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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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Steam Deck
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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.
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There's an interesting issue here that shows Linux support is a cultural thing, not a business thing.
They've presented it as "it doesn't make sense to financially support Linux due to low player count." But they don't need to provide official support, they just need to tick a box and say "yeah, we don't support this, do it at your own risk."
From a purely financial point of view, Linux support is almost free. If you release your game, a bunch of developers off of your payroll will just add Linux support. You don't even need to give them technical support because they use an unsupported platform.
To use business lingo, blocking Linux support is just leaving money on the table.
But I think a lot of companies feel like they have to have full control of everything. That everything they do most be fully supported and approved by them. That they are scared of letting the community take charge of things because it might tarnish your brand or whatever.
They are worried that there'll be graphical bugs or something and that'll make Fornight look bad, so it's better for their brand image to just block everything they don't have control over.
It's a worrying pattern I've seen in a few places, including Mozilla of all things.
... Or maybe it's just that Epic are too stubborn to accept help and contributions from anyone else, especially their "enemies".
I have been wondering why they don't just take Heroic launcher and add a skin around it to make an "official" launcher. It's probably just because they are too prideful to support anything open source or Valve. They think that they need to make their own thing, rather than using existing code.
Sorry for the rambling post, but I think this situation is more due to an unhealthy company culture than "lol 2% market share" as they present it.
Pro individual agency? Linux.
You'll own nothing and be happy? Micrapple
We can take an easy guess at which one if these things Epic is.
In the case of fortnite, this isn't really true. The issue of fortnite is the anti cheat system is not designed to play nice with Linux and allowing Linux without having the anti cheat on point would lead to players getting mad at cheaters and the collapse of fortnite. It's happened to several games in the past that couldn't prevent people from cheating.
Easy anti-cheat stays on. Several other games have implemented it on Linux without problems. Easy anti-cheat made it as easy as the developer (Epic Games) checking a box to allow it to run on Linux. That's what the person you're responding to is referring to. It's a recent development that happened earlier this year.
And those games are...? There are plenty of games that have allowed anticheat to work on Linux and haven't imploded, but I don't know of a single one that has. Care to encourage enlighten me?
I don't specifically mean games that used anti cheats that ran on Linux. I just mean games that couldn't keep from too many people cheating and it ruining the online aspect of a game. A couple different Diablo games come to mind. COD:Warzone got pummeled for a while. Fall Guys had a very rough season 1.
I suspect you need to factor in the efforts needed to prevent cheaters exploiting the unofficial client and spoiling the experience for other gamers
Epic already makes anticheat that supports Linux, and other games they own already run on Linux with anticheat.
They're just holding out on fortnite because... actually I'm not sure why. Probably Sweeney's personal thoughts on it. If they actually wanted it to run on Linux/deck I have no doubt they could without much trouble.
Sweeney is lying through his teeth here. From things he has said previously, it becomes very clear he hates the whole idea of linux. When steamdeck became a thing, it was clear he was salty about how it would shine a light on it as an alternative OS. With this interview, by now it seems he is beginning to bend under the pressure and at least pretending that "oh I have nothing against such and amazing platform, so sad we can't support it" in order to not look like an ass.
Which is an out that will bite him in the ass, they can support it, so soon interviewers won't be asking, "why can't you support linux" but "why won't you".
There is no "unofficial client" to exploit, there is an unofficial installer/launcher. Windows games run using proton run in exactly the same way they do on windows, the game itself is not modified in any way, that's the whole point.
It allows you to run games, as if they were on windows. All these companies have to do, is fucking allow it.
I always love how People with no clue how any of it works tell how terrible decisions were made to prevent cheaters.
Are you aware that Fortnite uses EasyAntiCheat which is already working on Linux with plenty of other games? It's literally as simple as Epic Games allowing it. And yes the anticheat still works, so no it's not about preventing cheaters. Read the news from earlier this year about EAC enabling it on Linux and how a whole host of games have already done so.
I think you're replying to the wrong person
Not relevant to my comment.
I presume this is a jibe at me, but you don't tell me why I'm egregiously wrong.
Valve is guilty of the same crime, a billionaire can’t hire anyone to do CSGO2 Apple support. It’s never been about money or support. The CEOs are just being jerks.
I'm sure Valve would be very happy to let people use a Vulcan to Metal translator if one existed.
I'm not asking Epic to hire anyone to add Linux support, just asking that they let Linux users try it out and get it working on their own.
Valve did purchase the for-profit MoltenVK layer and had it open-sourced under the Khronos umbrella, so they've already been happy to provide people a Vulkan-on-Metal solution for those who want to support Apple without an entirely separate rendering engine.