the bug reports started to flood in. Many weren’t prepared to actually provide support and spent years regretting it (according to postmortems.) I managed to get a refund on one game after the developer’s Twitter rant went completely off the rails re: Linux being unfit for desktop. Weird that they were 100% fine with Linux when it meant getting my $15, $20, or $30. Makes you think!
Garry from Facepunch was pretty down on Linux from Rust (the game) because of the high bug to purchase ratio and because some stuff just didn’t work on the Linux version of Unity but worked fine on Windows. I mean, fair enough.
Looking in to it a bit more, it looks like they handled this extremely well, admirably even! https://rust.facepunch.com/news/updated-linux-plans
I’ve seen that several times. I expected that’s where this post was going, nice to see that was wrong.
Reflecting on my first year running solely Linux (as opposed to dual-booting), I think that this culture comes from the fact that, on Linux, problems can more often than not be solved. If not solved, then at least understood. When you want to change something on Windows, or something breaks, you have far less room to maneuver.
When I was a Windows user, I’d barely ever submitted a bug report for anything, in spite of being very tech-literate. It felt hopeless, as my entire experience with the OS was that if a fix would come, it’d have to be done by someone else.
Linux treating its users like adults, produces users who are more confident and more willing to contribute.
When it comes to closed-source software developed opaquely by for-profit corporations, particularly the huge, monolithic ones like Microsoft, I generally have the attitude that, if I do discover a problem:
- They won’t take my detailed report
- If they do take my report, it goes straight into a shredder bin (or a massive queue where low priority problems go to die, which may as well be the same thing)
- If they do read my report, then it’s likely something they already are aware of
- If they don’t know about it somehow, the issue is probably so low-priority and niche that it wouldn’t escape the backlog anyway
Probably not nearly as bleak as I make it out. But when you can’t see the process, how can you tell?
With open source projects, these things can all still happen, but at least the process is more transparent. You can see exactly where your issue is, and what’s been done to it so far, if anything. Other users can discover and vouch for your problem. And if the dev team takes pull requests, and you are willing, able, and permitted to contribute, you can make the fix yourself.
Also, with open source projects, I actually want to help the developer improve their project, whereas with Windows I simply do not care and won’t donate a second of my time to a large corporation for free.
You can do the exact same thing in Windows, just think of the SysInternals Suite and its power. It’s just that people on Linux expect problems, while the overwhelming majority of people on Windows/MacOS is using their device expecting it to work and if it doesn’t they go do something else or buy another device.
Also this completely untrue notion that you cannot fix Windows or play around with its internals is very prevalent, to the point that it’s a meme, so people don’t even try.
This is true. I also dont even know how to report actual Android bugs. On Windows its true, its simply a big “f you”
Great to see this perspective from a developer and it totally makes sense. I think the Firefox browser has encountered essentially the exact same thing. Linux support may be a strategic advantage for devs that embrace it.
That does not mean that every developer will find the same thing though. Proton and Unity have many, many Linux specific ( or at least non-Windows ) bugs I am sure. It would be easy to bemoan these. It takes a different kind of mind-set to see working around these kinds of issues as valuable. Even rarer are devs that take the opportunity to address bugs in the underlying tech ( outside the game - eg. in Proton ).
I suspect though that many non-Windows bugs are actually due to defects in the game. They are just not manifesting yet or in the same way. The fact that Linux exposes these is again an opportunity in the way the author of this post points out.
In other words, cross-platform deployment is an opportunity for a stronger product. Access to an engaged community with strong communication skills and technical chops is a bonus.
Hopefully more devs start to see the world this way. Great article.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/
Please link to the source in the future. Pictures without alt tags are an inaccessible medium for people with impaired vision. Screen readers don’t ship with an OCR.
Interesting take. I wonder if the amount of platform dependent bugs is generally that low for games. I’m a developer, but not a game developer. I would assume that platform dependent stuff comes into play a lot more, when using shiny new tech like direct storage, which is probably used more by AAA titles and less by indie games?
In my somewhat limited but relevant experience, the amount of platform specific bugs is indeed that low. I mean, there’s of course a layer of platform-specific low level stuff which is highly subject to platform specific issues, but once you go above that layer and into game code proper, most bugs are just bugs.
I didn’t fix 400 “Linux-only” bugs, but I did fix dozens of “seems Linux specific” and “only happened when at least one Linux client was connected” bugs, and a grand total of 2 were caused by platform differences. And of those two, zero were Linux specific. The platform difference in this case was about how different compilers optimise non-crashy types of UB.
Of course, we don’t want UB at all so the fix is to remove it.
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The difference is money. Vulkan is an incredibly terse spec compared to dx12. You’d think that would make it much more consistent to work with, but really, it’s all it can do to keep up with msft and IHVs who pour money into coaxing AAA devs to use dx12. Then, even when the app gets something wrong and causes issues for end users, the IHV just makes a special case in the driver to correct it, because having a big important dx12 title run correctly on their hw is important to sell units.
Meanwhile, the same IHVs barely bother to support anything beyond the basic vulkan requirements, because it doesn’t gain them anything to do more. If a vulkan game experiences issues, IHVs don’t care because it won’t sell well anyway.
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A. If you haven’t played ΔV, do it. One of the most amazing games out there imho. So good in fact that I just went to find a Δ on the internet so I could use it and not disrespect the dev and the game. B. He is such an amazing dude. I don’t know him personally, but I do know that when Ukraine was invaded he made the game free for months on Steam so people in Ukraine could get it and have something too distract themselves from the conflict. A+ move in my book right there. I had already bought the game at that point, but I wish I could buy it again just to support him further. C. Reading this almost makes me think it would be a good tactical move to offer early access games at a steep discount on Linux if it has this great of an effect. Pay back the “free” QA kindness of the community.
Imagine saying all that and not linking it 😏
I got you fam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/846030/V_Rings_of_Saturn/
Lol, thanks. It was late.
remember the other several occasions where developers hated actually getting feedback from these linux users cause they actually would have to fix their shit? but not many actually did
cause i remember, they only care as far as money goes
That’s true. But I won’t hold my breath as the bar getting low to get a better&better out-of-the-box experience on linux (and it’s good), it will bring its lot of smelly gamer on their racing chair which don’t care usually, they don’t mind to exec this fishy binary to get 5fps. They will come by simple fact that MS, eventually, would have been too far in BS in their Ai-Ads-OS.
Just check this community on YouTube, Twitch and forums. Shitting on AAA title which are a monstrosity of complexity but because it fails sometimes, those smelly, pretentious douche can get quite incendiary quickly.
That’s why I wish that those tiktok games (apex, fortnite,) never ends on linux.
What if the bugs are linux-specific? lol
Did you read the post lol?
He says 3 out of all reports were linux specific.
You’re taking this too seriously lol
???
