Anyone else frustrated with the lack of native games to Linux?

[oldrocker99]

In the last 18 months, the following (IMHO) AAA games have been natively been available, and just from Steam: Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis IV, Half-Life and its two expannsios, all of the Orange Box games, Portal 2, Civilization V, X-COM:Enemy Unknown, and the best damn turn-based strategy game, Dominions 4 (available from Steam and Desura, and Desura is where its official forums are). Besides that, there are lots and lots of other games. This is, seriously, the beginning of the Golden Age of Linux Gaming, and you're lucky (in a way) that you started now:

In 2008, I started with Ubuntu 8.04. The only commonly-avalable commercial native Linux game was Neverwinter Nights. Then, the Humble Bundles started, then Desura, then Steam. Now I have more games than I have time to play all of them, and more and more games are coming out for Linux every week.

[Arthur_D]

Just for the record, SuperTuxKart which I'm involved with, despite being arguably "Linux-centered" due to its name and other Free and Open Source mascots being portrayed, have roughly half of our users on Windows. So for us, it would also cut heavily into our userbase if we didn't support Windows, and it's from the userbase we get other volunteers to help create the game. And we are few enough as it is.

[donkyhotay]

In addition to what everyone else has said about the userbase problem for making a game "linux only" there is another bigger reason for not doing that, it goes against the FOSS spirit that permeates linux culture. Large companies like Microsoft and Apple try to encourage the mindset that programs can only be for one (preferably their) system. Linux, BSD, etc. are FOSS and encourage the FOSS mindset of sharing programs and getting them to work on any system. I have a game project I work on in my spare time and since I use Linux exclusively primary development is naturally for Linux. However I intend to try to maintain windows and osX compatibility at the minimum and if possible would allow it to work on others though that isn't a high priority. Although I like linux and think the world would be better off if it was the dominant OS I'm not going to try to force my game to only work on it. Even if I wanted too because it is FOSS anyone could take the code and make a port if they wanted. The only way I could prevent that would be by making it proprietary which I wouldn't do because I support FOSS more then I support linux itself.

[polochamps]

I completely agree that it should be on all platforms as possible but I think it's time to be the other way around - Code Linux games in its native language then port it to other platforms. It should give Linux the attention without sacrificing the exposure the developers need.

[EuclideanCoffee]

I was not frustrated with Linux when I first found out the lack of support.

At first, I tried flash games. Then tried native games. Then tried wine. Then learned what wine did and pretty much have been able to play anything on Linux since.

I try to always use alternatives first, but if I want to play a game with a friend, I get it working on wine. Usually doesn't take much more than a few minutes of research.

[sffvba[e0rt]

I don't see why there should be games that are exclusive for Linux... what would be the point? As far as gaming on Linux is has never been this good before and I am loving it <3

[ELD]

Well there are a lot more games now than there used to be that's for sure.

If you check http://www.gamingonlinux.com we cover new games pretty much every day.

Borderlands 2, Borderlands The Pre-sequel and many more are coming to Linux this year, so be sure to keep an eye out.

[myrkat]

The really frustrating part is that many big games use linux somewhere (either in their servers, or worse, and in-house native client like Blizzard is rumored to have for WoW). The game I play most on Linux is World of Warcraft (currently on patch 5.4.x), and it runs under WINE spectacularly well. I cannot tell the difference from when I ran it under windows 7 (then 8.1 pro) on the same machine. I've heard that Bliz stopped developing it's linux client (probably turned into the mac one early one) since the guys at WINE are far better than Blizzard's staff at getting things to work.

So there's another layer of frustration: We have WINE, and it works pretty well for a great many things: does that tell developers, "Hey, don't worry about Linux, we'll get your windows version running for you" and thus turn them off from Linux development? I sure hope not.

Steam has some great ports and native Linux games. I often will buy some early development games just to keep the market going (as any dedicated linux user with an income should do), and yeah, there are some really bad ones out there, but occasionally, you'll find some decent ones. Many of the unity engine games are OK, but it is obviously a "beginner" tool set... for now. Give Steam another go, and see what's there. Civilization V was recently ported (since I owned it under windows, I got it for linux now... as I did with XCOM and Small World).

It's getting there, but I have a feeling that Gaming on Linux will always be a journey, and never a destination.

[Arthur_D]

I completely agree that it should be on all platforms as possible but I think it's time to be the other way around - Code Linux games in its native language then port it to other platforms. It should give Linux the attention without sacrificing the exposure the developers need.

Not sure what you mean with "native language" - C++, Python, Lua and so on and so forth are as native to Linux as to Windows. The only language I know off the top of my head which isn't is C#, and even there we have Mono which provides a Linux implementation.

[polochamps]

Not sure what you mean with "native language" - C++, Python, Lua and so on and so forth are as native to Linux as to Windows. The only language I know off the top of my head which isn't is C#, and even there we have Mono which provides a Linux implementation.

Ooops! Wrong choice of words. What I truly mean is make native Linux games first then port it to other platforms not the other way around.