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Oh? Maybe hire a good dedicated Linux team back and crowdfund their salary perhaps?
[1] I'm not sure if there was ever a time when more than one person was working full time on any Linux port, and even those times were short.
-JLarja
Platform freedom sure is becoming a thing more and more. Feral Interactive, Aspyr, etc. add Linux port to their games almost without an exception now.
How are they able to do it with flying colors? What is different in their model? It would be beneficial for everyone to not endorse platform exclusivity?
Second, I don't know how Feral Interactive, Aspyr etc. are actually doing, and what is their business model. Are they taking a risk themselves or are they just selling porting services to others? In a short run, does it actually matter to them, whether the games sell or not? So I can't really tell whether the "flying colors" comment of yours is accurate or not [1].
Finally, not porting to OS X and Linux is a far cry from endorsing platform exclusivity. Nine Parchments is coming to Windows, PS4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.
By the way, it's not simply about how many man months the porting would take and dividing that with unit price to get break even sales. Skilled people required to make a port (mainly coders, producers and QA) aren't generally available. There's always an opportunity cost too. Shall we do the port or improve some feature instead? Should we risk a schedule slip because we wanted more platforms for launch? It really isn't a straight forward problem.
All that said, please understand that I don't have sales numbers or accurate estimates about porting costs for our previous projects. However, based on some educated guessing, the best bet for Linux port is still to hope that OS X port gets done and uses OpenGL renderer. With that, extra work for Linux becomes manageable.
-JLarja
Only one single PC platform there, though. I think you guys should seriously at least aim towards also platforms other than Microsoft Windows. I'm sure you know the reasoning behind this after 10... It is quite unacceptable IMO how that OS behaves on its user etc.
I don't know how accurate the numbers really are (for example, survey currently shows +6 percentage point change for Windows 7 and almost -5 percentage point change for Windows 10), but there's certainly no hurry from market share point of view. I have to say, though that previous Linux ports have generated disproportionate amount of positive buzz (even though they tend to have lot of problems running on various distros). However, I have no way of knowing whether that buzz has generated much sales or not.
Technically speaking, as long as we keep making console ports, adding another platform, whether a new console or PC one, is relatively straight forward. So I'm not sure how much more aiming toward other PC platforms we can do, short of actually making a working port.
And if you happen to know an experienced and 1337 programmer interested in porting our future games to OS X or Linux, feel free to steer her/him to our web site (there's a section about jobs there) :) .
-JLarja
A discussion has ignited at Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/748fst/frozenbyte_recently_dropped_linux_porting_appears/
I truly hope you'll find that "1337 programmer" for Frozenbyte to continue accommodate this small yet growing Linux gaming community!
Linux gaming has never been as convenient as it is today. Thanks to platform agnostic Vulkan etc.
Therein lies our biggest problem unfortunately. Developers don't support linux because there aren't enough players, but there aren't enough players because developers aren't supporting linux ..... because there aren't enough players.
It's an incredibly frustrating cycle that we will only break out of if we get more developer support (but why would they support us if we're "too small"... argggggh!)
We started making some real headway when SteamOS came out (tons of linux ports were happening) but that momentum is starting to fizzle out now since Valve can't seem to manage a project to save their lives.
This isn't a request to get a linux port of this game... just a general comment about the situation we're all in.
So if you ever see a bunch of "+1" comments and other various nagging threads about linux support.. just know that this is why. We're pleading with developers to support our small platform that will never grow in the gaming space without help.
Thanks for at least discussing it, a lot of the time threads like this get locked and ignored.
For what it's worth.. Pôrnhub, which I would consider a pretty platform agnostic site for interweb travelers, pegs (hehe) linux at 3% as of 2016 :) Up from 2.5% in 2015 and 1.7% in 2014. You can google their yealy stats blog posts, I can't post them here. We're certainly growing. Steam's hardware survey doesn't represent the platform very well. A lot of linux players are forced to dual boot because, you guessed it, lack of developer support on linux
Linux ports in the future are not completely off the table, but unfortunately at this point Linux version of Nine Parchments is very unlikely.
Thanks for communicating with us! We often, in gaming realm, have to swallow the feeling of "2nd class citizen" because of our platform choice.
A treatment used in favor of Aspyr might be required for Frozenbyte too! =) Them cookies!
https://twitter.com/AspyrMedia/status/791034166070616064/photo/1
We'll try to continue the communication and have a nice weekend!
Thanks for your interest as well. :)
Oh dear, that escalated quickly :D .
Just wanted to comment on a few points that came up in discussion at Reddit (I don't think I've ever registered in Reddit, or spent much time there, so I don't feel like commenting there):
On the problem of getting sales numbers, please keep in mind that I'm a programmer, not financial manager. I don't know what numbers management at Frozenbyte has, so I don't know whether the lack of resources for Linux (and OS X, though no-one seems to care) porting is about absolute cost or opportunity cost. Also, there's no good way to count people who have bought our games on Windows, because they like what we were doing on Linux.
Humble Indie Bundle requiring Linux port is actually a good reason why there might be Linux port someday. However, it's rather unlikely that we would put 9P to HIB soon after release, so getting the porting going now would require quite a bit more of forward looking planning that usually takes place in games industry.
As for personal Linux experience, I've been running various Linux servers nearly twenty years and currently have two servers and one DVR running at home, and love them. That said, I've never much used Linux on desktop and take gaming way too seriously to consider turning my gaming rig to Linux system.
By the way, releasing a Linux port is always very satisfying, because you get happy people thanking you and generally feel like you are making someone's day. I wouldn't mind working on one again. I'd like to thank the Linux gaming community for kind words over the years and hope we'll get a change for more ports in the future.
-JLarja