Why are video games only made for Windows operating systems?

Why are video games only made for Windows operating systems?

Is porting them to Linux truly more trouble than it's worth? If so, why?

Market share. It would be a waste of money to make a port for something that no one will play. There aren't very many linux users, and those that use it probably aren't interested in video games anyways.

not completly true. there are some linux users, but the important part is that basicly every one of these linux users that wants to play games also has some windows version, so porting the game to linux would not increase the sales by more than a really tiny bit.

Because games are for kids and not for adults.

Which adults use Linux?

market share. also in the past opengl was a much bigger mess than it is today, so it was easier to code for direct3d.

Games usually use DirectX, including its input, sound etc. as well as graphical APIs. It's more hassle than you'd think to port them.

No he's completely right, you don't get it. There's something like 90% of computers running Windows and less than 5% running a Linux distro. Nobody would make any money marketing to Linux users, it's an afterthought

me

Simple because it is More economical ig

they don't port because there's no demand.
there's no demand for linux because they don't port games.

it's almost as if there was someone behind that...

you heard it here first folks, user is confirmed to use linux

Porting to Linux would barely be a problem if it weren't for the cancer that is DirectX.

did vulkan mitigate that gap?
or is it the same effort to put out 2 versions, vulkan and directX, as it would be to put out loonix and winblows versions?

If you were an adult I don't think you'd be here. I will be willing to believe that you're a manchild though if you want to change your answer.

Definitely market share entirely.

Almost all gaymin PC run Windows, games based on Windows can still get sales from Linux users thanks to Wine and most game optimisations are focused and developed to the most popular platform (Windows) first (due to sales and platform choice focus).

Vulkan replaces the graphics side, but doesn't change anything regarding sound, inputs etc.

which one is the biggest issue?
lazyness?
directx either organic or artificial hurdles that would make things incompatible acroos the platforms?
what are the difficulties to bring up an agnostic api, isn't vulkan exactly that?

Because a lot of people who use Linux just aren't interested in playing games on it. A lot of us are actual tech enthusiasts that like to control our systems beyond a wallpaper change and playing LEGOs on PC part picker or whatever. If there's something horribly wrong with my OS, I like to know that I'll be able to grab a copy of the source and fix things myself if the devs don't do it for whatever reason. Support is also never permanently dropped like with Windows XP or OS X Tiger that were good systems, since I can just fork my OS and keep going if I am forced to do so. I use text editors, office stuff, a web browser, media players, etc. I don't care about games.

I do. The productivity memes are fake and gay if you don't need Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, or Microsoft programs. Everything else works just fine, and MS Office is available through a web browser if you really need it. You can also just spin up virtual machines for this stuff if you aren't a poorfag corelet. I sometimes use Photoshop in a Windows VM in QEMU and it works great on my ThinkPad P71. I can't find any downsides to using GNU/Linux in current year aside from the no thumbnails in the Firefox file picker, but this is the fault of Gnome devs.

I think that there's at least some contra-revenue program (or pogrom) going on, M$ style.

>Because a lot of people who use Linux just aren't interested in playing games on it.

>remove you're head from your ass.
>smell the fresh air, you didn't experience since the late 90's.
>also, with renewed vigor, make an effort a better person, and not as much insufferable.
>talk to us then.

tl;dr
kys

This desu (the part about Linux being fine in current year)
I got a mac recently and already wanna go back to Linux, it's crazy the kind of shit that normies put up with. There really is no going back once you've gotten used to Freedom™

>Why are video games only made for Windows operating systems?
Because Microsoft/Windows is much more popular system, that GNU/Linux.
>Is porting them to Linux truly more trouble than it's worth?
Depends. If game uses DX - that is a pain. If it uses OpenGL or Vulkan - no problem.

Linux is just a kernel.

I don't really care, typing out GNU/Linux all the time is a hassle

Because linux users want them for free.

SDL is making things better, not vulkan

Me, I don't think I can go back to anything else after i3

Not enough of a market to make money. Take the PS3 for example, apparently it was a dog to code for but game companies did it because there was a large market.

ur mum s a krnl

It's hard to port native software. And there's 99% chance wine runs it anyway.

Wine won't run Doom 4 or Fallout 4.

Use a VM or dual boot, or don't use Linux at all. Stop trying to make a fish ride a bicycle and hammer nails with a banana, dumbfuck. Use the right tool for the right job.

I would actually argue that the default install of a distro like Fedora or Debian comes with more useful stuff than a default Windows install. I recently set up a Windows 10 Pro VM and found myself installing Firefox, VLC, an image viewer, and all kinds of other third party programs to get a useful system. On Fedora I just install a music player and other little things here and there.

most programmers are just lazy brainlets who can understand the hardware

You guys always seem to forget the thousands of Linux games on Steam

> reddit border

You guys always seem to forget the thousands of Linux games on Google Play

linux is for dweebs real men use wine

In the same boat as you, dynamic tiling WMs are very powerful while taking a really small amount of resources. i have around 230 MB of used RAM when idle.

Wine does run doom and fo4. I play both. Doom runs really well with Vulkan and has been playable since release. Fallout4 has only been playable with wine since November.

They are Linux games if I can play them on every Linux Distro without emulation. Therefore they are not.

It's because video games are for morons.

>every one of these linux users that wants to play games also has some windows version
Not my experience at all but your point is basically valid anyway. The GNU/Linux users I know don't use Windows at all but they don't play games either.

My impression is that those who want to play games (ie the market) use Windows .. because it allows them to play games. Those who don't play games have no problem making the switch so they sometimes do.

>a lot of people who use Linux just aren't interested in playing games
I too have this impression.

Tell us how wrong we are instead of throwing a fit like a child. Do you play a lot of games and use GNU/Linux exclusively?

>want them for free
This isn't really relevant, not for me anyway. My worthless NEET brother invites himself too frequently and shows up even though I tell him no and he always brings his xbox. It's not like I couldn't play games on that while I wait for him to finally go back to my mom's basement. But I don't. I'm not the video game type. He plays GTA all day and would probably buy that if he had Linux pre-installed on his computer and they sold a Linux version of it. I wouldn't play it even if it was free and came with my GNU/Linux distro.

>Is porting them to Linux truly more trouble than it's worth?
Usually a company will consider OS X before they consider Linux. Let that sink in for a moment.

But underage anime girls are right?

I see all those morons on twitch making a fortune per month doing nothing.
How much does your welfare/dead-end job/code monkey job pays again?

I read in an interview that Jonathan Blow made absolutely no money from selling Braid in the Ubuntu Software Center. Linux users don’t pay for software, not as in they pirate everything, but as in they’d rather play Tux Racer cause it’s FLOSS.

Also OpenGL vs DX9/11/12. I’m heartbroken about lack of Vulkan titles.

>Ubuntu Software Center
Lol. The real question is how many people on Steam play games on Linux.

Get the fuck out of Sup Forums dumb third-worlder monkey.

>Also OpenGL vs DX9/11/12
Great argument.

>Indie games and hentai cartoons
What a time to be alive.
On a serious note only Valve is seriously supporting Linux. Indie devs support Linux from ideological points. Companies like Activision and EA don’t have that.

Vulkan will become the standard soon anyway.
It's compatible with everything and faster, so there is no reason for dX to exist.
My guess is that the only companies continuing to use dX will be bribed by microcock.

>It's compatible with everything
Not aplel

I play games on my linux box. Wine actually runs XP and older games better than w7/10. Plus there's openarena and a few other good native games. No problem as long as you don't play AAA games. If you do there is always gpu passthrough to keep the aids contained away from bare metal.

Everyday I wonder is he serious

It did,Valve did a huge push for development on Linux because of their Steam machines and VR.
Intel was second and opened their drivers while AMD lagged behind but eventually caught up.

actually user, many budding game developers create their games for Adobe's Flash operating system

Yeah but I hear Vulkan is so low level people rather develop on DX11. Low level is good but means more work. And computer reaources are so abundant these days no one cares about optimization. If something can’t be run 60fps, the pc is to blame and not the code. Kinda backwards.

slight kek

w/ wine and steam, as long as you don't play AAA games (the vast majority of which are utter garbage nowadays) there are tons of good games available.

The problem isn't the amount of games, it's that linux still kind of sucks ass as a development target for games.

Laziness or vendor lock in. It's very easy to port a game to Linux by at least making your own WINE wrapper. If an indie dev team of less than 10 people can do it (Terraria uses a wine wrapper) then there is no reason big companies can't. It's already shown that DOOM runs on WINE with near identical and sometimes better performance compared to windows, and it's made to work on Linux by just a few people.
It's easier to port a game to Linux than porting a game from a console to PC, yet companies port console games to windows but not windows games to Linux or Mac. They're either paid to do do by Microsoft or don't give a shit. Either way vote with your wallet and only buy games that have a Linux port.

Terraria uses DX and is made using Microsoft's development tools. Yet it's ported to Mac and Linux using a WINE wrapper. WINE recently got DX11 support and Linux could natively run DX9 for years. There are no excuses anymore.

Vulkan is almost as difficult and annoying to use as DX12. It would require too much work to make a Vulkan product. It's easier to make something in openGL (for now).

Here’s hoping.

>No he's completely right, you don't get it. There's something like 90% of computers running Windows and less than 5% running a Linux distro. Nobody would make any money marketing to Linux users, it's an afterthought

He's not. You're the one who does not get it. Even if you say 90% run windows and 5% run linux you would also need to take into account which of these users is playing games. Most adult people don't play games but don't use linux either. Besides even if it were only 5% that could be potential customers for a game (using your not really applieable statistics) you could increase the sales of your games by over 5% (your logic) by porting it to linux (that's what saying "only market share matters" effectivly does).

For a game like GTA V (budget ~265 million dollar) 5% would be more than 13 million dollars (in sales alone, they make some extra bucks in gta online too). Surely they'd be able to port the game for less than 10 million dollars to make some extra profit, they "just" have to replace the used graphics api with something like opengl or vulkan and compile it for linux(well technically a bit more but). It's not easy but nothing a few million dollars woth of programming hours can't fix.

But they did not do that. Why? Because it does not matter at all how many people use an os, it only matters how many sales can be generated by porting it. And most companies (including rockstar games) decided that it would not be worth it.

If it's not clear for you by now let's say 2018 would be the year linux desktop goes mainstream and at the end of this year 30% would use linux. Most games still would not get ported if most of these users had a additional version of windows running because porting the game would still not increase sales enough for it to be profitable. Why? Because these "potential customers" can already buy and play the game on windows.

So no, the reason is not the market share itself.

I haven’t played an opengl game in years. So I’m assuming DX got an upper hand.

>linux still kind of sucks ass as a development target for games.
It's actually much easier to make a Linux game. The amount of control open source gives you is insane, not mentioning the fact that AMD drivers are open source so you can see exactly what's happening under the hood.
The only issue you might have is cross-distro compatibility. This is easily fixed by just including all libraries with your game, or packing it into an appimage.

>They're either paid to do do by Microsoft or don't give a shit.
They don't give a shit. The freetard market is not big enough to bother with, as many people have already pointed out in this very thread.

>The GNU/Linux users I know
Wow, that is an good statement to argue with. Guess what, most people i know are white. Surely this must be representative for all people on earth.

>I haven’t played an opengl game in years. So I’m assuming DX got an upper hand.
Great logic

>They don't give a shit.
Correction, they're incompetent. There are lots of gamers on Linux.

Like 1% of all Steam users use Linux.
>source: first page of Google (no clicking links)
It’s probly accurate tho. And I guarantee you they all play the games they already bought for Windows. I don’t think there’s a single Linux exclusive in Steam.

When MS released Vista, they basically dropped OpenGL support and forced OpenGL apps to run in a VM, so despite OpenGL being superior to DirectX, Microsoft gets to have games because they banned competition. If games used OpenGL it would be much easier to Port them.

to get games working on unix, you'd have to make your own libraries, and they'd have to be split across multiple directories such as /home, /etc, /var etc

it becomes a mess, especially when you have to uninstall it

on windows, you simply create a folder and that's it.

Wake up

You’re free to start coming up with opposing facts anytime. Maybe a chart? Or an article? Stats? Names?

>but I hear Vulkan is so low level people rather develop on DX11.
Maybe from dumb indie devs.
Most engine-developers are probably glad that they can fully utilize pc hardware via Vulkan now.

How many kernel patches have you written

>inb4 how do i instal gaem
Steam is making this considerably easier tho, but distro software centers are all 100% foss.

>to get games working on unix
No.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
You can just statically link almost everything.

That was really dumb

>all this text just to be wrong
No you're an idiot and your argument illustrates it. Come back when you understand marketing at all, Mr programmer who apparently would throw millions at a port that would lose you money. Fucking retard lol

Video games are artificial challange, hacker prefer real world challanges like finding 0day exploits.

For Linux? Two, but only one was accepted because someone else had gotten the same patch in first.

that's not a solution, and you have no idea what you're talking about

typical freetard

>there are no money to be made with video game hacking
Underage get out

Over 100 thousand Linux users are active on Steam every day. And it's already established that almost every Linux user runs Steam in WINE or has Windows for certain games. 250k+ people isn't a bad market.
Unless you're arguing that they're not incompetent? Ill take you to this post explaining how a single digit team ported Terraria to Linux, and users themselves made DOOM (AAA game) run on Linux within a month.

>Terraria DX WINE wrapper bla bla bla
That’s actually great news. I did not know that. Bad for Vulkan tho.

Market share. I think developers don't even like the pc cause it sucks ass to support so many different platforms. Think of each pc config as a platform, whereas xboxes and playstations are all the same.

>video game hacking has to be done on Linux
Nigger, please.

Stop replying, you retard.

I like how you said something really fucking stupid and now you've ran out of arguments. Typical freetard.

Hmmm fair enough but I still doubt they play anything other than CSGO and DOTA.

I think the opposite is true, pretty much everyone writing game cheats does it on Windows

How old are you? 17?
You have never fucking touched a compiler in your life, and now you are telling me some bullshit. Fuck off.
> you'd have to make your own libraries
No. There are millions of libraries available, including the most popular physics engines and math libraries, glfw, sdl2 and many others.
You _don't_ have to "make your own libraries". Whatever that shit means, you mouthbreathing indian retard.
>and they'd have to be split across multiple directories such as /home, /etc, /var etc
Just google static linking, you dumb fuck. But since you are too stupid to do so, I will tell you what it does.
It includes your libraries, in your executable. Nothing to install anymore, since everything is in the executable.

Actually this doesn't mean Vulkan will be used less. Since dx has to be translated into openGL for WINE to work, you can use Vulkan instead of oGL to improve the game's performance. Vulkan is already used to significantly improve the performance of console emulators. If nothing else then Vulkan can at least be used for emulation. Which ironically means that starting with android 8.0 even android devices will be able to run Windows software, as WINE was ported to android recently. Microsoft could lose the market to Google if Google starts investing more into WINE, indirectly improving the Linux market as well.

Sorry I would like to interject...

>if Google starts investing more into WIN

Are they already doing that? Thats like a full blown attack against ms

I like how every game works with my xinput controller config on steam, I havent looked into it but i'm almost 100% sure i couldn't have it just work on linux

>glfw, sdl2

hahahahaha

It's hard to compete with older games, and linux users are generally savy enough to use emulators.
Your cinematic lootbox simulator with auto aim 2.0 can't hold a candle to even a mediocre megaman game.

>they basically dropped OpenGL support and forced OpenGL apps to run in a VM, so despite OpenGL being superior to DirectX, Microsoft gets to have games because they banned competition. If games used OpenGL it would be much easier to Port them.
Is this real life?

Controllers work really well with linux these days. Most major controllers included with kernel so just plug and play. Steam, Xbox, ps... wiimotes work but did take some extra configuration.

If you want custom controller configs launching with the steam interface works well but also has configuration tools for controller inputs