At least for high performance C++, the Linux toolchain improves code quality by so much. Between valgrind/cachegrind, asan, efence, always having the latest clang and clang_analyzer, and Dockerfiles for continuous integration environments, programming on Windows feels like I have a hand tied behind my back.<p>Even something basic like replacing malloc with your own instrumentation to track errant allocations is basically impossible since every DLL in Windows loads its own allocator.<p>I know Windows has similar tools but wrangling Visual Studio, especially remotely or across multiple developers, is significantly more painful in my experience.<p>Even if you don't ship on Linux, programming on Linux is worth it imo. I mean, Carmack wrote Quake on a NeXT and shipped on Windows, so if he was doing it back in the day, how wrong can it be?
I don't see the big deal. They don't think Linux support is worth it. So a developer chasing Linux support won't use them. Salesman says what he needs to trying to close the deal. Kind of a dumb thing to say, but... Us Linux users are used to being second class citizens in the consumer software world. Vivox just won't get our money either. Eh.
I saw the post on Reddit, and I was a little shocked. When I switched to Linux on my primary computer, it was like Steam automatically filtered out the games I didn't like. I immediately spent some money on other games with Linux support.<p>So, there's a market, and it <i>seems</i> to be getting larger over time. What's troubling to me is that the Vivox employee seemed to think the developer just didn't know that Linux was a smaller market, or hadn't bothered to make a rational decision.<p>Then again, I also play things like Adventure, and the odd round of Lemmings.
Middleware company is right. Supporting the platform is not worth the trouble. Data shows again and again that Linux gamers will be a fraction of a percent of your customers but generate an outsized amount of support tickets. Most of these support tickets will require holding their hand through basic Linux box administration.
The original response was of course stupid. Developers should just use Mumble instead anyway. It's open source and not locked into any specific platform.
This is a very whistleblow-y article. Sensible commenters here correctly point out that a 3rd party vendor shouldn't be sending messages like that, it was unprofessional and ultimately pointless. But the point of the article and subsequent community backlash is the same old self-servicing trope that linux gamers seem to love: "We're here, we're important, we spend money, you are stupid to ignore us!"<p>It's the same thing every time and it's getting old.
Considering the huge push from Valve to improve gaming on linux, which includes improving Wine etc... The fact that Google's new platform is entirely Linux backed, and AFAIK Sony's next gen is probably Linux as well. It is inevitable that Linux will become a huge platform for gaming.
Dropping Linux support is a perfectly sensible thing to suggest. When it comes to computer gaming, all of the tooling, ecosystem, and cash is on Windows.
This should surprise no one. Linux gamers are a very vocal minority, but also a very tiny portion of the market.<p>I gave up on the linux gaming years ago, after suffering with WINE.<p>Why would companies pour hundreds of thousands in resources to support a platform that has almost no serious gamers?
Why do people care about Linux gaming? Is it that hard to just boot into Windows? Or even, a VM with a pass-through graphics card? It's hard enough to make games as it is. It seems unfair to complain about something when it's clearly not in the developer's interest to waste a bunch of time on something nobody will use.