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Any Linux gamers out there?

A topic by tlsigma created Jun 29, 2023 Views: 913 Replies: 28
Viewing posts 1 to 14

Hello, I was thinking about developing Linux exclusive (only) games.

I know that's a risky move so I want to get a sense of the market for it.

Are anyone out here a Linux user?

What are some sources that can help me with find info on this?

Do anyone know of any Linux exclusive titles made?

From my point of view, I think that's a bad idea. You have to strive so that the more people can play your games the better. Do you develop with a special game engine that makes you can't export to Windows? If the engine allows you to export to various operating systems you should take advantage of that.

Moderator (1 edit) (+3)

I play on Linux, and try to make my games for Linux first. Funny how Windows developers never think of Linux when they say "let more people play your game".

That said, I'm not aware of many Linux-exclusive games, and Linux players don't seem especially interested in supporting games made just for them. Why do you ask?

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tux racing is the only one i can remember as a linux exclusive off the top of my head.. lol

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Just trying to gage the potential market for making exclusive titles on a OS that theoretically wouldn't have as much competition; like AAA games and such.

I was looking at it from the point of view:

Being a "little fish" in a big pond 

vs

Being a "big fish" in a little pond

Moderator

Linux users want to play the same AAA games as everyone else.

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I use Linux almost exclusively.  I want to see more Linux games.  But my experience with Linux games, on itch and on GOG, is that more often than not they just don't work.  Building and packaging a Linux game so that it works across different versions of different distributions is apparently beyond the abilities of a lot of developers.  As such, I prefer it if Linux games come with a Windows version so that I can fall back to running the games under Wine if I can't get the Linux version to run.

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Did you use Appimage format when you package your game? 

I heard it's suppose to work on all Linux distros; I only tested on Mint and Ubuntu.

AppImage is useful for packaging, but it doesn't prevent broken builds by itself.  I've seen plenty of Linux games without AppImage that work fine, and I think I've seen at least some AppImage games that don't work (although AppImage is pretty rare).  I do use AppImage for my own games, but more importantly, I use static linking where I can and I redistribute .so files and use custom rpaths where I am forced to use dynamic linking.

Very good point

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I use Linux as my C++ develop environment (and use Linux almost exclusively).  My first game published so far (NybblyBits) was released for both Linux and Windows (cross compiled under Linux for Windows via MinGW-w64).

Moderator(+1)

Long term Linux user here. Supporting only Linux is interesting, but it all depends on what your goals are.

If you want to earn enough money to sustain yourself developing games, you might have to support as many platforms as possible, at least the popular ones.

If you are just making games for fun, then do as you like, support any platform :)

Do anyone know of any Linux exclusive titles made?

Many early games were indeed exclusive to their unix.  Until they were ported. 

I highly doubt you will find many actual games that are exclusive for non trivial reasons.  The most trivial is that no one ported it. But if you use open source libraries, you will be hard pressed to find linux exclusive libraries.

Maybe some games of idealists. But those are also likely to have open source, making exclusiveness moot.

My very first game from 2020 had a linux build.

I learnt today that it wasn't working. Based on this I would assert that developing exclusively for linux is a bad decision.

What was the exported format type you used for your game if you don't mind me asking?

Was it Appimage?

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Linux is very good, but from my experience, not for game development, I have a history with linux, for me, when it comes to making game tech, specially on the low back-end graphics programming... it's painful as hell! Debugging is not trivial, gpu profiling is innacurate and drivers from certain vendors like AMD performs way worse on linux than windows. It used be better, but when android came out it seems like the big OEMs shifted their priorities thanks to the new embedded systems.

If you're being Linux exclusive, one might assume you have an aesthetic reason for that choice. Perhaps it's to match the game's theme or story, or perhaps you'll incorporate gameplay with assumptions that your users will know simple bash commands?

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I have been a linux user for more than 20 years and personally I prefer it over windows.

But according to steam statistics, 96% of its users use some version of windows (from 7 to 11), while only 1.47% use linux.

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How do they classify their steam deck? Because that is arch linux, but many games are played with  help of an abstraction layer. If the deck is in the 1.47%, that means there are even less  linux users (that use linux consciensously)

There's also people such as myself that play Steam Windows games under Linux (non-Steam Deck) through Proton...

The OS is linux, so it should show up as a linux computer.

The steam client allows you to run games that only work on windows using proton, but steam runs natively on linux and if the game has an executable that works natively on linux it will install that version.
It's not that steam runs on this abstraction layer, but that steam can use proton to run specific games (Those that only work on windows)

There is not much difference with using any computer with linux and having steam installed on it.

No it might not. As I just checked, that is not an actual real usage statistic, it is a survey with answers given by participiants. Should you exclusivly use that steam deck, you might not even be aware that it is Linux ;-)

If you have a Windows Gaming Machine and buy yourself a Steam Deck, what would you answer...

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That is not right. You don't answer anything, the only question is if you want to participate, if you answer yes, the steam client automatically captures all that information.

If you have a PC with windows and a steamdeck and you participate in the survey on both, the system will add a computer with windows and a computer with linux.

More than once, steam has asked me if I want to participate, and you shouldn't answer anything manually, precisely, because then the data would depend on your knowledge of your hardware.

EDIT: Maybe you are confusing some other type of survey, please, search on how the official steam hardware survey works and you will see that what you say is not correct.

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Let's assume that on the plate you see "Blue screen". It was the last drop of impatience I loosed. After that I permanently moved to GNU/Linux


Depends on what tools you are going to use. If you want to use something really portable for example godot, it can make sense to export it for windows also. If you want to use for example sdl/c++ it would be pain to compile it for windows without windows.

Do you want something that really exclusive for linux? Something that can be compiled only for linux? It shouldn't compile for windows even if you have source code? It is a bed idea.... Anyway you can create your game as part of linux kernel. You can use POSIX API.... It will make you game bounded to linux and make it is more hard to compile/run it on windows but I don't recommend you to do it if the goal is just to create this bound just because you want this bound...

In general I always recommend godot.

Under Linux distributions that fully support current MinGW-w64 tool chains and respective libraries, cross compiling SDL2 app C++ code from Linux for Windows is painless once the CMake file is set up and any platform specific code is #ifdef'd.  I'm on a Arch based Linux distribution, so maybe that has made things easier.

im a linux user for some time.. i also create games using linux but my game engine only supports exporting for windows.. but the games can be played with wine

There is a deep logical flaw. One does not has a significant smaller pond by being exclusive for Linux. Because you do not compete against other Linux exclusive games. You compete against every game that is exported or crosscompiled to Linux, plus every game that can run under proton or wine with ease and every game that is platform indipendent, like html games. Or even good bad Java.

Your perspective is interesting, I didn't think about Proton or Wine support which would mean linux gamers will just run windows games on their systems, also online gaming.

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Proton and Wine is only the icing on the cake. The real problem is, that many popular games that are small time indie     have exports for Windows, Android, Mac and Linux. The reason being, as I suspect, is the use of engines.

And just like games get often  asked about android or mac releases, if you post a popular linux game, you would get pestered for a windows release. If the libraries used are available as open source (and we are talking about Linux here ;-)   chances are, that a windows build is trivial in theory.