Old launcher no longer working

[DPZ2]

Seems to me if an unsupported platform doesn't work after any changes to the game a developer makes on supported platforms, it's up to the supporters/developers of the unsupported platform to make things right.

There are fixes being proposed and partial workarounds, which is pretty much what the Wine community has been used to for almost three decades.

What's different, apparently, is the sense of entitlement to something that was never promised by the software vendor.

[darkvalefor]

Seems to me if an unsupported platform doesn't work after any changes to the game a developer makes on supported platforms, it's up to the supporters/developers of the unsupported platform to make things right.

There are fixes being proposed and partial workarounds, which is pretty much what the Wine community has been used to for almost three decades.

What's different, apparently, is the sense of entitlement to something that was never promised by the software vendor.

And that is totally fair, thats why in my original post I ask if there are any future plans to support the Steam Deck.

I can understand not supporting Linux as the userbase is very small and would not really mean too much of a benefit even if the change would be almost effortless, but the Steam Deck will probably have more users and in the near future could bring about the same amount of users as the macOS platform so it would be interesting if they decided to support it.

One concern tho is the security risk of using an obsolete and unsupported APi but we will see what happens and hopefully we get a solution from wine devs.

[junmoxiao]

can understand not supporting Linux as the userbase is very small and would not really mean too much of a benefit even if the change would be almost effortless

The latest Steam statistics show that Mac users are about twice as many as Linux users. We are talking about a factor of 2, not a factor of 10+, and the devs think Mac users are enough to be worth supporting. Also when you are talking about subscription numbers of tens of millions of people, even 1% of that is still hundreds of thousands of users. Please don't encourage this false narrative that the Linux userbase is so small as to be negligible, especially in a context where Mac is already supported.

[Zer0ofTime]

Seems to me if an unsupported platform doesn't work after any changes to the game a developer makes on supported platforms, it's up to the supporters/developers of the unsupported platform to make things right.

There are fixes being proposed and partial workarounds, which is pretty much what the Wine community has been used to for almost three decades.

What's different, apparently, is the sense of entitlement to something that was never promised by the software vendor.

This argument might hold any weight if the game ran poorly or didn't function right, But the game in and of itself plays flawlessly on steamdeck and proton. It is literally JUST the launcher that is broken not even the game itself, so it's not like people are putting out major fires in gameplay to get it to work. So you might call people who buy a game on steam and expect play it on steam deck entitled, or try to put down linux players, but they will look at your weightless argument here and not think twice about your false opinion putting them down.

[darkvalefor]

The latest Steam statistics show that Mac users are about twice as many as Linux users. We are talking about a factor of 2, not a factor of 10+, and the devs think Mac users are enough to be worth supporting. Also when you are talking about subscription numbers of tens of millions of people, even 1% of that is still hundreds of thousands of users. Please don't encourage this false narrative that the Linux userbase is so small as to be negligible, especially in a context where Mac is already supported.

That is actually surprising as i was uninformed about the numbers but if the Linux playerbase is already half of the macOS one, Steam is very soon going to push that over the macOS playerbase, which means it’s already more than worth it supporting Proton and hopefully it will happen soon

[darkvalefor]

That is actually surprising as i was uninformed about the numbers but if the Linux playerbase is already half of the macOS one, Steam is very soon going to push that over the macOS playerbase, which means it’s already more than worth it supporting Proton and hopefully it will happen soon

I meant Steam Deck

[ShanksFCS]

Yeah, just to add on to the above, the game was 100% flawless for me. Possibly even better at points. It is literally just the launcher being broken and preventing Steam users on Linux from being able to access the game.

Square-Enix has no obligation to provide full support for a certain OS if they choose. That's fine. It's just frustrating that literally the only component preventing Linux users from playing is the front-end launcher that happens to use super-outdated proprietary Windows tech.

[Ransu]

Once again, are we a prolific problem persistently pestering the populace, or are we less than one percent?

Its a can that doesn't need to be opened, thus the take companies like Epic and Bungie are taking against supporting linux.

[DPZ2]

So you might call people who buy a game on steam and expect play it on steam deck entitled, or try to put down linux players, but they will look at your weightless argument here and not think twice about your false opinion putting them down.

No one at Square Enix announced support of their game on the Steam Deck. That it 'just worked' is a tribute to those Wine developers who put in time to make it so, but it's not Square Enix's problem. The fact that a simple change in the launcher, which works for everybody except those who are running unsupported on Linux and Steam Deck is a problem for Wine and Steam developers to correct.

If you desire support, you need to convince both Steam and Square Enix that it is in their best financial interests to provide that support.

[HereInPlainSight]

Its a can that doesn't need to be opened, thus the take companies like Epic and Bungie are taking against supporting linux.

Implying that Epic hasn't been doing everything in its power to claw at Steam's user base. Absolutely no one should be surprised that Epic are doing what they can to not support something that would benefit the Steam Deck, since it would benefit Steam.

No one at Square Enix announced support of their game on the Steam Deck. That it 'just worked' is a tribute to those Wine developers who put in time to make it so, but it's not Square Enix's problem. The fact that a simple change in the launcher, which works for everybody except those who are running unsupported on Linux and Steam Deck is a problem for Wine and Steam developers to correct.

If you desire support, you need to convince both Steam and Square Enix that it is in their best financial interests to provide that support.

Chicken and egg problem, you get no support, so prove you're worth supporting, when you can't get support to be able to prove you're worth supporting. Nice.

But you know what? Let's just play the game for a minute anyway, just for fun. Let's just use some easily available numbers. Steam estimates roughly one percent of players are on Linux currently. Cool, we'll ignore the hardware that's on back order for a few financial quarters, still, that comes with Linux. It's probably not relevant anyway. A quick google estimates XIV as having 35.8 million players as of late December 2021. (The site it sourced its data from says the current subscriber count is currently higher, but I'm trying to math this out in your favor, so I'm sticking with the lower number.) So, one percent of that would still be roughly 358 thousand players. Just to give you the benefit of the doubt, that there's as minimal a financial interest as possible here, let's assume every Linux player is using the cheapest subscriptions, $12.99, though for simplicity's sake, I'm just going to do the math with ~13 / month. The number comes out to $4,654,000 per month from theoretical Linux players. Ahh, chump change, I guess. Not worth looking at.

But hey, let's go a step further. Let's just say that it's not even one percent of subscribers playing on Linux. Let's say it's half that. Half a percent of players, playing Linux. We can just cut that four million down to $2,327,000, still, per month.

We're talking over two million dollars a month over a launcher problem. I think they could afford to take a month of our theoretical existence's money, even half of our theoretical existence's money, and fix what is strictly a launcher-only problem.