
An Ex-Porter of AAA Games to Linux Talks about the Future of Linux Gaming - ekianjo
https://boilingsteam.com/an-interview-with-peter-mulholland-ex-vp/
======
tapoxi
It looks to me like Valve has been missing the boat constantly. They
completely screwed up SteamOS/Steam Machines, haven't shipped a game in years,
their current games have been essentially under maintenance mode, competitors
have built their own storefronts/launchers that have caught up to Steam, they
didn't react to obvious gaps with communication (Discord) and streaming
(Twitch).

They shipped SteamVR with HTC, which is cool! But you need a powerful PC,
$800, and plenty of free space. There's no competition to the $200 Oculus Go.

I guess the flat management structure isn't all that its cracked up to be.

~~~
chrischen
There's no competition to the Oculus go because nobody wants the Oculus Go.

~~~
ryanmcbride
This is in line with my anecdotal experience. A few of my coworkers got Oculus
go when it first came out, and all of them ended up returning it. The only
thing it seems to be good for is watching normal non-VR content, which they
don't need a VR headset for. It doesn't have enough power for gaming.

I could see it being useful like, on airplanes or something, but I don't think
we're at a place yet socially where someone could wear a VR headset on a plane
and not look like a weirdo/pervert.

~~~
girvo
Weirdo I get, but pervert? Huh?

~~~
sethrin
There's a fair amount of VR porn already. It's maybe not quite entirely fair
to associate porn with new display technologies, but I can see why people
might. And in this case, who knows what you're really looking at?

------
onli
> _What is especially ridiculous is that we keep seeing folks, in 2017 and
> 2018, repeating the same nonsense “Witcher 2 runs like crap”, which is
> completely false and a blatant lie at this point in time. The long tail of
> stupidity._

Witcher 2 did indeed run bad on Linux the last time I looked at it, and that
was many months after its release. It wasn't at 2 FPS anymore, but still only
barely playable. I bet it still runs badly, I think my last test wasn't that
long ago, but given the driver improvements since then I might be wrong. All
that on a system where the game ran fine on Windows.

I know nothing about whether the criticism was too heated, but if a linux port
is released and does not run properly on user's systems, then complaints are
to be expected.

~~~
setzer22
I completely agree. There's something wrong with that port. With a machine
that can run The Witcher 3 on high settings (on Windows), Witcher 2's port for
Linux barely gets to 30fps on medium-low settings.

~~~
ekianjo
I have a 970 and Witcher 2 runs constantly above 60fps on ultra settings. You
sure you have tried it after the port was improved?

~~~
onli
I think that goes to me as well... I dug a bit into my blog archive. My first
try with Witcher 2 on Linux was just a month after its Linux release, I wrote
down that the recommended fglrx driver worked worse than the free mesa driver,
which in 2014 was a new experience. I was happy to see that I did not bash the
developers at all, I was just a little bit disappointed, but happy about the
improvements of Mesa. I also wrote that, at least at that time, only Nvidia
was officially supported. I guess that explains why your experience was (is?)
so much better. Also, the 970 is a very strong gpu for a game released 2014 on
Linux and 2011(!) on Windows.

But I definitely played it again not too long ago (trying to get all the
achievements) and I stand to the statement that performance was bad, but I did
not write down when that was exactly. But didn't I make some screenshots? Yes,
with Steam, and the details reveal that playthrough was in 2017! But that was
also with a Radeon (but a stronger one than the first try, I upgraded in the
meantime).

To be fair, I will download now and check the current FPS, but even it worked
great now, the bad performance in 2017 makes clear that the vitriol expressed
in the interview is wrong. They never made the game run great, at least not
with AMD, and from what I read also Nvidia performance remained bad when
compared to the Windows version.

~~~
onli
It did not even start :/

------
BanazirGalbasi
> The Linux bridges have been burnt for CDPR

This phrase made me sad, but it's an understandable statement. The article
mentions several times that the Linux community in general was very toxic when
it didn't get its way, and this isn't the first time I've heard the sentiment.
It seems to me that the sense of elitism that Linux-users (including myself)
generally carry can be enough to turn people off from trying to assist us from
outside the community, and I don't think I'm the only one who has come to that
conclusion.

~~~
TheCapeGreek
I've seen it too. I use macOS at work, troubleshoot my gf's Windows laptop and
use Mint as my daily driver. I'm far from the elitist camp. But the sentiment
against Linux is surprisingly large. I posted 2 reviews for Overlord and
Overlord 2 just to warn Linux users that a camera bug that makes the game
incredibly annoying to play is still present and I was met with comments that
I shouldn't be bothering to play on Linux.

If the developer offers that support, should I not report issues with the
port? I don't follow that logic. I didn't pass any judgement on the game
itself, but couldn't really give a positive recommendation.

For now, I value the lack of Linux ports for some items because I know the
barrier to get it working on Wine (not always doable) will limit me and force
me to get back to other, more valuable pursuits. Can't just game all the time
as much as I'd like to at times.

------
preinheimer
It's interesting to hear about the dynamics between the porting company and
the original developer.

As a mac user I'll agree with the statement "mac users are happy to pay for
their port". I'm perfectly happy to pay for whatever is coming to mac, it just
needs to work properly. When I do pay and the performance is crap I don't want
to spend hours digging through forums while people point fingers at each
other.

~~~
nottorp
Dunno, as a mac user I only buy cross platform games lately. I.e. those that
have at least win/mac (preferably linux too) available in GoG or Steam. I
would never consider buying just a Mac or just a Linux version.

However, most AAA games are made with consoles in mind, so if i do want to
play one, i'll get it for my PS4. It happens pretty rarely lately, though.
Huge backlog of Mac indies to play, sorry AAA companies.

About the Witcher 2, the performance on Mac (and I guess on Linux too) _was_
crap on launch. And that's what most people who bought the game saw, because
they didn't expect the ports and bought when the Windows version launched and
dual booted. Whatever they improved, it was too late, everyone had finished
the game by now.

As for Witcher 3, I bought it but I only got like 1/3 of the way through it.
Why? Because it only runs on Windows (I haven't tried Wine lately, so this may
have changed) and rebooting to play a game is disruptive to all the stuff I
run on the Mac OS side of things.

That doesn't bode well for my chances of rushing in and preordering Cyberpunk,
sorry CD PROJEKT.

Edit: please no one explain to me how Macs don't have the hardware to run
games, I hackintosh, have a proper video card and stuff like the ports of the
Metro games work just fine(tm).

~~~
ekianjo
> Because it only runs on Windows

I finished Witcher 3 on Linux using DXVK. Not sure if it works on Mac
(probably not), and it's not 100% perfect yet, but it is pretty good
performance wise already.

~~~
nottorp
DXVK seems to be Linux only. Might as well reboot to Windows then for less
hassle.

Problem is: out of sight, out of mind. I've kinda lost interest. Pretty sad,
considering how enthusiastic I was on launch.

------
Yizahi
> Linux wasn’t really ready either, with the poor AMD driver situation amongst
> other things. AMD APU’s would have been the ideal platform for a console

Is there any practical difference for applications whether GPU is outside or
on the CPU chip? Any major difference in drivers?

~~~
pjmlp
Lots of them, because it affects how data flows between CPU and GPU.

For example, dedicated GPUs usually can't make use of shared memory.

On the other hand, shared memory has slower access rate, meaning integrated
GPU with it cannot be as faster.

This is just one difference, there are others.

