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merthyr1831 ,

Sweeney is just being diplomatic here. I dont think he ever wants to support Linux

Phen ,

Didn’t they drop Linux support on some stuff when the deck got announced?

merthyr1831 ,

no idea. As far as I know it’s never worked on linux

Tankiedesantski ,

Might as well ask Nintendo if the next Pokemon game will be released on Steam Deck and PS5.

Moonrise2473 ,

But in another interview said that they will never support Linux because he thinks that’s not possible to detect cheaters (although IMHO they should be detected server side, otherwise it’s a cat&mouse game)

Smk ,

Not enough engineer lol They also don’t have enough people working in ethics too.

gnubyte ,

Epic games has its own store: its competing. There is no way they want to support the steamdeck right now. Same goes for xbox/Activision in a lot of ways and anything they’re doing for the time being is just a way to sedate the law makers that objected to M$ activision acquisition.

Going to add that Epic Games blaming engineering headcount is a BS measure to distract from it too. They just got done suing Google. They absolutely want every part of the bottom line they can grab. Many companies have cut/are cutting programming staff to hedge bets they will be fully replaced if not mostly replaced in 5-10 years.

littlecolt ,

“The Linux Problem” = “Not enough people using it for us to care”

jerkface ,
@jerkface@lemmy.ca avatar

That’s a public line. It’s BS. Sweeny has been actively trying to torpedo gaming on Linux for YEARS. I don’t know if it’s just “Steam is good for Valve so it’s bad for me”, or if it goes deeper than that, but it’s obvious in the last decade of behaviour.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

IDK, Unreal Engine runs on Linux, can export to Linux, and the Unreal Tournament games are released on Linux.

I really don’t think he hates Linux, I believe him that he didn’t see a financial point in supporting it for their games. People seem willing to use Windows to play their games, so there’s not a strong financial incentive to support another platform.

If you want Sweeney to change his mind, get more people to use Linux exclusively. Personally, I prefer to ignore him.

jerkface ,
@jerkface@lemmy.ca avatar

IDK, Unreal Engine runs on Linux, can export to Linux, and the Unreal Tournament games are released on Linux.

You are cherry picking. What about EVERYTHING ELSE?

sugar_in_your_tea ,

What are you talking about? I’m merely showing that he has supported Linux in the past, and at least some of his companies products support it today (Unreal and EAC).

The reason EGS and Fortnite don’t support Linux isn’t because he hates Linux, but because he doesn’t see profit in it. And I don’t blame him, Linux probably isn’t profitable in the short or medium term for EGS or Fortnite.

Steam didn’t start supporting Linux because they saw short or medium term profit, it was a long term investment to keep an option open in case Windows was able to force stores to share profit on their platform. Now that Windows has kind of backed off that, they’re doubling down because the Steam Deck provides another option to increasing sales and appealing to more people.

I don’t hate Tim Sweeney for not supporting Linux, but I am a bit disappointed though. But if Linux gains enough marketshare (not sure how much we’d need, but maybe 5%?), he’ll likely change his mind. He’s interested in profit, and Linux just isn’t an attractive enough platform for that right now for EGS. Maybe that’ll change in the future.

I have never and probably will never give EGS any of my money, but that didn’t mean I hate Sweeney or his products, it just means they provide no value to me, so I’m uninterested, much like he is with Linux.

HawlSera ,

There are tens of Millions on steam, what a dish

13617 ,

Important to note that Fortnite does launch on the steam deck, but the anticheat kicks you out a couple seconds into the match.

The game does run. It’s Epic.

chicken ,

lol so he’s completely lying then

ziggurat ,

Yes

sugar_in_your_tea ,

No, he didn’t say it needs more users to port it, just to support it. Support means more than getting it working, it means testing and customer support if there are issues, which means training testers and support people.

The extra load here would be much lower if it was a single player game, but because it’s MP, they need to know how exploitable it is by cheaters, and perhaps patch some vulnerabilities out.

It’s a lot more than flipping a switch, but it’s also something Epic could totally handle. He’s not lying, he’s just content to milk his cash cow as long as he expects to not lose too many customers by not supporting Linux.

ziggurat ,

No

ILikeBoobies ,

No

Catsrules ,

It’s Epic

That doesn’t sound very Epic to me.

pythonoob ,

Am I the only one that doesn’t actually give a fuck if fortnite is on steam deck or not.?

Hell I’m happier with it not.

SmoochPooch ,

So it would upset you if it was available on the platform?

pythonoob ,

I would… Actively scoff…

TexMexBazooka ,

Then you’re an elitist asshole. Let other people enjoy things without needing to feel superior.

pythonoob ,

Need I put a /s? Really?

WholeEnchilada ,

Fortnite what? Isn’t that the crack the 12 year old video gamer nerds smoke?

Omega_Jimes ,

It’s more that having a game like that support linux would do a ton to quiet the “You can’t game on Linux” crowd.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I have no interest in it whatsoever, and I’ve banned my kids from playing it because I think it’s predatory.

That said, I wish it was supported in Linux because that would likely instead Linux marketshare, which makes it more attractive to support for other studios, which means more working games on my platform of choice.

I don’t care if Fortnite falls off a cliff and destroys itself, but I do care if it works on Linux.

jherazob ,
@jherazob@beehaw.org avatar

Compare and contrast

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/3778a136-5893-4ab4-be19-d2014807ea73.webp

haui_lemmy ,

You weren’t supposed to see this!

azvasKvklenko ,

Sadly he didn’t clarify why it’s the Linux being problem here. If there are any technical obstacles, why can’t he say something’s too broken on the Linux side of things so that community or Valve could fix it?

jose1324 ,

He means Linux problem as in: not enough players to justify supporting it, while those low amount of players also account for like 70% of the bug reports

RickyRigatoni ,
@RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

while those low amount of players also account for like 70% of the bug reports

And we have other developers saying that according to their metrics, most bugs linux players report are cross-platform and it’s only unbalanced because we’re the only people who actually bother to report bugs.

ShustOne ,

For that one game. There may be more games experiencing this but the 70% number I’ve seen is from one developer so far.

inetknght ,

those low amount of players also account for like 70% of the bug reports

Those bug reports are often real bugs that affect other platforms too.

pcgamer.com/indie-dev-finds-that-linux-users-gene…

Only 3 of the roughly 400 bug reports submitted by Linux users were platform specific, that is, would only happen on Linux.

ArcaneSlime ,

Turns out, the people who are more technically proficient and use software built and maintained by a community that necessitates bug reports, report bugs more often than the “it just (sometimes) works” OS users. Who knew?

abraxas ,

You mention bug reports as if they care to fix bugs in the first place.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yup, they care about cheaters scaring away paying customers. Supporting another platform increases the attack surface of the game, at it needs enough new customers to be worth the risk.

That’s it. If Linux support doesn’t have a high chance of significantly increasing profit, and it has a risk of pushing cash cow, they’re not going to do it.

jerkface ,
@jerkface@lemmy.ca avatar

Bullshit, he means Linux problem as in: “My main competitor is heavily invested in turning gaming on Linux into a viable platform.”

sugar_in_your_tea ,

If supporting Linux doubled his profits, he’d do it. Sweeney has a price, and Linux hasn’t met it.

ShustOne ,

He did in the next sentence. There’s not enough players on Linux to justify it.

penquin ,

I mean we all know that, he didn’t need to say anything. They want to make billions and they think Linux doesn’t have enough users to get those billions going. Not worth it to them. But hey, fuck him, fortnite is a shit game anyway.

rotopenguin ,
@rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

Because fuck you, that’s why

reverendsteveii ,

what’s fortnite’s anticheat like? my understanding is that a lot of games that would normally have no problem running on some flavor of linux or another but their anticheat software requires some ridiculous level of privilege that linux won’t (and shouldn’t) give it

Patch ,

Fortnite uses Easy Anti Cheat, which is made by Epic (that is, Fortnite’s own developer). EAC works fine on Linux; it just needs the developer to enable it.

PraiseTheSoup ,

Excuse me? EAC is Exact Audio Copy. There can be no other.

SirQuackTheDuck ,

Out of all the hills that are out there, this is the one you’re going for?

Interesting choice

v81 ,

Wooooosh

Hadriscus ,

Wiiiiiiiiish

WhiskyTangoFoxtrot ,

Whoa.

abbenm ,

…What?

neo ,
@neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

i fucking love exact audio copy btw

ILikeBoobies ,

Note

Epic bought Easy and made the Linux version for it. It’s there because of them

The issues are likely development related not anti-cheat

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

It could be that, or they just really know their community. If the cost of getting it working on steam deck and maintaining it is not substantially less than the income brought from the platform It doesn’t make any sense to utilize the platform.

ILikeBoobies ,

It’s the same thing basically, you could have unlimited devs if cost wasn’t an issue

But they have 9 platforms already that all have to work together and every feature has to work on before release so it’s a lot of work.

Like the last line says, they want the user base to be big enough for them to support it

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Exactly, Sweeney isn’t a complicated man, he’s just a greedy one. If choice a is less profitable than choice b, he’ll pick choice b. In this case, it’s Linux support vs other dev efforts, and the other dev efforts are apparently more profitable than Linux support.

And that’s my favorite quality about him, and it makes it really easy to avoid his products. It’s why I mostly play indies and use lemmy, I’m fine with lower production value if the quality of the overall experience is better.

ILikeBoobies ,

I wouldn’t call Epic greedy

They have one of the more indie friendly Engines

sugar_in_your_tea ,

That’s a side effect, not the goal. The goal is to make a ton of money on microtransactions, that’s why they have a revenue sharing licensing model, not a per seat model. They don’t lose much by being friendly to smaller devs, because they’re banking on raking in profits from the few that go viral.

I argue that until the recent change, Unity was the best engine for indie devs. You pay per seat and that’s it, you keep the rest. And you don’t pay until you make more than $100k, just like Unreal (Unreal is 5% after your first $1M). So if you earn $2M, you’ll pay $50k to Epic or $2k/seat for Unity (assuming pro plan). If you expect to make >$1M, Unity will probably be cheaper for smaller studios. If you want support, Unreal charges $1500/seat/year for the Enterprise option, and you still need to pay for royalties.

So here’s how I’d decide which to use:

  • Godot - most indie games
  • Unity - indie games with high revenue expectation (if it takes off), and studios with infrequent releases (you only pay if you’re making >$100k)
  • Unreal - big 3D games with latest tech, or indie studios with lots of smaller games with lower average revenue targets

Most studios don’t need the features of Unreal, so it’s an odd choice for your random indie studio.

ILikeBoobies ,

indie studios with lots of smaller games with lower average revenue targets

This is most people

Also gamemaker/construct/stencyl fit in the worse space

sugar_in_your_tea ,

In many of those cases, they wouldn’t cross the threshold for income for either, so the choice of tool wouldn’t matter. So use whatever you’re familiar with.

But honestly, with Unity violating dev trust, I highly recommend indie devs use Godot. It’s plenty good for the scale of most indie games, and there’s no royalties or costs (though donations are recommended).

Da_Boom ,
@Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

I thought it had a combination, eac and something else.

Patch ,

My understanding is that it uses EAC and Battleye, but in an “either/or” arrangement. That is, both are installed but which one is activated when you boot the game is essentially random (or driven by some logic that is not readily apparent).

Battleye also claims to have native Linux support.

But even if it didn’t, it would be trivial to have a Linux version which only used (the Linux version of) EAC. Presumably Epic have enough faith in their own anticheat product to rely on it for their flagship game for a small minority of users.

ihopethisisnotawful ,

Apparently they have enough developers to add in crappy emotes and crossovers but not enough to support one of the most popular operating systems… makes sense

Venat0r ,

Adding emotes is a different skill set than getting it to run on Linux, but there’s plenty of UE5 games on steam deck already so surely it can’t be that hard…

noodlejetski ,

adifferent skill set

you’re right, given that all it’d take for it to work on Linux would be ticking a box in EAC console, the anticheat that they develop themselves.

Kiosade ,

Saying “one of the most popular operating systems” when there’s only 3-4 serious, mainstream contenders doesn’t mean much.

Crashumbc ,

And Linux desktop is less than 2%

Kiosade ,

Yeah exactly, it’s the lowest of the major ones… not saying it’s bad or anything, just not exactly attractive to game devs

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yeah, I think 10% is where it’s definitely attractive, though macOS got away with far less, probably because of how much their customers tend to spend on hardware and software.

Da_Boom ,
@Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

For gaming I’m fairly sure that overtakes macOS

ILikeBoobies ,

Those are artists not developers

DingoBilly ,

Lmao at one of the most popular.

I don’t agree that Epic doesn’t have enough resources, but realistically Linux makes up such a tiny proportion of systems I don’t blame any other developer for not supporting it. Would be a waste of resources.

Phen ,

Well Linux is certainly one of the top 3 most popular pc operating systems.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yup, with ~2% market share. That’s like a fart in the wind, you’ll probably smell it, but it’s not worth actively doing anything about.

I love Linux and use it 100% outside of work (macOS at work), but I also 100% appreciate how little large companies care about it since it doesn’t even make a dent either way to their profits. We’re a rounding error to them, and until we get more marketshare, it’ll continue to be that way.

I wish they would support Linux, but I honestly only see risks and not many benefits to Epic to do so. Steam dominates Linux, so EGS probably wouldn’t make a dent there, and the costs to fix potential bugs that enable cheaters on Linux is probably higher than the revenue they expect to make (at least compared to other ways they could spend their resources).

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