John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support

A comment on reddit by id Software co-founder John Carmack (thanks Develop) follows the theme of a recent post by former id programmer Timothee Besset indicating that id's once-strong support for Linux gaming has waned. The post basically confirms and explains that premise, discussing how he sees a plausible path for Linux gaming via emulation on Steam, if "properly evangalized," but expressing skepticism about commercial native Linux ports:
However, I don’t think that a good business case can be made for officially supporting Linux for mainstream games today, and Zenimax doesn’t have any policy of “unofficial binaries” like Id used to have. I have argued for their value (mostly in the context of experimental Windows features, but Linux would also benefit), but my forceful internal pushes have been for the continuation of Id Software’s open source code releases, which I feel have broader benefits than unsupported Linux binaries.

I can’t speak for the executives at Zenimax, but they don’t even publish Mac titles (they partner with Aspyr), so I would be stunned if they showed an interest in officially publishing and supporting a Linux title. A port could be up and running in a week or two, but there is so much work to do beyond that for official support. The conventional wisdom is that native Linux games are not a good market. Id Software tested the conventional wisdom twice, with Quake Arena and Quake Live. The conventional wisdom proved correct. Arguments can be made that neither one was an optimal test case, but they were honest tries.
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53.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 7, 2013, 00:34
53.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 7, 2013, 00:34
Feb 7, 2013, 00:34
 
Well yeah if you're serious about playing games you own a copy of Windows, even if you duel boot. Carmack is just stating that economic reality, he's not saying we live in the best possible world.
Avatar 55038
52.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 20:54
52.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 20:54
Feb 6, 2013, 20:54
 
I was going to post exactly that. You could buy the Loki port of Quake 3 in a fancy tin which was linux only (I actually bought this) and counted as a linux sale, or you could buy the windows version which was not in a fancy tin and would obviously install on windows and you could download the linux installer off their ftp site, which counted as a windows sale. I even believe they started using the tins for the windows version later on as well. There was never a windows installer for the Linux version.

I may be remembering wrong, but Quake 3's expansion, Team Arena, only had a windows version. I was able to install it on Linux on my own, but there was no installer or Linux retail box so, again it would have been counted as a Windows sale.

So in short, there was practical incentive to buy the windows version over the Linux version, even if you bought it because of the Linux version, which would only count as windows sales.

Also, I take issue with a comment up above that said Linux was more niche than it is now. I would say this is not true. In 1999 you could go into any Electronics Boutique and purchase a copy of either Red Hat Linux, or Mandrake Linux, and they were sure to have a copy of Eric's Ultimate Solitaire for Linux as well. By 2001, you could find the entire catalogue of Loki's ports as well as Metrowerks Codeweaver for Redhat, and other various Linux software.

Carmack did a lot for linux, which is why its frustrating to hear him so down on it now. After the Quake3 port, Epic's Unreal series had the linux installers on disc up through UT2003, which all counted as windows sales unless you bought from a specific linux retailer. Carmack wrote linux graphics card drivers. He was big on OpenGL and open source in general. But as others have said, he doesn't seem to be real interested in games any more and he should go full on with Armadillo Aerospace, which I think is pretty awesome.
51.
 
Re: RE: Follow up
Feb 6, 2013, 19:25
51.
Re: RE: Follow up Feb 6, 2013, 19:25
Feb 6, 2013, 19:25
 
UConnBBall wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 18:53:
So developing games OS agnostic is bad? Who cares what OS you use (Well I do but not the point) Why develope games that are Windows Dependent.

Use OpenGL and make things cross-platform period.

The OpenGL argument is a tired ass red herring. There are lots of reasons that more developers don't port to Linux but that's not one of them. Coding a non-portable rendering engine today is hard to do. The prime thing that really holds up Linux development is the fact that a lot of 3rd party tools and engines either don't support Linux or their support is barely there. That's a major issue because nearly every game out there is making use of 3rd party tools to make their development times quicker. Few are truly writing anything from dirt floor up these days. There are also loads of other issues that devs run into when moving their code to Linux that aren't issues on other platforms (debugging, sound, etc). The third party tool issue is paramount though.
50.
 
Re: RE: Follow up
Feb 6, 2013, 18:53
50.
Re: RE: Follow up Feb 6, 2013, 18:53
Feb 6, 2013, 18:53
 
So developing games OS agnostic is bad? Who cares what OS you use (Well I do but not the point) Why develope games that are Windows Dependent.

Use OpenGL and make things cross-platform period.
49.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 18:08
nin
49.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 18:08
Feb 6, 2013, 18:08
nin
 
I get the feeling Zenimax is strangling id software. It's evident from the consolization of Rage.

Don't forget the BFG edition of Doom3 from last year (no mods, I believe?).

48.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 17:34
48.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 17:34
Feb 6, 2013, 17:34
 
Well, I believe porting Quake to Linux is as honest a try as you can get. Sure it wasn't marketed hardcore or anything like that, but that's likely because there just isn't a huge market there to justify it business wise. So there it is, the granddaddy of first person shooters on Linux. One company can only do so much. So how about some Skyrim for Linux? League of Legends? DOTA 2? Call of Doody?

I get the feeling Zenimax is strangling id software. It's evident from the consolization of Rage. Consequently, they asked Carmack to craft Rage to be cross platform for PC and console leaving the door wide open for more platform support, i.e. Linux. Well, we got no Linux support, though they said it was coming. Also, the id Studio Editor that was hyped to be released immediately with Rage never saw the light of day. It was touted for being easy to use.

Since Quake has always been about openness and moddability, what happened? Zenimax.
Avatar 57568
47.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 17:17
47.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 17:17
Feb 6, 2013, 17:17
 
So sad Carmack has given up on Linux when it has so much to offer.

Ozmodan wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 09:39:
People are just whining because they have to buy windows.

Yep, it takes a lot of extra disk space and costs a lot of money just so I can play an already expensive game on my otherwise perfectly usable PC running free software to do everything, except top 10% of games.
The rest will work either natively or using wine.
I duel boot, the last time I booted into windows was to play FarCry3, not booted Windows since I completed it, won't have need to boot it again till I splash out on another major title like that, maybe in a couple of months time, maybe longer.

Personally I enjoyed playing Quake3 and QuakeLive, Doom3 and ET:QW and Quake 4, all using native Linux ports.
I except it's not going to make you much money, but a couple of weeks to do a port is not that big a deal if it opens up the game to larger number of people.

OpenGL is perfectly able to handle the graphics, OpenAL is pretty close for the sound( but not perfect ) I'm sure there are fairly standard libraries for input code. All of which should mean a native port is possible and WILL run better than using Wine.
If Windows was perfect we wouldn't need Linux!! so why bother emulating it!! it just adds another layer of crap between the game code and real libraries that do the work.
46.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 15:04
46.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 15:04
Feb 6, 2013, 15:04
 
Panickd wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 13:38:
I'm not sure John Carmack ever claimed to be passionate about gaming. He's passionate about programming and passionate about problem solving through programming. The fact that he came into programming when most of the big challenges lay in computer graphics and, by proxy, games was just pure chance.

And I'm not really sure why people are hating on him so much. Unless he ran over your dog with his Ferrari or banged your wife he doesn't owe you anything. If you're upset because people still listen when he talks that's really the fault of the people doing the listening, not his.

I would have to agree. John Carmack's a pretty cool guy. If you read the things he says and how he says it you would see that he's really a nice guy. He is a person who really brought us a lot of great gaming hours in the 90s so we should cut him some slack. It's not like he's doing anything to harm us right? Besides, it's not like Michael Jordan was a great basketball player for every single year he played in the NBA right?
Avatar 55679
45.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 13:38
45.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 13:38
Feb 6, 2013, 13:38
 
Cutter wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 12:54:
netnerd85 wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 10:59:
Cutter wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 09:57:
Why does Carmack even bother staying in gaming? He clearly doesn't need the dough. And whatever passion he had for it seems to have evaporated long ago. It's more like just doing it because it's routine. He only seems to be stoked about space related stuff so why doesn't he focus on that?
Follow his tweets, read his articles, watch his interviews and you may learn something about the man rather than selected snippets and comments by gamers. He is a passionate programmer with an interest in other things. You have other hobbies right?

Passionate programmer for what? Games? Not in a long time. Besides he was a technical savant more interested in resolving programming problems than the games themselves. I've never considered a Carmack a gamer by any stretch.

I'm not sure John Carmack ever claimed to be passionate about gaming. He's passionate about programming and passionate about problem solving through programming. The fact that he came into programming when most of the big challenges lay in computer graphics and, by proxy, games was just pure chance.

And I'm not really sure why people are hating on him so much. Unless he ran over your dog with his Ferrari or banged your wife he doesn't owe you anything. If you're upset because people still listen when he talks that's really the fault of the people doing the listening, not his.
44.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 13:28
44.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 13:28
Feb 6, 2013, 13:28
 
Beamer wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 13:10:
Yeah, like I said in my second paragraph, it isn't time or resource intensive, just requires hiring some Linux people.

Also, it isn't as easy as just hitting "deploy." Sorry, doesn't work like that. Sure, if you choose to go with UE3 or CryEngine it's close, but id, of course, isn't doing that. So they need to hire some Linux people. And many other companies don't do that. So they'd need to hire some Linux people. And even those using UE3 often modify the code. So they'd need to hire some Linux people.

Like you said, what needs to be done is to have engine developers create Linux back ends. Some people need to be hired to do that.

I never said they need to hire game developers, I said game programmers. As in, they need programmers that understand both Linux and game engines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25L1Wx97CFM

CryEngine 3 with one controller running the same content on three different architectures at the same time. You're right though, I was going in the general when this topic is id specific. See my further post below for a better explanation of what I meant - which agrees with you in the bold strokes.
43.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 13:10
43.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 13:10
Feb 6, 2013, 13:10
 
headkase wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 11:37:
Beamer wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 11:04:
Valve's problem is going to be getting anyone to actually make Linux games. Like you said, "If they... get some large software developers aboard...." that's a big if. It's a risk. They need to hire Linux game programmers, something not really plentiful now. It's a big leap. Some will stick a toe in the waters, but don't expect anyone committing capital to jump in the deep end before anything is proven.

And, if it becomes proven, it isn't hard for others to adapt to it. Actually kicking out the product for Linux isn't really time or resource intensive, but it does require hiring some new people.

Having every developer writing for Linux is stupid. What needs to be done is that the engine developers write Linux-back-ends. When you develop your game for CryEngine 3 you don't say "oh my gosh! I have to write to the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC API!" No, shit. With CryEngine 3 you press the "deploy" button and the code needed at the lower levels - stuff dealing with operating systems and graphics and audio API's - is abstracted away from your content. If a engine developer makes an OpenGL back-end the developer of a game doesn't have to give two shits about it. They just press "deploy." Sorry, they have to press deploy 4 times: once each for Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and Linux. A properly written game engine will abstract away the lower level details and make it so a game developer doesn't have to give a single flying fuck about them.

Yeah, like I said in my second paragraph, it isn't time or resource intensive, just requires hiring some Linux people.

Also, it isn't as easy as just hitting "deploy." Sorry, doesn't work like that. Sure, if you choose to go with UE3 or CryEngine it's close, but id, of course, isn't doing that. So they need to hire some Linux people. And many other companies don't do that. So they'd need to hire some Linux people. And even those using UE3 often modify the code. So they'd need to hire some Linux people.

Like you said, what needs to be done is to have engine developers create Linux back ends. Some people need to be hired to do that.

I never said they need to hire game developers, I said game programmers. As in, they need programmers that understand both Linux and game engines.
42.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 13:00
42.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 13:00
Feb 6, 2013, 13:00
 
headkase wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 12:19:
yuastnav wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 11:46:
Wouldn't that make the code extremely inefficient?

No. A back-end is a logical unit of code. For each function to be provided you use one back-end per system. A PS3 environment will use the PS3 back-end and so on. There is no intermingling of code which means that on the target system there will only be the code needed for that system. Since code is not intermingled there is no performance penalty. You don't have one lego-piece that does it all but instead have a few different flavors of the same piece that you can use interchangeably.

Game engines are the proper place to put the different back-ends. With the number one reason being that if the support is in the engine then it massively reduces the duplication of effort between all the content developers who license that engine. For the longest time game engines have been tightly-coupled to the environment they ran in. Say an older engine would only run on Windows. Within the last few years however that coupling is being removed. Game developers do not write their code with a specific operating system in mind but instead write their code for a specific engine in mind. The workflow is: Content -> Engine -> Operating System. That is the "abstraction", the engine sits between the Operating System and the Content. The engine developers implement a variety of back-ends - the parts that touch the operating system - and then game developers are free to target whichever they choose. And because the game engine abstracts the operating system details then a game developer, in a proper case, would have to make exactly zero changes to their content when targeting a different system. The engine would do that.

Viable back-ends are obviously the consoles and Windows and Mac PCs. An engine developer however would only have to write a Linux back-end once and then maintain it like the other back-ends. Just by having that Linux back-end a game developer could then reap an additional 1% of sales right now without modifying any of their content to enable that. When Valve comes out with their mythical box expect the Source engine to have a back-end, obviously, for that and Source content - again in the ideal case - won't have to be modified at all to leverage the engine no matter the back-end.

Very interesting, I had no idea the engines had gotten that advanced. Thanks for explaining it.

Creston
Avatar 15604
41.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 12:55
41.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 12:55
Feb 6, 2013, 12:55
 
Optional nickname wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 12:41:
I'm going to say something that will silence the sharks reading my post:

John, you reading this?

you need to , damn I wish I could patent this idea..

but, you need to make arcades make a comeback to the scene.

What I'm saying is this: Asia seems to have unlimited supply of raw materials because they are DUMPING electronic shit onto the masses, risking selling only 20% of their production, while the other 80% gets into a landfill, so clearly that is not an issue to get hardware out to us.

What we need is dedicated ROM to dedicated games. Let the wave recommence. It;s time to bring out the next gen Arcades, where one game, a great game! a John Carmack game! is to be written to his own custom made hardware,

Fuck Sony, Fuck Nintendo, and Fuck Microsoft, get your own hardware OS!

You have trillions of dollars of cash pouring in, whereas kickstarter is merely a gratuity (tip) to this available money that the gaming industry now has.

Stop your BICKERING and BRING US GOOD GAMES ONCE AGAIN.

Is this a serious post? I can't tell and I'm usually pretty good at internet irony.
Avatar 51617
40.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 12:54
40.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 12:54
Feb 6, 2013, 12:54
 
netnerd85 wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 10:59:
Cutter wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 09:57:
Why does Carmack even bother staying in gaming? He clearly doesn't need the dough. And whatever passion he had for it seems to have evaporated long ago. It's more like just doing it because it's routine. He only seems to be stoked about space related stuff so why doesn't he focus on that?
Follow his tweets, read his articles, watch his interviews and you may learn something about the man rather than selected snippets and comments by gamers. He is a passionate programmer with an interest in other things. You have other hobbies right?

Passionate programmer for what? Games? Not in a long time. Besides he was a technical savant more interested in resolving programming problems than the games themselves. I've never considered a Carmack a gamer by any stretch.
"The horse I bet on was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of the trip." - Henny Youngman
39.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 12:52
39.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 12:52
Feb 6, 2013, 12:52
 
Optional nickname wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 12:41:
I'm going to say something that will silence the sharks reading my post:

John, you reading this?

you need to , damn I wish I could patent this idea..

but, you need to make arcades make a comeback to the scene.

What I'm saying is this: Asia seems to have unlimited supply of raw materials because they are DUMPING electronic shit onto the masses, risking selling only 20% of their production, while the other 80% gets into a landfill, so clearly that is not an issue to get hardware out to us.

What we need is dedicated ROM to dedicated games. Let the wave recommence. It;s time to bring out the next gen Arcades, where one game, a great game! a John Carmack game! is to be written to his own custom made hardware,

Fuck Sony, Fuck Nintendo, and Fuck Microsoft, get your own hardware OS!

You have trillions of dollars of cash pouring in, whereas kickstarter is merely a gratuity (tip) to this available money that the gaming industry now has.

Stop your BICKERING and BRING US GOOD GAMES ONCE AGAIN.

Arcades time came and went. They are quite frankly not convenient to any one but the publisher/distributor. Gaming is too diverse at this point that you can't crowd all those types a game in a gaming center like you used to do in the 80's and mid 90's. People want to play games on their terms.

Now for specialty and novelty games (motion control/3d/etc) or experience "ride" units those will always have a niche market in malls and movie theaters.

This comment was edited on Feb 6, 2013, 13:03.
38.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 12:41
38.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 12:41
Feb 6, 2013, 12:41
 
I'm going to say something that will silence the sharks reading my post:

John, you reading this?

you need to , damn I wish I could patent this idea..

but, you need to make arcades make a comeback to the scene.

What I'm saying is this: Asia seems to have unlimited supply of raw materials because they are DUMPING electronic shit onto the masses, risking selling only 20% of their production, while the other 80% gets into a landfill, so clearly that is not an issue to get hardware out to us.

What we need is dedicated ROM to dedicated games. Let the wave recommence. It;s time to bring out the next gen Arcades, where one game, a great game! a John Carmack game! is to be written to his own custom made hardware,

Fuck Sony, Fuck Nintendo, and Fuck Microsoft, get your own hardware OS!

You have trillions of dollars of cash pouring in, whereas kickstarter is merely a gratuity (tip) to this available money that the gaming industry now has.

Stop your BICKERING and BRING US GOOD GAMES ONCE AGAIN.
37.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 12:19
37.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 12:19
Feb 6, 2013, 12:19
 
yuastnav wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 11:46:
Wouldn't that make the code extremely inefficient?

No. A back-end is a logical unit of code. For each function to be provided you use one back-end per system. A PS3 environment will use the PS3 back-end and so on. There is no intermingling of code which means that on the target system there will only be the code needed for that system. Since code is not intermingled there is no performance penalty. You don't have one lego-piece that does it all but instead have a few different flavors of the same piece that you can use interchangeably.

Game engines are the proper place to put the different back-ends. With the number one reason being that if the support is in the engine then it massively reduces the duplication of effort between all the content developers who license that engine. For the longest time game engines have been tightly-coupled to the environment they ran in. Say an older engine would only run on Windows. Within the last few years however that coupling is being removed. Game developers do not write their code with a specific operating system in mind but instead write their code for a specific engine in mind. The workflow is: Content -> Engine -> Operating System. That is the "abstraction", the engine sits between the Operating System and the Content. The engine developers implement a variety of back-ends - the parts that touch the operating system - and then game developers are free to target whichever they choose. And because the game engine abstracts the operating system details then a game developer, in a proper case, would have to make exactly zero changes to their content when targeting a different system. The engine would do that.

Viable back-ends are obviously the consoles and Windows and Mac PCs. An engine developer however would only have to write a Linux back-end once and then maintain it like the other back-ends. Just by having that Linux back-end a game developer could then reap an additional 1% of sales right now without modifying any of their content to enable that. When Valve comes out with their mythical box expect the Source engine to have a back-end, obviously, for that and Source content - again in the ideal case - won't have to be modified at all to leverage the engine no matter the back-end.
36.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 12:17
36.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 12:17
Feb 6, 2013, 12:17
 
Lets be honest here most games have the logic and rendering elements well separated and distinct from the OS platform code. I am going to assume that the difference in the code base between the platforms is probably less than 1-2%.

They could support Linux quite easily if they wished. The proof is quite literally in the fact that most of the AAA companies are falling over themselves to port their engines to mobile.

It is worth mentioning that because of Steam, Desura, Kickstarter, and the humble bundle that Linux is growing a consumer base wanting commercial games. Once that base gets large enough of course companies are going to want to support it.
35.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 11:46
35.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 11:46
Feb 6, 2013, 11:46
 
|RaptoR| wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 11:18:
[...]

Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3 had native linux binaries, but it's cool to focus on a browser-based version of Quake 3 to drive home your (invalid) point

My point is not invalid because his point wasn't. If he had included Doom 3 and Quake 4, which actually did have Linux binaries, then that would be a different matter altogether, however he specifically concentrated on Quake Arena (so he probably means Quake 3 Arena) and Quake live. Since he didn't even mention Quake 1 and Quake 2 you probably misread what he actually wrote.


Beamer wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 11:23:
Quake Live isn't even browser based. yuastnav is either misunderstanding the game or what "browser based" means.

Hold on, what do you actually understand by "browser based"? The game exists locally on your machine and is accessed via a browser plugin. What is your definition?


headkase wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 11:37:
[...]
Having every developer writing for Linux is stupid. What needs to be done is that the engine developers write Linux-back-ends. When you develop your game for CryEngine 3 you don't say "oh my gosh! I have to write to the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC API!" No, shit. With CryEngine 3 you press the "deploy" button and the code needed at the lower levels - stuff dealing with operating systems and graphics and audio API's - is abstracted away from your content. If a engine developer makes an OpenGL back-end the developer of a game doesn't have to give two shits about it. They just press "deploy." Sorry, they have to press deploy 4 times: once each for Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and Linux. A properly written game engine will abstract away the lower level details and make it so a game developer doesn't have to give a single flying fuck about them.

Wouldn't that make the code extremely inefficient?

This comment was edited on Feb 6, 2013, 11:54.
Now we donce.
34.
 
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support
Feb 6, 2013, 11:37
34.
Re: John Carmack On Linux Gaming Support Feb 6, 2013, 11:37
Feb 6, 2013, 11:37
 
Beamer wrote on Feb 6, 2013, 11:04:
Valve's problem is going to be getting anyone to actually make Linux games. Like you said, "If they... get some large software developers aboard...." that's a big if. It's a risk. They need to hire Linux game programmers, something not really plentiful now. It's a big leap. Some will stick a toe in the waters, but don't expect anyone committing capital to jump in the deep end before anything is proven.

And, if it becomes proven, it isn't hard for others to adapt to it. Actually kicking out the product for Linux isn't really time or resource intensive, but it does require hiring some new people.

Having every developer writing for Linux is stupid. What needs to be done is that the engine developers write Linux-back-ends. When you develop your game for CryEngine 3 you don't say "oh my gosh! I have to write to the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC API!" No, shit. With CryEngine 3 you press the "deploy" button and the code needed at the lower levels - stuff dealing with operating systems and graphics and audio API's - is abstracted away from your content. If a engine developer makes an OpenGL back-end the developer of a game doesn't have to give two shits about it. They just press "deploy." Sorry, they have to press deploy 4 times: once each for Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and Linux. A properly written game engine will abstract away the lower level details and make it so a game developer doesn't have to give a single flying fuck about them.
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