@Devs: Thanks for the Linux support

[soulsource]

I just read that Brandon Adler stated that it probably wasn't worth the effort to support Linux in Pillars of Eternity. While this definitely is bad news for the Linux gamers out there, as it means that future Obisidian titles might not be available for that platform, I'd like to focus on the positive side.

 

Many games are nowadays released for Linux, but it's by far not something to be taken for granted. Pillars of Eternity though has been released for it, and by that one of the (in my opinion) best games of this year has become available. This game has given, and will give, countless hours of high-quality entertainment to Linux users like me, fun that we would have missed, hadn't PoE been released for our platform.

Thanks to the developers for letting us enjoy this great piece of art!

[Guest 4ward]

that's too bad if true, am also completely on linux (opensuse), and while i'm not that interested in PoE i had hoped for future games from them that suit my taste more. Can we make some kind of campaign/poll, if they're really against it, does kickstarter for linux port make sense?

[Rosveen]

that's too bad if true, am also completely on linux (opensuse), and while i'm not that interested in PoE i had hoped for future games from them that suit my taste more. Can we make some kind of campaign/poll, if they're really against it, does kickstarter for linux port make sense?

It's not that they're against it, it just doesn't make much sense from the financial point of view because only a tiny part of their playerbase is on Linux.

[Guest 4ward]

 

but back then when PoE KS launched GoG didn't even offer linux games (?afaik), and with PoE being a niche game i think lots of linux users weren't aware of it, but now with the success of the game and with GoG offering more and more games for linux why stop now? Why did they even bother developping for linux at all, it's not like that back then it was believed that linux users were a dominant part of the playerbase. How do they expect their linux playerbase to grow if they discontinue offering it for them? Heck, Whalenought studios, a developper with 2 people offered Staglands for linux as well, Beamdog is doing it as well.

[Vorhees]

Can't remember the quote exactly, the panel got archived on youtube I believe, will see if i can dig it up in a minute.

But I think the question was something along the lines of "was supporting Linux worthwhile?" to which his answer was basically no, but then he went on to elaborate that now they've already gone ahead and put the mileage into developing a game for Linux that to do so again for a future sequel wouldn't be as big of a deal

Edit - here ya go, the question was asked around 33:42 (the audio gets out of sync with the video, the time stamp i gave has the relevant audio you're looking for....just ignore the video lol)
 

Obsidian Entertainment Presents A Pillars of Eternity Retrospective Discussion!

 

Edited August 31, 2015 by Vorhees

[Pawel.pc44]

The problem with numbers is they can be misleading:

 

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/how-steam-computes-linux-sales.4675/

 

Game is still buggy, so my question is: was backing it at kickstarter worthwhile? I bet not for everyone.

[Tennisgolfboll]

I just read that Brandon Adler stated that it probably wasn't worth the effort to support Linux in Pillars of Eternity. While this definitely is bad news for the Linux gamers out there, as it means that future Obisidian titles might not be available for that platform, I'd like to focus on the positive side.

 

Many games are nowadays released for Linux, but it's by far not something to be taken for granted. Pillars of Eternity though has been released for it, and by that one of the (in my opinion) best games of this year has become available. This game has given, and will give, countless hours of high-quality entertainment to Linux users like me, fun that we would have missed, hadn't PoE been released for our platform.

Thanks to the developers for letting us enjoy this great piece of art!

Piece of art?

 

Maybe if they ever finish the game to a working state instead of having it in beta version with literally hundreds of bugs

[tinysalamander]

There is only 1 question, do they like their profits 1.5% higher or 1.5% lower?

[Leevi]

 

They are a very, very small portion of our active user base—I think around one and a half percent of our users were Linux.

Linux user here, pledged to the Kickstarter and still haven't downloaded the game, so I am not yet part of the Linux percentage. Will download the game one of these years.

 

Sorry I annoyed you with giving you money and not then actively taking part in your game, Obsidian.

 

Made me sad to read that PCGamer article, Linux is getting more support and people are ditching Windows, but that article made me think Obsidian is struggling to wrong way.

[BAdler]

Hey, guys. I probably could have chosen my words better than I did. I wasn't trying to upset any of our Linux supporters and I didn't mean to belittle their support. I love all of our backers and I appreciate all of their help.

 

We basically had to build our Linux infrastructure from scratch on our side. It wasn't something we were used to. It was also painful for us to develop in Linux because the Unity tools didn't support Linux at the time. This meant that we were unable to debug on the platform.

 

Now that we have gone through the process of creating these builds it is something that will be much easier for us in the future. Pair that with SteamOS, Steam Controller, and Steam Machine and I think Linux's future is good with PoE games.

[Luridis]

As a Linux user... I have something to say you probably won't expect. Steam OS needs to move to FreeBSD, but leave the API's open for a compatibility layer on the Linux side. In the same way the BSD guys are able to port Linux software to their platform.

 

Why?

 

FreeBSD is much more stable. The ABI's don't change, and backwards compatibility is a given. PS4 is already running there, so cross-development wouldn't be difficult. Then leave the FreeBSD-to-Linux interfacing to the community. Linux developers are use to moving software targets. Hell, Linux can't even reliably wake from hibernation. That goes without saying how much stuff systemd is breaking, including POSIX compatibility.

 

Linux changes too much to build reliable business platforms on. Even Google gave up and gutted it, sans the kernel itself, for both Chrome and Android. All that change isn't necessarily a bad thing, and turns out to be a wonderful research and invention mechanism. But it also makes it far from an ideal commercial platform. So, move it to BSD and we'll end up running steam in a chroot with a different libc or even the BSD kernel under a Linux paravirtualization layer or something.

[Iconoclast]

I recently moved to Linux Mint and was glad that Pillars of Eternity was ported to Linux. Had it not been, I would have not had the chance to finish such a stellar game. I wish Obsidian gives greater consideration to its decisions to port its future games to Linux.

[Ein Eike]

Dear developers of Pillars of Eternity,

 

as a Linux user and Pillars of Eternity player I want to express my thanks for bringing such a great game as such a good port to my favorite platform. It must have been rather courageous way to go back then, when, as far as I know, Steam for Linux wasn't even in public beta and probably the tools were by far worse than they are now, which probably is still worse than on Windows. (I tried to do some programming on Linux, and found it really hard to find anything comparable to e. g. Visual Studio.)

 

I bought a box in the store next door, just because I found it that exciting to finally be able to buy a Linux game in the stores. I later learned that that probably was not accounted for as a Linux sell. Too bad. I hope your port was not a financial desaster and that - with your help! - Linux landscape has improved and your skills in that respect as well, so that the next time, it would be less troublesome.

 

I'm looking forward to play Bard's Tale (although I'm old enough, I missed the old ones)... on Linux. Would be great.

 

Ciao,

  Eike

Edited September 1, 2015 by Ein Eike

[ka1man]

Only been lurking on the forums so far, but here I have to chime in and express my gratitude for the Linux version as well.

 

I'm not a backer, and from my experience with the Infinity Engine games I was not sure if I'd really enjoy Pillars of Eternity. The fact that I could play on Linux was the one factor that caused me to reconsider and get a boxed copy for €50. I have not regretted the decision, since played through the game (unlike BG and BG2) and will be happy to buy the expansion should it ever get a physical release.

 

So yeah, we Linux gamers might be the minority, but we exist.

[omphaloskepsis]

I bet there are a fair number of "invisible" people who have both Windows & Linux.  That is, a small portion of the overall total, but a significant portion compared to the 1.5% of official Linux users.

 

I was Linux-only for 3-4 years, but brought a Windows machine back into the fold just for games.  I've been hoping for years (since the Loki days at least) that Linux would get some love from game developers.  For a few years now I've had a Windows box for gaming, and a Linux box for work and pretty much everything else.  But I only put expensive GPUs in my Windows rigs, so I tend to stick with those for games, even though I go out of my way to support Linux releases.

 

If games continue to be made for Linux, I think we'll see a jump of at least a few more percent in those numbers.  Because there are people like me who are ready, but not convinced that enough game devs are here to stay.

[algoc]

Great news. It is always interesting to hear more about the development process, success stories and what kind of problems there were. Fortunately this had happy ending.

 

Thanks for the Linux version.

[Epsilon]

Just going to post and say thanks for the Linux version. What many developers are misunderstanding however is Linux users and potential Linux users. Theres a lot of people who will support a kickstarter like PoE and might pay more for the game due to Linux support. Or simply support it because of the LInux support, without actually being Linux users.

 

I know quite a few of these people, they're Windows users, but they're always very positive about projects or games that actively support Linux, most of them because they want to use Linux in the future, but find that their 'one' favorite game isn't supported yet or they've not gotten tired of it yet. So they highly favor projects that favor Linux without being Linux users, because they want to use Linux in the future when they either have time to learn it, or theres enough games for them.

 

I think this is a shadow segment or percentage of users, one thats very hard to calculate. But I've spoken enough with people both afk and on forums to be able to confidently say that it's a large group of people who think like this.

 

There has been a few kickstarter projects that I will not name here, who decided that they didn't need to put a lot of effort into their Linux port, or simply cancel it entirely, because the statistics showed that the amount of people using it weren't that much.

The backlash of doing that however was costly to them, as they suddenly found that alot of their WIndows users stopped playing the game and bad reviews started coming up on Steam from Windows users.

This I think is due to word of mouth both from Linux users but also from prospective Linux users who get annoyed when their game isn't supported on the OS they 'plan' to run at some point in the future.

 

This requires more study though, but it's definitely not just a matter of statistics when the statistics don't cover all the data. As an example a large portion of Steams data point to a large amount of Windows XP users, but in actual fact many of those are wine users on Linux, due to wine setting the windows version to XP per default when you run it.

Understand that supporting Linux at this point is a matter of gaining goodwill from users and helping build a future without vendor lock in.

 

tl;dr theres more Linux users and prospective Linux users than the statistics show.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Epsilon

[ghostsquad57]

Thanks for the Linux port!

 

I'm having a great time with PoE on my Arch system.

 

PoE introduced me to the genre of Baldur's Gate style CRPGs. I plan on getting Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, and The White March DLC for PoE.

[ghoward]

A Mac guy, not Linux, and can run PC games with BootCamp no prob. However, Mac support was a huge part of my decision to buy into this game. You guys did a great job of creating a relatively bug-free product. If Mac and Linux platforms won't be supported on POE 2, assuming there is one, I'd have to be pretty convinced to buy a copy.

 

With the use of Kickstarter and the "RPG renaissance" there is probably going to be a lot of competition out there. You guys built up a lot of good will with the your fans by building this game. It would be a shame to waste it.

[Adam Brennecke]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. The development team loves to hear from all of you.   

[Ganrich]

If Valve is even moderately successful with their Linux endeavors then things can still get better. I still think these Machines are Valve playing a game of assimilation over many years vs the traditional console paradigm of success via attrition.

 

So even if the initial sales are mediocre I won't see it as a failure. If anything I would look at the numbers when the next series of consoles from Sony and MS launch.

 

Edit: I also appreciate the Linux version. Thanks, obsidian!

Edited September 2, 2015 by Ganrich

[stratus]

I also wanted to voice my support.

 

I paid a substantial amount of money during the keystarter ($100+) just because you were supporting Linux.

 

I understand there are hurdles developing for a different OS, might I suggest in the future reaching out to the community. We are quite passionate and I for one (who work professionally on Linux) would have provided whatever support you would have required for free. Especially if the bulk of the issues are around infrastructure, you should never feel like you have to do it alone. There are so many of us who can and will help just to see our platform succeed.

 

Here's hoping for more good things to come!

[Zonn]

As a big fan of Obsidian games and pretty much linux-only gamer for a year or two already (too lazy for dual-boot), I'd like to thank you for this effort.
I hope that linux support will be more financially viable for games you'll decide to release with that:)
Oh and a special thanks for same-time release on linux by the way:)

[jlibster]

I created a separate remark on this issue with Mr. Adler's remark. I have to be honest (and have said it). it was rather short-sighted in my opinion. Linux gaming is increasing and with the news of Windows 10 core spyware sending virtually all user data to their servers automatically (and consequently government agencies) an exodus is coming certainly for business users (out of necessity due to  being required to protect privacy/confidentiality) and to a lessor extent gamers (and possibly concerned parents) . It isn't just about the market now, but market shifts in the future. Windows is already losing ground in increasing circles. The mobile/table is lost to microsoft has already lost (not relevant here I know..but still you get the idea). It's about being ahead of the curve. Apple has been fairly good with that, and so was Mozilla and Valve. As 1.5% becomes 2, then 10, then 15. If, say Mint Linux (best for gaming distro right now I think), was marketed the way MS Windows is, it would be game over already (pardon the pun). I have students who are loving Linux who asked me about alternatives with all the problems with Microsoft Windows and news they dig up on it. They install it and use with no instruction from me or their parents. These are future RPG fans too BTW. It's like an internal motto by one of the big 5 banks here in Canada: Get the customer, get their kids and their grandkids. And well designed software can be used as foundation for future games. Anyway, just things to bear in mind. It may not have been a short term big profit now...but it did establish Obsldian as being capable,ready and the experience and libraries (reducing future build times) will server well in the near future. That investment will pay off. But remarks like Mr. Adler's will undermine/delay that payoff.

 

That said, I'm glad Obsidian followed through on the Linux build in spite of possible doubts by some there. I have this on Linux on my mid-end Linux gaming machine and I was happy to invest in it.

Edited September 4, 2015 by jlibster

[guest-tresca]

All hail the developers for porting to linux.

 

A really thankful debian user.