I’m asking because I just bought Cronos: The New Dawn on Steam because it has a native Linux port. To be fair, I would have bought it at some point anyway but I got excited when I saw it had a Linux port. The game is missing features that the Windows version has, It runs horribly at any setting other than very low. I think they only bothered testing for the SteamDeck. But if that’s the case, why does it support FSR 4.0? To be fair, the Windows version doesn’t run amazing either if you enable ray tracing but it still performs way better than the Linux port. Why do devs keep doing this? I’ve bought many Linux games that have problems that the Windows versions don’t have. Why even make a port if you’re not going to bother testing or optimizing it?
Because it costs money to maintain that most indie studios don’t have given the small target audience. I simply always use Proton, even if a native version exists.
Yeah I get that and I’m not disagreeing. But why port it at all, that being the case?
I’d guess because it’s an option in whatever they’re using to develop the game, doesn’t mean they’ve manually tested it much if it at all though.
It might also be a single dev who pushed for it. With only a 1-3% market share, the company is unlikely to push resources at it. That 1 dev getting any working version out is a win in many ways.
Also, most Linux users are a lot better trained at reporting bugs. Most of the time, this is a good thing, letting them get fixed in FOSS development setups. Unfortunately, in gaming, it ends up making Linux look a buggy mess. When 60% of your big reports come from 0.5% of your users, companies can panic. Even if the same bugs exist in windows, just no one bothers to report them.
And yet Microsoft and all PC OEMs panic at the existence of Steam Deck and throw resources at Windows-based competitors.
The same reason a dam owner panics over a finger sized leak. A hole becomes a crack, a crack a breach, and a breach can collapse the whole dam.
It’s gonna be different case by case, but my best guess would be it starts as wanting to please the community, then realising Linux users get weird errors they never hear about from Windows users and then deciding that all 5 Linux users are not worth it if the issue doesn’t concern majority (Windows) users.
As for missing features, usually it happens because they use some Windows-native feature (like direct DirectX calls) which saves them implementing workarounds for their engine. And porting to some Linux api is delayed indefinitely for the same reasons as bug fixes: not large enough user base.
Linux gamers often say stuff like “it’s literally one toggle in [insert game engine here]” but that’s never the case. Doesn’t mean new devs don’t fall for it.
IMO we should fuck native Linux builds - game engines are complex and messy beasts, building on one platform and testing on Proton is the best for everyone, IMO.
If developers (those that come from Windows) fall for anything, it’s the myth that Proton is already perfect and native ports have no value.
With Steam Deck the hurdle for game developers to dog food native ports of their games is lower than ever. SteamOS comes with Podman and Distrobox, so installing the Steam Linux Runtime SDK on Steam Deck’s desktop mode should be doable after reading a howto.