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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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The steamdeck runs on Arch. Games with windows-only anticheat excludes millions of potential players.
We actually know this number. As per Steam's hardware survey this group is around 2%, including Steam Deck players.
Best guess, Steam Deck sales are 5-10% of the Switch, which is in the same ballpark, so both numbers are probably roughly right.
Wheter you want to count that as "significant" is up to you, I guess. I bet the impact is very different depending on the game, even for supported games.
When it comes to large corporations, they're very risk adverse but will ruthlessly pursue every stray penny. It always bubbles up from the indie companies, so expect native Linux support for specifically steamOS so they don't have to contend with the GPL and FOSS advocates by 2030.
As someone who has been gaming entirely on Linux for nearly two years: we don't necessarily even need native Linux support for games, as often the Windows version runs better with Proton.
Nah, it's always a cost/benefit analysis. If anything, many of them tend to be very shortsighted about fuzzy reputational impacts they can't easily measure in dollars.
2% of users (and less of that in revenue, I bet, since some segment of Deck players will bite the bullet and play on Windows desktop anyway) may be worth salvaging...
...but only if it doesn't cost you more than 2% in terms of additional dev cost or in terms of losing you players due to having worse security.
That math is debatable, but I guarantee it's very likely how many of these decisions are getting made. Review bombing may or may not help there.
Negative reviews would increase the pressure. Every drop makes an ocean.
It does, but it depends on how many and how they emerge. If it's a review bombing campaign it's more likely to get moderated out or ignored. If it's an organic thing it's more likely to be perceived as a genuine PR problem. And in any case it depends on how many people are actually complaining. 2% can be a lot of people if the overall number is big, but if the game in question has a serious bug that's a lot more people willing to write about it than... you know, whatever percentage of 2% happens to be Linux-focused enough to go write a review.
I guess I'm trying to impress that a lot of people play games and of those a fraction get activist and of those a fraction play on Deck or Linux desktop and of those a fraction are going to complain.
The best path to solving this is less a review bombing campaign and more having a larger audience that is just obviously profitable to support. That one is mostly on Valve, Lenovo and the rest of the official SteamOS adopters, whoever they end up being.
Well, and on finding a reliable solution for proper anticheat on Linux that keeps it as secure as at least Windows, let alone consoles.
Correct, the reason I gave a 5 year window is because the investment into Linux support is tiny right now so they don't accidentally cut into the quarterlies.
Hah. You may have accidentally come up with the new "this is the year of Linux Desktop".
"Five years from now is the year of Linux gaming being financially relevant short-term" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, though.
Honestly, I don't have any predictions on this. So much is riding on how hard Valve is willing to invest on becoming a OS company and how receptive end users are to it. Right now the outcome falls somewhere between "Steam Machines" and "Nintendo Switch", and I genuinely don't think anybody can predict where in between it will fall yet. At the very least we need to see what happens to the Legion Go S and SteamOS adoption.
I'm speaking with industry knowledge on the state of gaming. It's coming.
Oh, by all means, share your knowledge on the state of gaming. I am looking for investment opportunities right now and that seems like a hot scoop.
I'm already fighting an unfair labor practice, I'm not interested in being sued for violating NDA.
You know what? Good luck with that, genuinely.
You're still wrong, though. Or at least overconfident.
Thank you, every ounce of support I get is what keeps me fighting. It's fine if you disagree, I very well could be overconfident
I’m glad to hear that. May the future be full of penguins gaming!
There are 3.2 billion video gamers in the world, and 1.17 billion play online (numbers are from 2023).
"millions" is a couple percent. (As seen in the steam survey as well as napkin mathing the numbers from above)
Call of Duty is the biggest fps game in the world, every year. Their playerbase is "only" in the millions, so I suppose you agree with the executives that it's not nearly successful enough?
No, because they are above the average video games market share.
But you can't argue that Linux gamers are a significant market share, just because the number in front of the % is the same lol.
There are millions of video games, which all have below 1% market share. Compared to the average game, a single percent is huge.
But there are no millions of operating systems with below 1% market share. Compared to the most popular OS, which has above 80% market share, 1 or 2 percent is insignificant.
Ok so if you agree that their playerbase of millions marks a successful game, then why do you consider the possibility of millions of players insignificant?
It's not absolute but relative.
Because for each individual game dev, linux gamers account for on average 2% of their sales, which is insignificant.
Linux gamers are spread across all of the games and game devs.
Every person excluded from a purchase is money lost in the eyes of corporations. It's why boycotts work when they're properly organized. It's why microtransactions are usually less than $5. I've been in corporate meetings for game companies before, I was recently illegally fired. The addition of Linux support is coming, but the big corporations need motivation to do it quickly.
You have to compare income from sales to development and ongoing maintenance cost of supporting a whole other platform. Not all engines can easily build for Linux. And the ones that can, are sometimes hindered by windows only libraries, which may significantly speed up development or quality of the game.
Boycots work when the market share of boycotters is significant.
I am, remember? I just told you that I was (is, will continue to be) a game developer. I've already considered cost of development.
As with your arguments where you mixed relative and absolute numbers - you can not apply the learnings of one subset of game devs (yourself & the companies where you worked at) to all of them, as they operate in vastly different circumstances.
For example, here is a different opinion from a game dev: https://x.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760
I was illegally fired for organizing unions. The labor activist world is tiny. I'm able to make these statements with the confidence that I do, because I've talked to hundreds of people in several game companies.
There were 11.1 million game developers as of Q1 2024.
The total number of game development companies from the tallied data is 9,924.
https://qubit-labs.com/how-many-game-developers-are-there-in-the-world-surprising-statistics
So you have knowledge of a tiny subset, which can not be extrapolated to apply to all of them.
I don't think you understand the outsized influence a few hundred activists can be. I was 1 of about 30 people who helped organize AQAU, one of the biggest unions in the industry, 600 people encompassing all of publisher-side QA.
Just hit me up when your prediction comes true and I'll happily agree that you were right all along. But looking at historical trends and the data that we have on the matter today - I can not share your confidence.