Ask HN: Can we find out why a specific ad appears in our Facebook feed? - <AUTHOR> Last week I went to a restaurant with some friends and while checking the menu we saw that there was a cocktail with Campari (alcoholic liqueur) - this triggered a 30 sec conversation about the drink. Following day I open my FB feed and something weird happened - there was a Campari ad just in front of me! In the last months of my online life I didn't search for Campari, cocktails, beverages or anything related so I think it would be great if there was a way of finding why that ad end up there! <comment><USER2> "Facebook does not use your phone's microphone for ads or News Feed stories."

[http://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your- pho...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your-phones- microphone-for-ads-or-news-feed-stories/)

The phenomenon you're observing is due to various interesting human psychological quirks, such as priming effects.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_\(psychology\))

<comment><USER3> Frequency illusion or Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon is probably a better term to search for: [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion)

But I don't think it's chance here. I think the facebook app has location access and if so they are definitely using it (e.g., the place might be popular for campari, your mutual friend appearing at the same location might've searched/wrote about it, etc).

For example google is pretty good with pinpointing exactly which restaurant I went to: [https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)

<comment><USER4> Chance is a funny thing.

I was once reading _Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72_ by Hunter S. Thompson (which I can heartily recommend) - not an especially obscure book, but certainly not his most famous. I was a student, and I was lying on my bed reading this book, whilst listening to some music. This was about 2000, and I guess I was a relatively early adopter of online streaming music: I'd selected some random electro music station to listen to. I'm reading my book and listening to some moderately uninteresting electro when a sample in the music piques my interest - I recognise the voice! It's Hunter S. Thompson. I think, "That's a funny coincidence, given what I'm reading..." Then I listen a bit harder and I realise he's talking about Nixon (or McGovern, I forget). I realise he's reading from the very book I'm reading - and yet, it seems even more familiar than that, like I've just read these very words... I glance down at my book and realise he is, in fact, reading the start of the very paragraph I'd just, seconds ago, finished.

I wasn't on drugs and I haven't embellished this story over the years, it really did happen just like this. Just a lot of chance, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can relate and you won't believe it. Last Sunday I was at a cocktail bar and while checking the menu with a friend I had the exact same short conversation about Campari, prompted by wanting to know what's in a Negroni.

There's a phenomenon that explains this kind of illusion as a psychological effect, called the Baader-Meinhof complex. Coincidentally later that night we mentioned it too. It's basically a trick our brains play on us partly explained by the psychological processing of information, selective attention and confirmation bias.

Or maybe Facebook is spying on me, on you, and Hacker News too.

<comment> J-dawg To what extent does Facebook allow its advertising clients to target users based on location? Down to the level of individual buildings (e.g. a bar)?

Is it possible that Campari could be running a campaign targeting people who recently visited bars that serve Campari? Or even simply people who recently visited a bar?

<comment><USER6> They can target based on "Behaviours", so, maybe? [https://www.facebook.com/business/a/online-sales/ad- targetin...](https://www.facebook.com/business/a/online-sales/ad-targeting- details#Behaviors)

EDIT: The "Behaviour" targets can even drill down to specific types of alcohol beverages (beer, wine, other). Not sure that means specifically having visited a bar.

<comment><USER7> if any of your friends liked the wine or visited a site and the vendor had a look-a-like audience selected.

or maybe it uses voice recognition to target users "interests"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had similar experiences. One in particular: I had a private, in-person conversation with a work colleague about a very niche company that until that point I'd never heard of. He does not use Facebook. Advertising profiles may have been connected from other services, but no way to connect directly due to any proximity / micro-location service.

After that conversation and without me searching for anything further relating to that subject I began being targeted with ads for the same company.

When that popped up I deleted Facebook from all personal devices. It may have been co-incidental, but there have been to many other similar situations that have made me question the validity of their official statements.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's a theory: after your conversation with your friends, one of your friends checked out the Campari product on the web, and from there FB deduced that you might also be interested.

<comment><USER9> And here's another theory: you _were already targeted_ by the Campari ad before, but you were not consciously aware of it. This triggered the conversation with your friends.

<comment><USER10> Facebook knew he was interested in Campari, so they put Campari on menu in his local restaurant? That's smart!

<comment><USER11> That's amusing, but at the same time it _could_ make an excellent business idea - restaurants could tailor their menu based on the preferences of people who're booked to eat there. If you knew that a group of people who all really like sea bass are arriving at 6pm a restaurant could put a high-profit sea bass special on the menu knowing that those people are likely to order it. The customers are happier because they get their preferred dishes and the restaurant is happy because it makes them more money.

<comment><USER12> They could also change the pricing. Because they know you'll be more interested to try an expensive steak ($3 more than your neighbor pays).

You'll also find that same steak tastes better now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder the same too; I get a lot of weird stuff, that I talked about, but have NOT put down in text messages, emails, etc. I took some screenshots, to prove it and share with friends later. I end up doing some research and apparently is not related from voice/keywords. Officially addressed in the following link: [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your- pho...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your-phones- microphone-for-ads-or-news-feed-stories/)

Other references: [http://marketingland.com/no-what-facebook-hears-on-your- phon...](http://marketingland.com/no-what-facebook-hears-on-your-phone-isnt- triggering-ads-146057) [http://www.computerworld.com/article/3079412/security/facebo...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/3079412/security/facebook- advertising-microphone-itbwcw.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised no one mentioned 3rd party audience lists. It's more than likely in this case you used your credit card at the restaurant and this data was passed to a data service like DLX or Neustar, which Campari will pay a fee to get audience lists such as: Datalogix » DLX CPG » Alcohol Beverage Buyers » Spirits or AdAdvisor Audiences powered by Neustar » AdAdvisor Consumer Audiences » Alcohol (Restricted to Best Practices) » Consumption Location » Liquor-Where Consumed-Restaurant

As to why Campari specifically, that could just be a coincidence. Have you seen other alcohol ads lately?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't pay the bill but we arranged the lunch via FB MSN so easy to correlate I guess.

Haven't seen any alcohol related ads lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Related to privacy, I just found out that Google has detailed data about everywhere I go, because it's tracked by default by Android phones. Check yours here if you haven't (and maybe turn it off): [https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)

<comment><USER16> This is an interesting feature that Google doesn't seem to really talk about — it will also list where you took photos, tell you which businesses you've been to, and even go as far to guess your mode of transportation (in the city it'll go as far as guessing bus/train/car/bike with some accuracy).

And there's that typical double-edged sword: there are a lot of situations where I'd find this information really useful... but in order to gain that usefulness Google knows all that information too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Press "x" on the ad. There's an option to see how you're being targeted.

<comment><USER12> It's a dropdown arrow for me, but yes this gives a pretty good example of why you were targeted if you select the link asking "Why am I seeing this ad?" (Or something like that phrase)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> voice is not realistic in any scenario. Amazon echo or google doesn't understand everything, wide range microphone recording can't go unnoticed, the apps don't have access to it.

You are just one of Billion Facebook users, those numbers are high enough to have coincidences.

<comment><USER19> Many apps do have access to microphone, don't they?

Voice recognition may not be good enough to transcribe the whole convo, but it would be sufficient to pick up repeated instances of "campari."

op: Is it possible something was said to accidentally trigger a search, like "Oh, que goo gel, blah-blah campari?" or "Way searing..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe you didn't search for Campari, but perhaps a significant number of people going to this restaurant also notice this cocktail (maybe it's presented more prominently?) and google it. Maybe this topic also comes up more frequently within group of friends of a certain age, etc. So for FB, This restaurant + group of friends = show a Campari ad.

</comment><comment><USER21> I meet a girl. She had a smartphone in which she had the Facebook app installed. I had a iPod which had a Facebook app installed too. But there was no wifi in the place we met. And my location services are always off in my device. I come home, and Facebook shows her as "People you may know." I had 32 mutual friends with her. So I let it go thinking it might be a coincidence.

Few days later, I meet a guy. Don't know if he had a smartphone or not. But I had my iPod. And there was no wifi. Location services are off. I come home. I see that guy as "People you may know." This time I had 2 mutual friends with him. Coincidence?

<comment><USER22> >Coincidence?

No, but not the conspiracy theory you are imagining. It's my understanding that if Person A searches for Person B they are likely to show on Person B's list of people you may know.

Also just to clarify, how many times have you looked at the people you may now list and not seen someone you recently met?

<comment><USER21> That makes sense!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not directly related, but tangential anecdote:

I was visiting another state and while there I decided to check out a local, independent book seller. While browsing I found a very interesting and niche book a had never heard of about the linguistic and archaeological history of the proto-Indo-European language and the people who spoke it. I purchased it with cash. Perhaps a week later, the book was suggested to me by Amazon. Of course I had already bought it, but I took it as an example of how accurate their recommendation algorithm could be.

For anyone interested, the book was The Horse, The Wheel and Language.

<comment><USER7> sure it wasn't The Catcher in the Rye?

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118883/synopsis](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118883/synopsis)

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you want to know what Facebook thinks about you, visit this page while logged in [https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences](https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences). FB profiled you using tons of internal data (your page like, activities, etc) and external data (bought from Epsilon, Acxiom, etc). There is a good chance Facebook already know about your habit and your choice of drinks even before you visit the restaurant.

</comment><comment><USER25> I suspect it is Campari season and they are just pushing their ads around this time of the year. I also have been "spammed" with Campari ads on YouTube for no apparent reason. I don't like it. Never searched for it. But live in a country where campari-orange is a staple night-out drink.

(Edit) to complete my 'theory': Campari has been advertising a lot, including pushing its use in bars/restaurants and pushing ads online, increasing likelyhood of that coincidence to happen.

<comment><USER26> Seconded, you are just selecting for your own bias. Facebook knew you were at a bar. Campari happened to be pushing ads. You noticed the ad and probably disregarded other bar-related ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Perhaps you're not the only ones at this restaurant to notice and discuss this same cocktail, such that Facebook has learned of a "Campari thing" from others before you?

I assume FB would have learned several friends have joined together in the same location.

</comment><comment><USER28> A case, or you had an app in background ... that recognize the voice and send data ... well it could be more near to reality than you maybe can imagine ... i'm impressed by the way, on how users install apps of any kind on their smartphone ... they really ignore how many data are transferred in background ... one day, or also right now, also the voice ... same users, often may are complaining that his phone credit get critical, and they do not know why! :)

</comment><comment><USER29> I went on Facebook yesterday and there was an ad from a retailer I used once ages ago that said, "We noticed you haven't shopped with us for a while, blah blah, here's a special offer". I use uBlock and have Pi-hole blocking stuff like this at the DNS level, so how have they been able to connect my accounts in such a way the retailer can target me? They even use different email addresses.

<comment><USER30> Credit card purchase data? FB ads offer a way to target based on info from Experian, et al.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Something similar happened with me. I don't have Facebook's app but I use Messenger (location - allowed), So I'm guessing this is location based. You went inside a restaurant, spent time there. And Campari turned out to be a hot selling thing for restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER32> I remember a post on here last year about Facebook suggesting patients of a psychologist as friends. It did this by location. Perhaps you or one of your friends had a facebook app on their phone with the location information turned on?

</comment><comment><USER33> Every Facebook ad has a dropdown in the top right corner, and one of the options is "Why am I seeing this ad?". It will show you details on that ad's targeting and why you are seeing it.

</comment><comment><USER28> A case, or you had an app in background ... that recognize the voice and send data ... well it could be more near to reality than you maybe can imagine ... this can be SO real, but rue or not, i'm impressed by the way, on how users install apps of any kind on their smartphone ... they really ignore how many data are transferred in background ... one day, or also right now, also the voice ... same users, often may are complaining that his phone credit get critical, and they do not know why!

<comment><USER34> Are you okay?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Its a well known fact Facebook stays open on your phone even after you close it. Gps and your bar seem to have told Facebook to serve you an ad. Crazy that Facebook can do this, I can only imagine what the govt agencies do with this data.

</comment><comment><USER36> People see ads on the Internet? Huh.</comment>


A game suitable to training a neural network? - <AUTHOR> Hello, I'm currently studying machine learning and neural networks. While studying theory is indispensable, I want to immediately apply it to a fun project. I have intermediate programming skills (just no experience with NNs), so I want to write a simple game and create a neural network-controlled bot to play it. While I understand that a NN may not be the best approach to creating a game playing actor, I am still willing to do it.
I am trying to come up with a game simple enough to be treated as a set of numeric inputs for the NN. I also want to write it from scratch to have complete control. Right now I think that I should start with a Pong game, since this game can be interpreted simply as positions of paddles and a position/direction of a ball. Then I should probably move on to something like Space Invaders or Pac-Man or Battle City (or maybe even Black Jack?).
What would you suggest? <comment><USER2> The international functional programming contest ([http://www.icfpconference.org/contest.html](http://www.icfpconference.org/contest.html)) often has games that may be amenable to neural network usage.

For example, [http://smlnj.org/icfp08-contest/task.html](http://smlnj.org/icfp08-contest/task.html) or [https://web.archive.org/web/20050405081045/http://www.dtek.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20050405081045/http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/icfpcontest/Rotmos/problem.pdf)</comment>


Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760 <comment><USER2> Linux is the perpetual scapegoat.

They selected a middleware, Coherent UI, that didn't work properly on anything but Windows. They also didn't make proper use of the Steam runtime, a mistake that continues to cause issues. Most games don't make these mistakes, so this isn't really representative of the larger state of Linux gaming.

It's worth pointing out that the devs did make a legitimately good attempt at making Linux/Mac support first class, by making a purely OpenGL engine for the game. But it seems they weren't aware of some other best practices.

<comment><USER3> Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. The fact that "technically" it's not Linux's fault doesn't really matter, unless you're more interested in the moral concept of guilt rather that the practicalities of making a Linux port of a game.

Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? So that they'd get kudo "clean code" points from people on HN? Most for-profit software cares very little about that, and for good reasons.

Gaming on Linux sucks because Linux is not popular for gaming. Linux is not popular for gaming because gaming on Linux sucks. That's the root of the issue.

<comment><USER4> > Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales?

Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countless tech related subreddits, twitter hacker- verse would take off. The "maker culture" would adopt it as its son or daughter.

Sounds like a tremendous opportunity.

We are not representative of the culture but we are hackers and developers and eventually one spark is all you need to start a fire. I have the perception that gamers are dying to get off of Windows, but I could be wrong, I certainly was when I was a gamer.

<comment><USER5> Literally nobody cares about Linux gaming. It's not even press-worthy because of SteamOS. Anyone who games on Linux does it for the _adventure_ of the process, not because it's convenient.

If you ported your game to the Atari ST or the Amiga you'd get more press and probably more sales.

<comment><USER6> There's nothing adventurous about using your preferred operating system and enjoying being able to have a working game experience. I've spent significant time in all 3 major OS options over the last few decades, and came to the conclusion that Linux is the one I prefer. A few years ago, I resigned myself to either rebooting to Windows or running Windows in a VM when I wanted to do any modern gaming. The significant advancements over the last year in terms of video driver functionality (both on Nvidia and AMD sides), binary compatibility (WINE/Proton), and more developers releasing native games have been a huge boon and very welcomed. I use Linux full time because it's what I enjoy and feel comfortable with as a primary OS, and I absolutely care about the gaming landscape improving. I'm only one person, but many others won't speak up.

<comment><USER5> It's like Mac gaming. It sucks. Unless it's a for-Mac native title, which is exceedingly rare these days, it's going to be trash because the publisher invariably uses some crappy DirectX to OpenGL wrapper that cripples performance and crashes constantly.

Developer kits like Unreal and Unity have helped a lot here, but those are far from flawless. Even those struggle with Linux because there's just way too many distributions and way too few standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I work for a small company that produces a DAW and VST plugins. Supporting Linux is a huge amount of work compared to Windows and Mac.

The main issue is that 'Linux' is not a thing you can support. You have to pick the distros you want to support, and then once you've picked a distro, what versions you want to support.

And you need to use the C++ version that ships with that distro, so if you want to support old versions then the entire project is held back from using latest C++.

And distos aren't backwards compatible. ie when libcurl4 is released, they remove libcurl3. So you can't have one binary for Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04.

So it means for every product, have a build for every distro / version combination you want to support.

So now the solution is AppImages where you bundle up your app with all dependencies like a container. Haven't investigated this yet, not sure it will work for plugins.

<comment><USER8> > And distos aren't backwards compatible. ie when libcurl4 is released, they > remove libcurl3. So you can't have one binary for Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04.

If you don't want to depend on the libcurl provided by the OS, ship your own.

If you don't want to depend on the glibc provided by the OS, ship your own, with your own dynamic linker.

readelf -n <your binary> will tell you the oldest kernel that will run your stuff. Put that in the requirements document. Write a bash script that sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH correctly and make sure that's the main entry point to your application during deployment.

You're set.

<comment><USER9> Your suggestion to ship glibc caused coffee to end up over my keyboard :) This is the road to hell, but you'd only know that if you had the slightest clue of the ABI interactions involved in swapping out a core library like that - starting with the reality that parts of the (probably binary-only) graphics stack must be linked and loaded in-process, and they naturally depend on at a minimum glibc. Your suggestion is to effectively ship the game in the form of its own Linux distro, which is of course complete nonsense.

Snap and Flatpack will hopefully help with the dependency aging problem, but they're brand new, and they both still suck one way or another.

To give you an idea of what swapping out glibc would involve, here is the list of shared libraries loaded by 'glxgears' on my machine, arguably the simplest possible OpenGL program:

        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbsd.so.0.9.1
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1.6.8
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnsl-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_compat-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_files-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnss_nis-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt-2.28.so
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1.2.11
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_dri.so
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm_intel.so.1.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm_nouveau.so.2.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm_radeon.so.1.0.1
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2.4.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglapi.so.0.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGLdispatch.so.0.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so.1.7.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGLX_mesa.so.0.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGLX.so.0.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpciaccess.so.0.11.1
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6.0.25
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6.3.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11-xcb.so.1.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-dri2.so.0.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-dri3.so.0.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-glx.so.0.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-present.so.0.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1.1.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-sync.so.1.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdamage.so.1.1.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdmcp.so.6.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6.4.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXfixes.so.3.1.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxshmfence.so.1.0.0
        /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXxf86vm.so.1.0.0

<comment><USER8> Ignoring your personal attacks, you and I are on the same page.

I do agree that shipping your glibc is "the road to hell" and shipping with the glibc could be qualified as "shipping in the form of its own Linux distro", as amusing as that sounds :) But that's the price of freedom you pay if you want to draw your platform boundary at the kernel -- you need to ship the whole userland! Where's the surprise in that? That means you need to understand the interactions between different version of /usr/lib64/opengl/nvidia/lib/libGLX_nvidia.so.0 (that you need to ship) and nvidia.ko (that is nvidia's binary driver loaded by the kernel, that you do NOT ship)

That's what people mean when they say they "are targeting Linux", even when they don't really understand the kind of work that that statement entails :)

Linux is an OS kernel. I'd wager it's the most popular one by far, in terms of the number of platforms that uses it.

Saying that "Linux is fragmented" is the wrong way to look at the problem. One should rather realize that Linux is just and OS kernel that is used by countless platforms. It's up to the developer to draw platform boundaries and focus engineering effort on the chosen ones.

If you need to support GNU/Linux with glibc-2.25, then you need to set up your testing bench to accommodate that. If you need to have native look and feeling in ubuntu, kubuntu and lubuntu, you already have 3 platforms with at least 2 LTS versions that you need to test with.

Each platform has its own quirks. Linux distros are the ones with the least amount of quirks, but in exchange we get many many platforms, because it's so easy to create them.

I guess that's life :)

<comment><USER10> Why would you want to take on that massive burden for such a tiny percentage of sales - most of which you'd have gotten anyway?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I love Linux, I think this is a totally fair "state of the union". At the end of the day, gaming or kickstarters or similar... are a business. You need to figure out your ROI (Return On Investment). It doesn't many any logical sense to spend a huge amount of time on a platform that nets you tiny amounts of sales (and gains you a huge amount of support costs).

This is why gaming on the Mac is only now starting to be a real thing. Not a decade or so ago, there were still relatively small numbers of people using a Mac. It cost a lot to develop for a new platform and didn't make much money. Now it makes more sense.

Of course Linux fragmentation will probably hold it back for significantly longer.

<comment><USER12> Is it really fragmented? You support Ubuntu (in either its flatpak runtime or the Steam runtime) and you let everyone else figure it out on their own. Distros like Arch have been very good about providing the Steam Native Runtime and Ubuntu flatpak runtime in its own package system for just that reason.

The support burden for developers is proportional to the operating systems you officially say you support. If you support "Linux" you are supporting thousands of completely dissimilar execution environments. If you support Ubuntu, or Steam, or a Flatpak target you are only supporting that one operating system.

And thats _fine_. Thats all Linux users really want anyway. If it breaks on your distro its your responsibility to fix it so long as it works on its officially supported target OS.

<comment><USER13> > You support Ubuntu (in either its flatpak runtime or the Steam runtime) and > you let everyone else figure it out on their own.

And isn't that already how it is? Pretty sure Steam only supports Ubuntu LTS, steam on every other OS else is an unsupported hack.

<comment><USER14> I think what is what zanny is saying. The fragmentation argument is fud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is just an out-of-context tweet (well, the context is there - it's a reply to another tweet, which is out of context)... so perhaps it was just auto-crash reports, but I wonder if you get more tickets from Linux users, because Linux users are more likely to file tickets?

When something crashes on my partner's computer she yells at it and restarts it. When something crashes on my computer I spend an hour trying to figure out WHY. If I can't figure it out, I log a ticket thinking I'm being a good citizen!

<comment><USER16> They still represent a vastly disproportionate amount of work for how much extra money they get you.

They get you 0.1% extra sales, but they cost you 25% (= 20/80*100) extra support work. And this is nevermind the extra time spent during development.

Your point would hold if the issues reported by Linux users would also fix issues on Windows. Some issues would occur on both systems, but I bet the vast majority is weird Linux and setup specific bugs.

<comment><USER17> _> I bet the vast majority_

This is the crux of your assertion and requires substantiation.

On the other hands, all these Linux user might be doing you "a favour" taking the time to log these tickets that less conscientious users on other systems would.

Of course that does depend on the classification of the tickets but coming from that community I wouldn't expect them to be trivial issues ...

<comment><USER18> It's even more of a favor if the bugs aren't just linux-only. But if they're in gfx drivers like the tweet implies and auto-reported, the only thing you'd really care about is "newest drivers?" Same as the parade of crashes in Windows for the same reason, you want to just tell people to update.

<comment><USER19> Which is why chromium pulled support for certain drivers on linux

<comment><USER20> They didn't pull the support at all.

They've _added_ another driver to a long list of blocklisted drivers that cause issues with the hardware acceleration. Nothing about that list is Linux- specific, as it includes a bunch of macOS and Windows drivers as well: [https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/gpu/config/...](https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/gpu/config/software_rendering_list_json.cc)

Firefox does that too: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drive...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers)

Between a crashy browser thanks to a crappy driver and a stable browser without hardware acceleration, browsers will always just take the latter route. Don't like it? Run it with a flag and expect it to be a little less stable. That's it. You absolutely can't blame neither the browser nor the platform for that, only the vendor of the driver (or in this specific case NVidia, since it's actively hostile to the vendor).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080544133238800384](https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080544133238800384)

Follow-up tweet by the same author:

> As a follow up to this, I've been told by those actually involved with Linux > stuff that this wasn't true. I probably just stopped paying attention to > Linux issues at a time when everything was broken.

Just so the discussion does not overly focus on the (apparently wrong?) numbers.

<comment><USER22> This is a follow up to another tweet though

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a pretty well-known effect in gamedev. The specific numbers change, but Linux sales are only a small percentage of total, while generating much more development and support work.

At least dev work can be drastically simplified with middleware like Unity, which is how small studios can even consider Linux. But support difficulties are real. Players have so many possible distros, configurations, and drivers - actually supporting all of them would require a level of Linux expertise that gamedevs simply don't have (being typically Windows or OSX based themselves). Limiting yourself to something like Ubuntu LTS helps a bit, but there are still plenty of gotchas.

So it becomes a simple matter of numbers: given relatively small amount of extra sales, is it worth the extra work, and spending the time to learn Linux development and administration in sufficient depth? Sadly usually it is not.

<comment><USER24> But for a game that is built on Unity, wouldn't these support issues be Unity's responsibility? Assuming the issues are triggered by their glue layer.

What's the arrangement there, does anyone know?

<comment><USER25> Unity does not do your customer service for you. Also, bug fixes might only go into a future release of Unity (months out) and updating to the new release to get the bug fixes might break your game. Unity games that spend a few years in development often ship on a very old version of Unity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Gaming is the #1 reason I haven't fully switched to Linux on the desktop at home (at work I exclusively run Linux).

A lot of my Steam games work flawlessly with Linux but others will just silently fail to launch and it takes hours to properly diagnose and fix, which isn't what I'm after when I get some time to play games.

<comment><USER27> Your comment is the perfect example of how there's an "invisible" demand demand for gaming on Linux.

Nobody can see it, because those who want it will mostly make do with Windows.

<comment><USER28> Invisible demand is undistinguishable from no demand, as far as B2C is concerned.

<comment><USER29> I agree that they can't distinguish it but there was no visible demand for an iPhone before the iPhone.

<comment><USER30> Only if we forget about the work done by Symbian, Psion, Microsoft, Compaq, Dell in portable Touch devices.

<comment><USER29> How did the demand work out for Symbian, Psion, and Microsoft phones?

<comment><USER30> Pretty well in Europe and Asia, until a certain company in Mountain View decided to screw Sun and offer a mobile OS for free to OEMs., in exchange for user data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The situation seems to be similar for Mac: [https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080327518983315457](https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080327518983315457)

> Yeah, I didn't want to touch on Mac support in the original post, but Mac > support also cost way more than it made in sales.

<comment><USER32> Innumerate person here, does that mean that supporting Mac is a net loss for a business?

<comment><USER33> It's impossible to say for sure, without knowing people's behavior and motivations.

In the past, I've certainly been more likely to buy software if I see it's cross-platform, even if I know I'll never use it on those other platforms. Or it might be a corporate requirement. There are many possible reasons.

For example, if a restaurant serves only steak, is it a net loss for them to put a pasta option on the menu, if they know they'll never sell enough to make up the cost of ingredients and preparation? Maybe not -- it could mean a party of 10 (with 1 vegetarian) is willing to eat there, when they otherwise wouldn't have been.

<comment><USER27> A "loss leader"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Please mark it with (2014):

[https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080380532108619776](https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080380532108619776)

> The world of 2014 Linux graphics drivers was not a friendly place. We > absolutely encountered issues where some driver revisions only worked on > certain distros, and AFAIK we did not use anything specific to a Linux > distro.

</comment><comment><USER35> "I didn't want to touch on Mac support in the original post, but Mac support also cost way more than it made in sales."

</comment><comment><USER36> > Issues specific to Linux were almost entirely graphics driver related, and > unique to the platform.

Just want to point this out before this discussion starts blaming the devs for 'not writing with portability in mind' or other such nonsense like the twitter thread did.

</comment><comment><USER37> Part of the problem in 2019 is that the vendor with the best drivers on Windows is the vendor with the worst drivers on Linux. (aka Nvidia).

<comment><USER38> Care to elaborate?

Nvidia used to be the only discrete GPU manufacturer that had Linux support worth mentioning. I know that AMD/ATi has made a _lot_ of progress, but is Nvidia really the worst at this point?

<comment><USER39> I just went through the process of getting NVIDIA drivers working on my brother's dual-boot Ubuntu. Here's the issues we hit:

1\. You don't don't get drivers out of the box. The NVIDIA driver is non-free, so Ubuntu's (and other Linux distros') hands are tied here: they're not permitted to distribute it. Getting it is relatively easy (check a box, install a package), but you need to know that you need it, and then figure out how to get it.

2\. (For laptops) You need to install optimus/primus/bumblebee, s.t. the system isn't using the integrated GPU. This is another package that you need to know you need, and install. Ubuntu here is particularly bad: it apparently installs the drivers in the wrong spot, so even with everything correctly installed, you have to find a config in /etc, edit it to what a couple of comment on a GitHub issue that you found after Googling the error indicate. (Other distros, in particular Arch, do not have this issue.)

3\. (For laptops) You need to configure the game in Steam to take advantage of primusrun. Steam does not do this automatically.

<comment><USER38> Last time I checked, both AMD and Nvidia expect you to download manufacturer drivers for Windows. I'm willing to jump through similar hoops for Linux. (Incidentally, when someone complains about how hard it is to install Linux, that person has usually never tried installing Windows without using the OEM disc from the manufacturer. Take that away, and Windows becomes a lot harder.)

Linux support for Optimus and friends is abysmal, I agree. When I say good things about Nvidia's Linux support, I am referring to their discrete desktop and workstation cards.

<comment><USER27> Recently I tried to install Windows on some HP Elitebook, a few weeks back.

It didn't have drivers for the graphics card, nor both network interfaces (and several other internal devices). How am I supposed to download the network drivers without a working NIC?? (same machine, like many others, have no troubles with Ubuntu, out-the-box)

It was only so my wife (honest) could play The Sims 4. Fortunately, thanks to the hard work of the WINE developers, it runs flawlessly on Linux (small amount of trickery required for Origin).

<comment><USER40> USB tethering long enough to download drivers has been a reliable way for me to get around this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't think the Linux situation is good per se, but I haven't heard anything this negative from the devs of other multi-platform Kickstarter games, like Obsidian and their Pillars of Eternity games.

(Not that they were terribly positive about it.)

To paraphrase the Obsidian take:

Supporting Linux for the first time was much much more work than they expected, but it was mostly coming to grips with everything, learning all the gotchas, and integrating that into their build system and software dev practices. Once they got over that hump it was much easier/not so bad and worthwhile enough to continue. But at the same time, if they'd known what they were getting into the first time they think they'd probably not have promised Linux support. So first game it had a huge marginal cost to support, but once the tooling and experience was there that marginal cost to support was much much lower.

Of course Pillars was a Unity game and probably not as demanding performance- wise as PA.

</comment><comment><USER42> > We started working on the game in 2012

> Issues specific to Linux were almost entirely graphics driver related, and > unique to the platform.

So this is essentially a rant about linux graphics drivers circa 2012?

<comment><USER43> Are they any better in 2019? Last I checked the anything beyond desktop compositing features is still a tyre fire of lying capabilities, broken functionality and wishful thinking. nVidia being by far the most stable while lacking integration with modern Linux APIs.

<comment><USER42> As a full-time linux user and occasional gamer, I have been using the AMD open drivers since circa 2010. The improvements have been _massive_ , both in stability and performance. Since the availability of steam, I have been doing all my gaming exclusively on linux, logging a probably unhealthy number of hours on various games (Dota, various iterations of Civilization, City Skylines, Stellaris, etc.).

Not to say the situation is perfect by any means, but the difference from 2012/2014 is night and day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'll take the step and say that most developers do the mistake to treat linux like any other proprietary system which they can target with stable interfaces and call it a day.

Free software changes more often, but when it does, it is not that big of a problem because you have both control over code and the code that your code interacts with, because all code is accessible.

If game developers opened up, and here I don't demand the optimum, which would be open sourcing their game[0], but just to get people involved that actually are active in both their code and the free software community, they could deal with the eco system much better and make their code actually work even on most of the many configurations that exist.

Of course, the usual argument is that game developers don't have to care about this on other systems, but in fact they did have to gather experience and training on the other platforms, and with free systems, once you are involved in it, you can deal with it much more efficiently than what it seems at the start. There is nothing magic about filing a bug against mesa.

I am one of the persons that contacted Uber about PA not working on my linux system. It was a recent Debian stable without modifications. They didn't offer meaningful support. I just asked them to install a debian stable with free mesa drivers on a computer with a recent AMD gpu, and try to build and run PA, and see why it doesn't work (there were obvious, easy to reproduce issues). That is not a lot of engineering time, and I bet solving those problem would have solved many problems in linux systems.

[0] This starts to become a cultural problem that seems to need laws to deal with. As a society, we shouldn't accept to never have our cultural heritage, which games are part of, in the public domain in a usable form (source code and documentation).

Edit 1: Writing closed programs for a free software community is difficult. I think that it should be difficult. That pain is a constant reminder that you're doing it wrong.

Edit 2: Steam counts unsuccessful launches of a game where the game is laughibly broken as playing time, so after some extenstive testing, you can't even refund a game on Steam because it says you've played more than 2 hours -.-

<comment><USER45> > "Free software changes more often, but when it does, it is not that big of a > problem because you have both control over code and the code that your code > interacts with, because all code is accessible."

This is akin to saying "When you're bleeding internally it's not that bad because all of your blood is still on the inside."

Games are a hit-driven industry. In most cases, it is strictly better to be working on a new game than to improve incredibly niche support for existing products. It would be one thing if fixing Linux bugs effectively future- proofed it from more bugs down the line, but that does not seem to be the case for most of the devs I know who've shipped on Linux.

<comment><USER44> > it is strictly better to be working on a new game than to improve incredibly > niche support for existing products

I'm not sure about this one. Compare Ferals and Ubers approach as two data points.

<comment><USER38> AAA games rely on a single purchase fee for revenue. Once sales taper off because the game isn't hot and new anymore, there's nothing to be gained from further investment. (Ever notice how games steadily decrease in price the first few years after release?)

Uber gets recurring revenue from their app, so expecting them to provide updates is like expecting a rental property owner to maintain the property-- entirely reasonable. Expecting a game developer to release patches years later is like a homeowner calling up the original real estate developer and demanding improvements. Not gonna happen.

(With the obvious caveat that homeowners are allowed to do the work themselves without the original developer's permission, but this about economics, not the absurdities of software licensing.)

<comment><USER44> If their one shot release isn't good enough, they deserve all the flak they are getting. I do have empathy with them getting frustrated, but the root cause is their approach.

<comment><USER38> The original post in the thread basically said that Linux support is easy if you just make a new release every time the libraries you depend on make a breaking change. (Or a GCC update breaks binary compatibility for _everything_.)

Even if an initial release of a Linux game is flawless, it tends to stop working with the next major distro release. (Unless it's statically linked to _everything_ , or uses something like Flatpack to distribute all its own dependencies. Both options have their own disadvantages.)

You also have to understand that, from a business perspective, game companies have much more in common with a Hollywood studio than a normal software company.

Movies don't get patches. Occasionally they get re-releases for new formats, but at that point consumers are expected to go pay for it again.

None of that applies to today's slot machine^H^H mobile game companies that rely on in-app purchases, or MMOs that rely on monthly subscriptions. The former would never survive in the Linux world anyway, and the latter are often quite successful on Linux, even if it's only in the form of official support for Wine/Cedega.

<comment><USER44> I understand the business aspect that the Hollywood model is possibly incompatible with games in free software systems (i.e. "Linux"). There are other business models to make games, though.

The problems are real and I think it is natural that they are there, because the movie model is suboptimal. I see similar pains with Android device manufacturers and updates to released devices. That pain is because they are doing it wrong (i.e. not mainlining and doing things binary). That pain is a feature, not a bug. It is a constant reminder that the approach is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The flip side of this is: I only game on Linux. If your game doesn't run well on Linux, chances are, I'll never play it.

There's already a back-log of games on my wish list that I'll get to as soon as i find the time.

<comment><USER12> I've been Linux only since 2012, which coincidentally was when RadeonSI came out and I "took the bet" on AMD drivers getting good with a 7870 purchase.

Its 100% no tux, no bux at this point. My last Windows title was Darksiders 2. Darksiders 3 came out in 2018, I was totally hype for it, but it was Windows / Xbox / PS4, so no deal there. Not like I have a shortage of dozens of other games to still get around to, my library is overflowing with titles I need to finish like Tomb Raider and Metro.

The worst part was that Nordic was apparently intent to rerelease the remasters of Darksiders on Linux but just dropped it at some point. If they did the math and said it wasn't worth the time fine by them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I was one of those who for every problem I had I would go out of my way to reliably reproduce the problem, then I would create a detailed description of it, with full system specs, terminal output (on both Windows and Linux) and all log files I could find.

Today, I still do that on Linux. But if it excludes Linux as a platform, it must be rock solid on windows, right? If it isn't, all it gets is a negative review going about the "crashes all the time", "glitchy" and "is unplayable". That saved me a lot of time.

Being an indie GameDev myself, I personally love well written tickets. But the passive aggressive responses I often receive from big devs makes me wonder if I'm actually the only one.

</comment><comment><USER48> Why don't we just support the Steam version of Debian and be done with it? Anyone running custom things should be ready to make their custom fixes...

Oh well, this guys sounds full of hubris. Just because something isn't immediately profitable doesn't mean the community as a whole doesn't benefit from you ironing out bugs.

<comment><USER49> > _Oh well, this guys sounds full of hubris._

From a later tweet by the same person: _Linux support was a passion for many on the project, and I was a proponent in favor of that support._

If the Linux community is going to bite the hand that feeds them, don't be surprised when other developers aren't anxious to support Linux in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This sounds like complaining about users being able to report bugs.

<comment><USER51> Do you run a business, say software? Or even a non-technical business like window washing or pet walking?

If .1% of your pet walking clients made 20% of the complaints, what would you do?

<comment><USER52> Wait what? What if only 0.5% of your costumers complain?

Or that 0.1% of the pet you walk are cats and 99.9 dogs, and you get complaints that you are bad at walking with cats and bad at walking with dogs. Is it good use of the metric to conclude that the cats are the problem?

<comment><USER53> The conclusion here is stated in the article as

"Issues specific to Linux were almost entirely graphics driver related, and unique to the platform."

So somewhat similar to having 0.5% of your pet walking customers complaining about issues you can't do much about, or have to do extra work to make them happy - their doghouse at home is too small, their car has an issue so they can't come and pick up the cat - basically a subset of your customers giving you a whole lot of extra work for very little gain.

<comment><USER52> Ye, well I agree it's probably not worth the fuzz support Mac or Linux for gaming.

But I mean, without numbers on how much extra dev time the linux port demanded it's hard to reason about what a 0.1% revenue increase means. 0.1% is still 0.1% and could have been more if it didn't crash at that rate and discouraged buyers.

Since they released for Mac the game must have been programmed with cross platform functionality in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Too bad Planetary Annihilation was a poorly optimized, buggy, under-delivered piece of shit on Windows too.

</comment><comment><USER55> I almost stopped playing games when I switched to Linux and I think it contributed to free time in my life for learning, side projects, sports, etc. I can always go back to OpenTTD if I crave gaming.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'd say us Linux folk are probably more likely to identify an issue and report it as well. It takes a special determination to run Linux, and I'd wager that Linux users have a keep eye for undefined behavior, feature requests, and wonky workarounds.

Once time I updated a Linux box and the Nvidia drivers downloaded and started to build like usual, but there were tons of errors. After the graphics drivers failed GCC updated and rebuilt itself. Switching kernels fixed the problem. It took me a week to submit a ticket to Nvidia and then another 3 days of working with support before we realized that the Nvidia drivers were built with an outdated GCC and then GCC was updated afterwards. So when we checked GCC version it was the proper version, but the drivers were already built with the old version.

If it was a Windows box I would have formatted it after 12 hours and called it a day.

</comment><comment><USER57> The conclusion I draw is that we should raise linux game prices by 200x

<comment><USER58> Except Linux users want all their software to be free.

<comment><USER59> I'm a Linux user and supporter of free software and I certainly want source code for my software. I'm quite happy to pay for it, though (and I _do_ believe it or not). Not a lot of games offer source code, though, which is a shame. I've bought several games simply because they offer source code and I want to encourage it. I've bought a few games that don't offer source code as well (the only such software on my computer).

It's a bit frustrating seeing facile comments like these both conflating the "free as in beer" vs "free as in freedom" as well as implying that those who care about "free as in freedom" are just a bunch of deadbeat freeloaders. You can imagine how insulting it must feel to be tarred with such a brush when it is completely untrue (at least in your specific case). If you want to make a statement about a population, at least back it up with some evidence. Do you have access to any studies showing that people using free operating systems are unwilling to pay for software?

<comment><USER60> I'd be happy with code escrow too, which would mean we can keep the game forever _and_ the company gets to protect their secret as long as they exist.

I think we should talk more about code escrow, in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It may be better to solely target SteamOS, Valve's GNU+Linux distribution, and to not support the other distributions who shall adapt/follow SteamOS.

</comment><comment><USER62> Seems to me there is no sales on Linux because the game barely works on Linux? Maybe you'd have bigger sales ratio if you'd fix those 20%?

</comment><comment><USER63> Anybody competent enough to use linux is competent enough to dual-boot into Windows. I would love first-class support for Linux gaming, but dual-booting is such an easy fix for me that I frankly don't care that much about linux support.

I totally get there are other potential issues revolving around having to use windows, but for me at least, I don't really have any issue with using windows for games.

</comment><comment><USER64> I was one of the PA Kickstarter supporters and played the game on Linux. It never worked flawlessly (graphical glitches). Today however I can play the latest DOOM (through Steam) on Linux using Vulkan without problems using an AMD card and open-source drivers. There is no reason not to build games for Linux, just use Vulkan and graphic problems are a thing of the past.

</comment><comment><USER14> As I recall the development of Planetary Annihilation was a clusterfunk of bugs and really bad performance. I kickstarted it, and remember getting it to work on linux. Put even though it ran, it did so 15 frames a second, even on a powerful machine. I actually just gave up on the game as the developers released it, even though it was still unplayable for me - and going by steam reviews - numerous others (mostly windows users I would guess).

I guess it makes sense now that they 1.0'ed a barely working game, with such an animosity towards users reporting issues.

<comment><USER65> It barely worked on Windows. I don't know what he's trying to pin on Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> How do they measure the 0.1%? Many times I've purchased games because of the promised Linux support, and played it on Windows until the promised Linux support arrives.

<comment><USER66> I'm sure it is measured by number of installs or downloads. Either way the statistic is still very telling. If 0.1% of installs/downloads/purchases created 20% of the bug reports, I can understand the developer's frustration.

<comment><USER67> The stats might be measured differently: Steam might not report a Linux user as such if they played on Windows at first (or something like that), while the tickets might be correctly labeled as Linux-specific by the user.

<comment><USER66> For sure, it's harder to understand what platform people WANT to play it on based on an action they performed at checkout.

I know personally, when it comes to purchases on Steam, I've bought ~200 games/applications, and I've probably only installed a third of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Most of the people I've met over the years who are tech literate say they have some flavor of linux installed, love it, but keep windows around because 'gaming.' I would venture the number of folks who had linux installed but didn't buy it for that platform because of instability to be much higher than 0.1%. It's a chicken/egg problem.

</comment><comment><USER69> Considering my graphics driver is buggy enough to cause the KDE panel to crash, I'm not at all surprised games on linux have issues.

</comment><comment><USER70> Well if the game crashes a lot on Linux then those players would likely switch to an alternative platform. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where games don't run well on Linux and game developers don't see Linux gamers as a large demographic.

If most games ran smoothly on Linux, you can expect the % of Linux sales to rise... no?

</comment><comment><USER71> >There is no denying that there are plenty of issues with some parts of Linux, but still I believe it will become predominant gaming platform, especially in the more "appliance" space. It is worth investing in the know-how early.

Bold claim to make. I doubt Linux will ever be a predominant gaming platform.

<comment><USER72> Umm... Phone games? All Android devices are based on Linux. Android is a major player in the mobile gaming industry.

<comment><USER73> What skills/tech you use for Android games is "Linux" specific and would transfer from/to a desktop Linux system or other Linux platform? (instead of being Android-specific, or specific to an engine etc)

<comment><USER72> Anything from Android can be forked into any number of Linux distros you want to make. So none of it is Android-specific, really.

For example Android software worked on Jolla's Sailfish OS.

<comment><USER74> Sailfish has a crappy Android simulation layer. You don't really want that on the Desktop. Android and Desktop Linux are completely different platforms, except maybe for the graphics APIs (Vulkan/OpenGL).

<comment><USER72> I'm not saying I would want that. My original point was that the person I was replying to said that they won't believe Linux gaming would ever be predominant. I'm saying it already is.

<comment><USER73> Would you say the same about FreeBSD gaming then, given the PS4 runs FreeBSD?

<comment><USER72> You can easily fork Android and create an OS on top of it that connects with the Android ecosystem. Can't do that with PS4 and its OS and ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Steam and the work that Valve has done on the linux side seems to show that's not the case. (They've managed to port quite a lot of linux games).

This sounds like a case where a platform wasn't a priority for their business was showing that it had bugs.

</comment><comment><USER76> I game on Windows because of the momentum behind it but Linux support is a selling point that goes into every purchase, because the day I migrate I will still have my purchases.

</comment><comment><USER77> 2007s 'Supreme commander' is still _by far_ the best game in that series, and the best RTS ever imo. It's still going strong, and has an awesome community- built matchmaking service, that effortlessly supports mods and maps, called 'Forged Alliance Forever' or 'FAF' [https://www.faforever.com/](https://www.faforever.com/)

Imo the idea of projecting an epic RTS onto a sphere is just, bafflingly bad. In supreme commander, you zoom out the view to get a strategic overview of the entire map.. You cant ever do that with a sphere. I am just bemused by this game.

</comment><comment><USER78> I'm aware that if you buy a game on Windows and play it on Linux, it might be tagged as a Windows game purchase. Wonder if this 0.1% truly tells the whole story.

</comment><comment><USER79> I should note Android runs with a Linux kernel. It has been estimated that games like Pokemon Go have made over $1 billion on revenue from Android devices - larger than its revenue from iOS. Candy Crush Saga, Clash of Clans, Dragon Ball Z etc. do well on Android as well. So the "would totally skip Linux" advice is not heeded by every company for every platform.

<comment><USER30> This comes up all the time by people that usually lack Android developer experience, specially with the NDK.

Nothing on the Android app stack exposes the underlying Linux kernel to app developers.

Yes it is possible to access certain paths or syscalls, however none of them are part of the public API nor guarantee to work across devices.

Only OEMs have direct contact with the underlying Linux kernel, which could be replaced tomorrow without any issues for app developers, e.g. Fuchsia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> it would be nice if companies could ship to linux and just say ' yeah good luck on that' and do some fixes where they feel the time is well spent. but unfortunately that's also not acceptable in the market, so it's either full on or nothing for many.

</comment><comment><USER81> While I am a Linux user, I boot my workstation under windows for gaming. So I would not even be accounted as a linux gamer by the stats.

While rebooting is a bit cumbersome, I don't really mind now. I also wouldn't trust all the games I play to run as my user on my workstation. And it would take a bit of efforts to properly sandbox them.

</comment><comment><USER82> Pretty much every game runs fine on my linux box. You guys are just doing it wrong. ;)

</comment><comment><USER83> And these number are flipped for Mac users.

</comment><comment><USER84> I'm sure those statistics are entirely real and not pulled out of his ass at all.

Also didn't Planetary Annihilation have that awful chromium based UI?

</comment><comment><USER85> So, free beta testing?

</comment><comment><USER86> > In the end they accounted for <0.1% of sales but >20% of auto reported > crashes and support tickets (most gfx driver related). Would totally skip > Linux.

OK. So just another dumb developer being wrong. Nothing to see here move along.

</comment><comment><USER87> Developing software for Linux is like painting a moving train.

<comment><USER12> SDL is binary compatible on its major release (2.0) and will probably be forever at this point. libc++ only broke its ABI once when C++11 required it.

What else do you need to make games for Linux? If you are using Unity or Unreal its going to statically link all its dependencies anyway. Don't use libraries that break semver.

<comment><USER43> SDL is a 2D library. Any modern game will use 3D APIs and there you'll quickly hit the insane minefield of OpenGL bugs that are graphics drivers on Linux. Those are pretty much optimized for driving the desktop compositors with everything else being a stroke of luck if it works as defined in the spec.

<comment><USER12> Any modern game should be using Vulkan for just that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> But wasn't this supposed to be the year of linux on the desktop ?

</comment><comment><USER89> Also I wonder how many of those crashes would have happened in windows or mac. I suspect the code is shared and would have happened.

<comment><USER90> "gfx driver related" code is unlikely to be shared between Windows, Linux and OSX ...

<comment><USER91> Then redirecting those issues to the right mailing list could still be very welcome by someone.

IMO issues does not need to be fixed by the game developers and drv developers might be happy to have them and some code that reproduces them. Not sure why the game dev complains here.

<comment><USER90> Because dealing with the users who experience the problems costs more than they make in sales? If every additional Linux sale costs you more than it makes?

There's being a good citizen. There's wanting to offer support to a small set of customers. Then there's losing money. At some point, you just can't afford to service the long tail.

<comment><USER91> If the issue the user has found is in the driver, then redirecting them there or maybe sending an automatic email for each unique issue to the driver mailing list might help fix the issue without much effort on the game dev side.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The man who predicted the 2008 economic crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.rksv.in/blog/2013/09/what-you-do-not-know-about-the-new-rbi-governor-mr-raghuram-rajan/

<comment><USER2> I was expecting Peter Schiff!</comment>