Linux Game Support

corpest · 2024-12-21 20:49:41

Not sure if this is the correct discussion, but oh well.

Why don't more game studios choose to support Linux?

I understand that not many people use it, but it does offer significantly better performance 3x better.

Wouldn't it make more sense for game studios to support Linux?

Valve and Rockstar are practically the only ones doing it.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2024-12-21 21:23:01

Valve have ruined it for everybody because nobody will bother developing native Linux versions now Proton exists.

Awebb · 2024-12-22 06:14:30

It depends on what you mean by "game studio". Anything with a big publisher wants DRM and most DRM will not be effective on an open source operating system without agreeing on some sort of DRM kernel driver, effectively turning the machine into what many Linux users would consider a hostile device.

Small studios sometimes support Linux, but they're often confronted with unreasonably high expenses to satisfy a relatively small user base. Supporting Linux isn't the same as supporting an operating system, because it's not only a moving target, but it doesn't mean anything. What kernel versions are supported? Is that even relevant? What's available on the target platform? If you support Android, Windows or OSX, you'll only have to factor in hardware differences, but most of the time you have one interface for everything and with a few differences, the user experience is mostly the same.

Then there is the middleware, the engines and all the other third party libraries. They usually have to support game consoles, some FreeBSD spin-off on Sony side and some Windows on the Xbox side and not rarely the Nintendo Switch. Windows, sometimes Android and sometimes OSX and iOS.

HoaS is right, Proton has reduced the need for native Linux executables, but game developers have tried to get Steam Deck certified for a while now, so it seems reasonable to assume that they at least optimize for Proton. However, I disagree that this is the end for native Linux gaming, because thanks to Proton, Linux is gaining traction on the desktop. People have been trying to escape Windows 11 for years now, Nvidia has made progress with their drivers and the Linux world seems to slowly unfuck itself regarding Wayland.

corpest · 2024-12-22 13:00:24

Thanks for the explanations

ReDress · 2024-12-23 09:29:42

corpest wrote:

Not sure if this is the correct discussion, but oh well.
Why don't more game studios choose to support Linux?
I understand that not many people use it, but it does offer significantly better performance 3x better.
Wouldn't it make more sense for game studios to support Linux?
Valve and Rockstar are practically the only ones doing it.

Most game engines don't support Linux. Even if it does support Linux, it's not something that you can rely on.

Consequently, working with games on Linux might require extra skills and support relating to Linux.

There are many games that run on Mac, though, still, porting them to actual Linux might be quite a bit of task.

That said, there's a lot of games that work and run on Linux!

cryptearth · 2024-12-23 11:12:16

BohemiaInteractive - the studio behind ArmA - released this statement:

due to proton we shift our efforts from developing two branches - windows and linux - to one combined branch focus proton
the last linux native will be kept available for single player only but won't receive any further updates
please use proton

in a dev stream for satisfactory community manager Snutt shortly replied to my question about linux native that they, too, will focus on proton and use the support of unreal for linux for the dedicated server only
there're several other studios, both indie and bigger ones, which focus on proton rather than windows or linux native as what runs on proton also runs on windows

also: one major point is the DirectX environment: DirectX isn't just the renderer Direct3D but also DirectSound for audio, DirectPlay for networking and XInput for controller support - much stuff DirectX already provides for engine devs making developing game engines far easier
targetting linux native an engine dev likely would focus on vulkan and other cross-platform stuff to make porting easier - but it still requires a lot of boilerplate glue logic code around the main platform-independent game logic code
thanks to dxvk and the rest of the proton translation layer becomes better and better it just makes sense to target proton directly as the one common denominator

ReDress · 2024-12-24 09:37:01

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Valve have ruined it for everybody because nobody will bother developing native Linux versions now Proton exists.

I'm not sure why you are quick to conclude that. If you check, for instance, there's a whole patch series for 'NT synchronization primitive driver'

This is the first time Proton and relatives are contributing code to the Linux kernel. At least in the recent past. Maybe they tried submitting patches before and failed? Sounds unlikely, though.

For me this looks like some first steps into taking on the Linux kernel gaming related issues, which might help a lot especially if generic code gets improvements :-)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2024-12-24 10:05:48

And what happens when Valve eventually drop Proton? The code will rot and nothing will be left to play on Linux.

ReDress · 2024-12-24 11:01:34

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

And what happens when Valve eventually drop Proton? The code will rot and nothing will be left to play on Linux.

Probably not. Wine will remain a predominantly more effective way of porting software to Linux

Head_on_a_Stick · 2024-12-24 11:02:50

Ah yes, of course. I remember that working so well before Valve started throwing money at the problem

ReDress · 2024-12-24 11:05:03

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Ah yes, of course. I remember that working so well before Valve started throwing money at the problem

How is it not working well, currently?

How about this? Engine developers support Linux! Which, honestly speaking, would be probably much easier to do.

Last edited by ReDress (2024-12-24 11:06:40)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2024-12-24 11:06:45

It's working very well currently but that's only because Valve have employed people to make it that way. Once that investment stops things will regress.

But Valve never give up on projects so we should be fine.

ReDress · 2024-12-24 11:09:59

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

It's working very well currently but that's only because Valve have employed people to make it that way. Once that investment stops things will regress.
But Valve never give up on projects so we should be fine.

I don't believe Valva has made any investments in Wine, though, it's quite clear they have been supporting development recently.

Awebb · 2024-12-24 11:32:15

Before Valve came along and threw money at the problem, virtually nobody was interested in making games for Linux. The few Vulcan early adopters who didn't think Microsoft was the right horse to bet on made Linux versions for their games for a short while, but even that was just another bandwagon to jump on. Only a hand full of those games were more than half-assed ports. Before Proton, Linux gaming was a wet fart in the wind. These days, you need to come up with some DRM infested online-online game to get any attention to a "but does XYZ run?" kind of argument. Yeah, one day they'll grow tired of Linux like they grew tired of Apple, because it'll stop making them money, but until then, Linux gaming will be quite plug&play.

Succulent of your garden · 2024-12-24 14:36:49

corpest wrote:

Not sure if this is the correct discussion, but oh well.
Why don't more game studios choose to support Linux?
I understand that not many people use it, but it does offer significantly better performance 3x better.
Wouldn't it make more sense for game studios to support Linux?
Valve and Rockstar are practically the only ones doing it.

In my opinion most of the current issues are only with multiplayer games, because you need to create the anticheat software that most of the time it's related to the kernel in someway. So for that you will need to make support for two operarting systems for you anticheat software if you want to be able to use windows and linux, which could make you invest more money but losing also. So if your primary concern as a company making video games it's profit, maybe it's not a good idea to make the compatibility to linux, because most of the players doesn't use it, and also the cheats for linux most of the time are free, and the windows are not, as CTT said sometime ago with some game that I dont' care that drops linux support (I'm not a gaminig person, but I like the porting and crossplatform support lore ). As you can see, single player games are more easy to get adopted to linux than the multiplayer ones, that's mainly because of what I'm saying, for example if only 8% of your players are using linux, and you are worried that your game could lose your daily income of users because of bad experience with cheating, you will need to patch a lot the anticheat for linux stuff to compete with the linux cheating community, which probabbly are solid programmers, that's translate in paying more to the developers, and probably the final answer for that is a no, because it doesn't generate more money for the company. I think that's the main issue.

Don't get me wrong, I hope this someday could be resolved in someway, but as you can see the main factor it's the kernel-anticheat drama and how to make it easy to develop or compatible with the linux and windows kernel easily.

Some tips for you if you are going to be in the linux gaming journey: It's a good idea to play games that current windows 10 or 11 doesn't run very well, you can use wintricks to load the native libraries for the game in his development time and not the current ones. That sometimes would make a performance gain. Most of the singleplayers are okey with using linux, but the main issue is multiplayer. So check before the linux support unless you want to be banned quickly. If you see an only singleplayer game that doesn't want to give support to linux, then probabbly it's not a good idea to buy that game.

If you want to go the arch way in your setup great, go ahead, but also if you are some kind of gaming person (Which it's seems to be) then check bazzite linux, maybe you will be more comfy and happy using dualboot bazzite with windows.

Hope this post helps you

Cheers

Last edited by Succulent of your garden (2024-12-29 11:21:53)

ReDress · 2024-12-26 11:03:08

Anti-cheat is probably not going to make it into the kernel(at least the Linux one), if you ask me.

To me this reasoning is based on the fact that Wine is an emulator and, it should be possible to do this in Wine. It just happens to be incredibly hard. To give you a picture of how hard this is, it is should be sort of like implementing exception handling, It's very easy to use but notoriously hard to implement.

Wine is an emulator, while at the same time not being an emulator. If you look at all the good use-cases for emulators, Wine seems to suit all of them.

twelveeighty · 2024-12-26 16:46:25

only 8% of your players are using linux

I think you're just using 8% as an example number, so I'm not jumping on it, but to amplify this point, it's probably more like 0.08% of the player base (not counting Steam Deck), so there is no business case to develop commercial games for native Linux.

Another point is the dog's breakfast of Linux distros that are out there. It's far from a guarantee that if you make a game that runs well on - say - Ubuntu, that it will run well (or at all) on Arch. With game devs on Windows, they can focus on just hardware compatibilities (CPU / graphic cards, etc.) and they have far less headaches (i.e. costs) dealing with core O/S and system library dependencies. Game development projects take years and to save costs they need to "freeze" system libraries as much as possible to avoid mass re-testing every 2-3 months. Just dealing with Windows updates alone is a big cost, let alone all the different updates on various distros happening at different times.

cryptearth · 2024-12-26 21:27:44

twelveeighty wrote:

Another point is the dog's breakfast of Linux distros that are out there. It's far from a guarantee that if you make a game that runs well on - say - Ubuntu, that it will run well (or at all) on Arch. With game devs on Windows, they can focus on just hardware compatibilities (CPU / graphic cards, etc.) and they have far less headaches (i.e. costs) dealing with core O/S and system library dependencies. Game development projects take years and to save costs they need to "freeze" system libraries as much as possible to avoid mass re-testing every 2-3 months. Just dealing with Windows updates alone is a big cost, let alone all the different updates on various distros happening at different times.

I'd like to point out that
a) since about windows 8 a given windows version doesn't say much - starting with win8 vs win8.1 and all those different feature versions since win10
b) as for system libs: pretty much every game comes with its own specific version of DotNet runtime libs - with just a few games one often ends up with about a dozen or so different DotNet runtime installations - and because it's not sufficient to have just the newest installed one can end up in dependency hell - and hence its quite common to have it installed not as system libs but rather as per-application specific
c) although there're many many specific distributions - the number of families can be counted on one hand: debian, arch, slackware/suse, redhat/fedora and gentoo - and if devs would properly use a given systems package manager instead of a launcher like steam - or if said launcher would better integrate with a systems package management - proper dependcy management shouldn't be a big problem ... and yes - from a big studio with world wide sales and millions of profit it has to be expected they spent a couple grant and build a few linux systems - or at least have a few steam decks on hand as a point of reference

twelveeighty · 2024-12-27 01:50:51

cryptearth wrote:

it has to be expected they spent a couple grant and build a few linux systems

Why? That's not how corporations work. They do not owe you anything. Either buy their product or don't. The only consideration is if there's sufficient profit to be had in doing that.

Awebb · 2024-12-27 10:31:29

twelveeighty wrote:

cryptearth wrote:
it has to be expected they spent a couple grant and build a few linux systems
Why? That's not how corporations work. They do not owe you anything. Either buy their product or don't. The only consideration is if there's sufficient profit to be had in doing that.

So we've reached this point in the discussion. Marvelous. All we need now is some crypto bros with some wild theory about how not wasting CPU cycles on DRM free Linux gaming is harmful to the environment.

Succulent of your garden · 2024-12-28 23:37:33

ReDress wrote:

Anti-cheat is probably not going to make it into the kernel(at least the Linux one), if you ask me.
To me this reasoning is based on the fact that Wine is an emulator and, it should be possible to do this in Wine. It just happens to be incredibly hard. To give you a picture of how hard this is, it is should be sort of like implementing exception handling, It's very easy to use but notoriously hard to implement.
Wine is an emulator, while at the same time not being an emulator. If you look at all the good use-cases for emulators, Wine seems to suit all of them.

Yes, that's it. Even back in the days without valve focusing in linux gaming, if you know enough in many cases you could run your games, not with great performance in many situations. I think that the leap jump was when DXVK made gaming in Linux to have more performance, that's my theory.

Also in the realm of kernel anticheats, I still don't know how you could play blizzard games in Linux. Which by default in windows you have a anticheat that's get attached to the kernel.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2024-12-29 10:32:19

Proton managed to port The Finals' "Easy AntiCheat", apparently. The Finals' devs had to change it shortly afterwards because of the massive influx of Linux cheaters

Succulent of your garden · 2024-12-29 11:41:36

so in the end the whole process is literally porting the anticheats of videogames that works with windows syscalls with wine and winetricks to the linux kernel, so Tux can know how to handle the anticheat program ? But since the kernel is linux you can be able to handle the windows sys calls but also tunning the kernel to your needs to use the anticheats at the same time ?

long story short:

Linux kernel: Hi anticheat here are some windows sys calls that wine translate for me.

Anticheat: Oh thank you very much, it seems valid.

Linux kernel: No it doesn't, but don't tell to the server that I have a module to cheat.

I'm correct in how this works ?

Zibi1981 · 2024-12-31 09:29:06

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Valve have ruined it for everybody because nobody will bother developing native Linux versions now Proton exists.

I strongly disagree. Valve is doing an magnificent job for Linux gamers with Proton and it's platform called Steam Deck, which BTW runs on Arch. Just take some time and try to find out how gaming under Linux looked liked before Valve started to run Proton compared to nowadays. It's obvious that every producer and developer doesn't care much about 1% of gaming community and won't engage it's team precious time and money to develop and maintain a port for very few people running this system. Today the only "problem" for a game developer who wants to support Linux community is not a costly process of creating a port for other systems, but to make sure it runs under WINE/Proton, which is far more easy and cost-effective. Apple decided to take the same way with Rosetta.

cryptearth · 2024-12-31 11:15:16

as for anti-cheat: from what I read due to the crowdstrike incident microsoft seem to re-think about locking down the kernel which is supposed to mean to also get anti-cheat back out of it - as most anti-cheats work down in the kernel as kind of a root kit and thereby get way too deep rights they don't need in my opinion
anti-cheat no matter if just in user space or kernel crap often don't help that much either due to the crap netcode of the games engine - see the recent implementation of BattlEye in GTA V: ByttlEye DOES support proton - so its Rockstar actively blocking linux - but look over at, say, Arma3 which was one of the first games with BattlEye actively supporting proton it doesn't help much anyway - same goes with that crap p2p netcode of gta v: BE will never be able to fix that crap design as in difference to A3 for gtaV the servers only handle the authentication - the game sessins run as p2p instances - so no matter BE or not there'S just no control instance which check for players teleporting around or spawn in stuff - as this is how the netcode is designed and its just impossible to differentiate between a player causing some action or some mission script

overall as for anti-cheat: I know this sounds somewhat like chinese propaganda - but if there would be a service I had to register to with personal data and hardware info and have some background service running - and maybe pay a fee - but for that get a clean player base actively monitored - yes, I would join that service - no matter of eu gdpr - but unfortunately there'S no such service ... not even in china where it would be legal as the gonvernment does it anyway

Arch Linux

#1 2024-12-21 20:49:41

Linux Game Support

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Re: Linux Game Support

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