A little over a month ago we released the Linux port of Osmos, promising statistics on our sales and downloads. We wanted to find out – from a financial perspective, for our studio – “is it worth porting games to Linux?”
The short, simple answer… is “yes.”
Nice.
Combine this with the recent successful Humble Indie Games Bundle, and I have to think Linux is becoming a very attractive market indeed for game publishers.
It’s also worth noting how important Steam is to sales — according to Hemisphere Games own numbers –, another reason why Steam coming to Linux will be a major factor in the viability of Linux for gamers.
Furthermore, you know how certain nay-sayers are always playing up the difficulty and cost of supporting a Linux port? And how Linux users are “freetards” with a huge entitlement complex?
Well, consider Hemi’s take on Linux support:
Support emails for Linux are night-and-day-different from Windows or Mac — they include the log, version numbers, stack info, troubleshooting schemes already attempted, etc. Sometimes they even include the solution to the problem — just letting us know. And Linux users are vocal — there have been some amazing people in the community that have helped spread the word. We simply could not have done this ourselves; we wouldn’t have known half the places to approach, and even if we had we would have come across as fish-out-of-water. So once again, thank you.
So, yeah.
Distro goals
You know how there are some distros that seem to base or justify everything on what “newbies” or “windows users” might think?
The problem with targeting Windows users is that you might just get them.
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