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john_hatcher: It‘s funny how things work (not only for cdpr). If they are promoting a new game, they are all over the place, but answers to somewhat critical questions ... there is no one to be seen.
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kohlrak: Politicians and romantic relationship partners seem to be like that, too. The idea is to let the prospective buyer/voter/investor/boyfriend/girlfriend invent their own dreams about something and then only deliver on precisely what they say, but never on the imagination that they promote. If you call them out later, they say "I didn't actually promise that," but they totally lead you on the whole way. Honestly, it's our fault for falling for it, but it's really important to point out and catch.
I absolutely agree with you. That is why, at least with games, I only buy them when they deliver what I want and never preorder a game because of them bonus or things like that. If tthey want my monney, they first have to deliver.
With politics it‘s different, but I don‘t forget so easy like some others and never vote for some party that lied to me.
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kohlrak: Politicians and romantic relationship partners seem to be like that, too. The idea is to let the prospective buyer/voter/investor/boyfriend/girlfriend invent their own dreams about something and then only deliver on precisely what they say, but never on the imagination that they promote. If you call them out later, they say "I didn't actually promise that," but they totally lead you on the whole way. Honestly, it's our fault for falling for it, but it's really important to point out and catch.
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john_hatcher: I absolutely agree with you. That is why, at least with games, I only buy them when they deliver what I want and never preorder a game because of them bonus or things like that. If tthey want my monney, they first have to deliver.
With politics it‘s different, but I don‘t forget so easy like some others and never vote for some party that lied to me.
You must not vote anymore, then.
GO LINUX. Forget MicroSoft.
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Gede: The bottom line is that they believe that the money they would make with Linux (and Mac) sales will not make it worth the investment on that title.
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shmerl: Nothing stops them from crowdfunding such effort, if money is the issue. I assume it's not about the money really.
This really ignores several core issues

Profitability and opportunity cost

Its all about money. Games crowdfund because game development costs are front loaded. You have high up front costs. You are basically time-shifting revenue from the future to today. But games still have to MAKE MONEY. They're not a charity and CDPR as a publicly traded company is interested in profit

So crowdfunding doesn't solve the issue of profitability. You still are going to put X money in, and are getting Y money out. crowdfunding just defers a percentage of Y to the present. But the bucket of sales is still Y overall, and profitability is viewed from that perspective. If the linux port is unprofitable, then its not worth doing.

Then there is Opportunity Cost. A dev studio has finite resources. So resource allocation is zero-sum. Resources put into A do not get put into B. So not only is there an actual dollar cost of X for putting a bunch of engineers on this Linux project for 1 year. But there's the opportunity cost of "if I put X engineers on Witcher 3 Linux, that's X engineers that are NOT working on Cyperbunk 2077". That opportunity cost could be "we cannot implement feature A without those engineers" or "we must delay teh game because we don't have enough engineers".

So now you say "well just outsource the porting" ok so now you've increased the cost by A LOT so your profitably goes down. Also outsourcing doesn't mean 'you don't need to manage the project'. In fact to do so requires a lot of dedicated resources, time, energy from your core team. porting is not a 'fire and forget' thing. Thus again you are sucking away resources from other projects to the port. Is that worth it.

In this situation your profitability question is not just "Are we making money X" but also "is making X money even worth it compared to the lost resources to other more profitable projects". As a core example I'd like to point out Stardock's Elemental Game vs Impulse Store dilemma. Elemental was a disaster mostly because of Impulse. Impulse store was highly profitable and thus the company re-allocated limited resources to the thing that was making money. The question of "where do I put engineer X" is easy when you see Impulse is making boat lods of money but not Elemental so the opportunity costs of engeineer x is better spent on impulse than Elemental.

Thus the question is not just "we wil make $100k on Witcher 3 Linux" is also "was that worth it because we probably could have made $1 million on Cyperbunk 2077 with those engineers". Thus even making money can be considered a LOSS with regards to resource utilization.
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satoru: So crowdfunding doesn't solve the issue of profitability.
Profitability isn't a problem, Linux releases are profitable that was already mentioned above. The problem is either uncertainty of sufficient demand, or lack of current funds. Crowdfunding helps with both.

This excuse of "should we use money for other projects" is irrelevant, since they in the past already promised TW3 release for Linux. Besides, according to CDPR themselves they wanted to release for Linux even in the time when Linux gaming market was smaller than today. So all these pesudo financial reasons are really missing the point here. Don't apply some generic exec logic to this particular case.
Post edited August 06, 2018 by shmerl
Honestly, with game support for Linux getting better and better, and all the one-person studios who mysteriously have the knowledge to make natively supported Linux games that the giant AAA studios can't (lol), I'd like to offer a different argument.

First entry (or getting it early). We sort of see this in the renewable energy sector. Companies, even giant polluting ones, are getting into this sector because it is the future. CDPR, being coupled with GOG, ought to get their bearings in order and get on the Linux bandwagon early and reap the rewards once it takes off even more.

Then you have virtually every phone and server under the sun running on Linux. It will still take some time due to the near-monopoly Microsoft has had and still has, but at some point the PC market will shift towards Linux too. It would be sensible to be well-positioned when that happens. As we have seen in other sectors, once things get into motion, changes can occur quickly.
Using DirectX the game is difficult to carry under Linux so expensive
Using DirectX they get money.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/7sx5ng/thoughts_on_vulkan_and_linux_support/
I think it calculates expenses and gain, Witcher 3 pays more on Nintendo Switch than on Linux.
But let’s not give up, Witcher 3 may come out one day, but of poor quality, DirectX obliges.

Pangaea666 I’m coming with you!
To live well one should not expect anything from CDPR, they chose the dark side of the video game!
Of course all versions of Linux games are profitable! But for them 200.000€ is nothing!
12400 (49,99-70% = 15) =186000 € (12400 x 50 = 620000€) CDPR does not need to make the sleeve,

making Cyberpunk 2077 did not cost much,
In 2016, the CDPR is one of 38 national studios to which the Polish government grants $27.3 million.
source (Wikipedia - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - French)
Cyberpunk 2077 made with Vulkan, so yes The Witcher 3 will have a chance.
But CDPR chose DirectX, so it’s only the $ that drives CDPR, NOT the love of making a good game.
Doing can win a lot! It’s their choice.
For silence... how do we explain this to our community? ( ̄▽ ̄)
With the new release of Witcher 3 coming up in the near future, CDPR once again have a fantastic opportunity to release the game with native Linux support. Driver support is better, technical solutions are better, and more gamers are on Linux. Doing this, could help get some goodwill back after the Cyberpunk fiasco. Will they do it?

(Haha, will they fuck. But a man can hope. Right?)
To be fair, the only CD Projekt Red game I would love to see a real native Linux build for is the first The Witcher.
I guess I have more chances to see that coming from xoreos rather than from CD Projekt Red themselves…
Post edited August 14, 2021 by vv221
low rated
Ive heard proton is better than native linux so pointless to make linux ports from now on
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Pangaea666: With the new release of Witcher 3 coming up in the near future, CDPR once again have a fantastic opportunity to release the game with native Linux support. Driver support is better, technical solutions are better, and more gamers are on Linux. Doing this, could help get some goodwill back after the Cyberpunk fiasco. Will they do it?
+1. I would very much like to see W1 and W3 released with native Linux support.

(btw, what is this new release of Witcher 3? I haven't seen/heard anything about it)
Since they cannot even bring the achievements for The Witcher 2 to GOG I have no hope.
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Time4Tea: (btw, what is this new release of Witcher 3? I haven't seen/heard anything about it)
Not much information yet, but most likely it will mostly be about graphical upgrades, maybe 4K support and stuff like that. Plus some stupid items that are from the Netflix show. A few armour pieces or something I guess. The whole thing is essentially about CDPR giving PR for the Netflix show. I suppose they are desperate for funds after the CP77 fiasco.

But who knows. Maybe they will do a more thorough overhaul, maybe even fix some bugs that were present in vanilla for ages (but that mods sorted). Whatever happens, it will be free for people who already own the game, so that is nice.
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Orkhepaj: Ive heard proton is better than native linux so pointless to make linux ports from now on
You've heard wrong. Proton/Wine work and are indeed sometimes better, but that's becasue some native releases were done badly. Those which are done properly have better performance than any translating solution.

With Steam Deck especially CDPR should have more incentive now to make native Linux releases.
Post edited August 15, 2021 by shmerl