Hello all,

I was wondering why some developers choose not to release their games on every platform that their engine supports.  I see a lot of Unity games on here that are exported exclusively for Windows, or occasionally for Windows and macOS, but often developers seem to forget to export to Linux.  I run Linux usually, and while Wine and Mono can run Unity games compiled for Windows, they are often buggier and slower than games that are compiled as native Linux binaries.  The same can be said for most cross-platform game engines.  Additionally, Wine installs are large and pervasive, and nearly impossible to remove fully - some Linux users choose to avoid Wine for those reasons.

I understand that exporting games takes time, but wouldn't it be relatively simple to run the export overnight when you aren't using your computer in order to support more players?  Is there some other reason that I'm not thinking of that devs would prefer to support fewer platforms?

Would love to hear some thoughts from the community.

I agree with FrostWorks, its all a matter of having the time to ensure the build is of quality for the users.

Imagine selling a game for £10, and you exported a build for a platform but couldn’t test it, so you just uploaded it as-is. Now imagine that the engine has a feature that is not supported by that platform, so when you compile for that platform, it tries to do a workaround, that doesn’t look as you’d expect, and now your game looks glitchy.

Now you have to deal with customers that spend £10, and are not satisfied by the quality you delivered.

That’s at least one of the reasons. I don’t have numbers, but I’ve heard some platforms are not worth (financially) developing for. I like to think that most indies don’t think like that, but I can understand those who do.

I agree with FrostWorks and Dark Dimension. I only published a Linux version of my bowling game because one person asked for it, but I didn't have a linux machine and had no idea if it ran or ran well (in fact, I only tested it for the first time yesterday after installing linux on a 2009 MacBook Pro). 

Which brings up the other issue, if only one or a  handful of linux users are going to download the game, then is it really worth the time to not only build, but get it to build (maybe there are scripting differences/limitations for linux, maybe some third party libraries or content aren't compatible), maybe you have to adjust for performance or controls (I had to separately tweak controls on Windows and Mac), and if you end up having to do builds and uploads and updates and support just for that small audience, it may not be the best use of a dev's time, and for indie devs, time is the scarcest resource.