Square Singer @ squaresinger @feddit.de

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2 yr. ago

Is there a reason why you ask this here and not just ask the staff at the shop?

Stuff like that can differ from shop to shop. So better ask the person who knows the answer.

I do see what you mean, but I do have to disagree on that point.

Someone involved in illegal bird killing or other acts of environmental destruction (oil, gas, producing garbage, ...) most surely knows what the effects of their actions are, but their want for personal gain is bigger.

And the moral difference between doing something terrible out of mallice or greed is very small, if it even exists.

Slavery isn't better when it's done just for the money.

There's a difference though.

If the game doesn't work for (some or all) Linux users, that's not a big problem from Epic's POV. They'll lose a couple users that wouldn't have been able to play the game without Linux support anyway.

But if the Anticheat faills on Linux, that is a completely different story. Then cheaters would all dual boot over to Linux to cheat all they want. That's now a problem for the whole game's user base and consequently for the publisher as well.

Something as low-level as an Anticheat would have to be rewritten almost from scratch to work on Linux and this one really needs to be tested with every possible permutation of installed relevant software. Because if one combination is found where it doesn't work, you can be sure that the day after every cheater will be running this config.

(Just to check, do you have a background in game development and/or low-level Windows/Linux programming? I got all of that and I can tell you, nothing that looks easy from the outside is actually easy. I think you are vastly underestimating how much work goes into something until it "just works as expected")

Companies just because they have money doesn't mean they know what they are doing. And sometimes even less than random people.

Well, if half a million people are guessing on a choice of two options, some are going to get it right. But that's not due to the insight of the people, but due to numbers.

Every time someone makes the business argument all I can think of Microsoft flopping with Windows Phone despite all their money. Google failing with Stadia and losing opportunity they had with hangouts to imessage. LG bowing out of smartphones. Blackberry and Nokia too late to enter smartphones despite prior dominance. Epic was so late into trying their hand at digital distribution until 2018 when doing it earlier over the past decade would have made entry easier.

These examples really don't apply here.

• Windows Phone, Blackberry and Nokia were caught up in a massive market change where they where too little and too late.
• Stadia was a purpously risky gamble to be first at a potential "next big thing" and was scrapped when the global economy crumbled and cloud gaming showed no signs of wide spread adoption. If anything, this is the opposite situation than Epic and Linux.
• Hangouts was renamed and merged with other Google chat apps, but in the end they now have messages, which is the messenger with the highest install count worldwide.
• EGS is still a comparably new thing, considering that Steam is in the market since ~20 years while the EGS is here only ~5 years. They are growing steadily, so this is not an example that we can look at in retrospect, because it's still unfolding. Also, sure it would have been great if they would have had to run a game distribution platform in 2003, but their money shower didn't start until Fortnite exploded in 2017. And they pretty much immediately got into the business when they had the money to.

Also, there are some other factors in play that you didn't consider.

Smartphones exploded between 2007 and 2010. It went from nothing to almost everything in just a few years, and those who got lucky and where ready at the right time managed to take the new market. Windows Mobile proves that it's not enough to be super early. You need the right timing in both directions.

There is no indication that Linux will have >50% market share among gamers within the next 3 years. Yes, it nudged Linux over the 3% mark but at that rate it's going to take a long while. Also, contrary to smartphones vs feature phones, the steam deck is an additional gaming PC for on the go. It doesn't replace desktop gaming.

Also, when it comes to mobile gaming, the Steam Deck is a distant fourth between Android, iOS and the Switch.

And even if you limit the scope to x86 mobile gaming, they are by far not the only competitor. There are lots of others, many of them using Windows, who do the same.

And the biggest edge the Steam Deck is it's value, because Steam subsidizes the Deck with their Store sales. Most people don't care whether it runs Linux or not.

Did you read the second line of my post?

The code changes aren't the issue.

Lone indie devs don't have to care about giving support to players, testing or cheaters.

So sure, if you completely ignore the difficult/expensive parts, the rest is super easy.

Apparently, their cost calculation is different. Also, Fortnite has about 50x active users compared to Apex Legends. That also changes a lot.

Sweeny said it doesn't make business sense for them and if it will make sense in the future, they will support Linux.

I'm pretty sure that someone who does know their business figures and frequently has to justify them to shareholders has a better overview about what makes business sense for them than anyone of us.

Yeah, pretty much all answers are "You are wrong, the code change is easy".

Kinda sad that people don't make it even to the first line.

Seems like you didn't read my first comment that you replied to before.

But still, your view is totally fine for a little indie studio, but that doesn't work for a game with >200 mio players.

Proton with what? Stable or experimental? DXVK or Wine3D? X11 or Wayland? Nvidia closed source or open source?

That's just what I came up with. There are probably a few more of these questions. Even Proton alone is not an easy target.

Especially if you want some low-level anticheat. And you know, if they have one platform that is easier to cheat, cheaters will all use that platform.

I don't know about you, but playing with tons of cheaters doesn't seem like a lot of fun to me.

That's the problem with native lingua franca speakers. They don't have a foreign language that they really have to learn.

If you don't speak English people are mostly limited to their own country. German is worthless in France. So we all need to learn English, while you don't have a lot of benefit of actually learning other languages.

To show my point: My team at work is spread over most of Europe. We don't have an English native speaker in the team and there are maybe a small handful of them in the whole company. Still, we all speak English at work, because it's the only language everyone knows.

Robber: "Why does it take so long to stuff money in the bag?" Bank employee: "Oh, that's what I was supposed to do."

That's a bit high. PLA still won't care, but PETG will probably only print perfectly for a quite short time (maybe a day or two).

That said, depending on what exact blend it is, Silk PLA or other PLAs with additives might also have an issue with humidity.

I think, people here look at it from the wrong side.

The code changes required for Linux support aren't the issue.

But if they support Linux, they have to support Linux. This is not some student's first indie game, but instead a massive game with up to 290 million monthly active users. That's 3.7% of the whole world's population! (And it's also more than the number of total Linux users.)

So supporting Linux means they need to test on at least all currently maintained versions of maybe the top 20 or so distros on all sorts of hardware configurations. That would increase their testing costs by around a factor of 20.

They also need to support customers if they have problems. Considering the variability of Linux configurations, chances are high that this comparatively small segment of players will consume an aproportional amount of difficult support requests.

And lastly, if the Linux version of the game has some serious bugs on some setup, it might likely be that all these Linux users think the game is shit and start talking badly about it.

So it's just a simple cost calculation: Does Linux support increase or decrease the total profit?

And if the variables change, the calculation changes with it. Exactly as Sweeny said in his post. People like Sweeny don't care about ideals or about which OS they prefer. They only care about money.

And the revelation that a CEO likes money and dislikes risk isn't exactly hard to figure out.

I'm not saying that it's good, but top capitalists tend to be capitalists.

And in the end, I'm pretty sure someone who has all the business figures and frequently has to defend those in front of the shareholders probably knows much better what makes business sense than any of us. Someone like him goes where the money flows.

To be fair, you don't look at the whole picture.

Yes, generating a Linux build wouldn't require a lot of changes to the code.

But if they support Linux, they have to support Linux. This is not some student's first indie game, but instead a massive game with up to 290 million monthly active users. That's 3.7% of the whole world's population! (And it's also more than the number of total Linux users.)

So supporting Linux means they need to test on at least all currently maintained versions of maybe the top 20 or so distros on all sorts of hardware configurations. That would increase their testing costs by around a factor of 20.

They also need to support customers if they have problems. Considering the variability of Linux configurations, chances are high that this comparatively small segment of players will consume an aproportional amount of difficult support requests.

And lastly, if the Linux version of the game has some serious bugs on some setup, it might likely be that all these Linux users think the game is shit and start talking badly about it.

So it's just a simple cost calculation: Does Linux support increase or decrease the total profit?

And if the variables change, the calculation changes with it. Exactly as Sweeny said in his post. People like Sweeny don't care about ideals or about which OS they prefer. They only care about money.

And the revelation that a CEO likes money and dislikes risk isn't exactly hard to figure out.

Depends on the relative humidity in your house and the type of filament you use. I have usually ~30% humidity in my flat.

• PLA reall doesn't care about humidity. I've got some 5yo rolls that still print like new, without storing them air-tight.
• PETG is fussier. After a few days they start to act up. I always have them in the filament dryer while printing.
• Specialist filaments (e.g. Nylon, Carbon, Wood) might be much more hydroscopic, depending on the material.

In this case, you should get a 3D printer.

You have to consider the square cube law.

Weight scales far quicker than bone strength.

And also kids are 24/7 running around and doing something for their fitness if they are allowed to.

Most adults don't do that.

I first read "politically enraged". Apparently I wasn't too far off.

Looks like Brexit was the way to go. For the rich.

Who would have thought...