Some interesting industry news for you here. Epic Games have announced a change to the revenue model of the Epic Games Store, as they try to pull in more developers and more gamers to actually purchase things.
Unreal Engine has official Linux support since ages. Unreal Engine running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is what movie CGI creators often use these days. It’s a highly lucrative market they’re not going to give up.
Epic actual employs quite a few people who work with Linux. The Unreal engine (and even, to a certain degree, editor) has native support for Linux.
The reasons they’re not including Linux support in their store front are two fold:
There aren’t enough pure Linux users to matter, and whatever percentage of their userbase would use Linux isn’t going to be large enough to make a dent[1].
The only serious Linux user base in gaming relates to the Steam Deck, a product that pushes a rival (and the dominant) store front.
While Valve’s move to push Linux gaming is brilliant for us gamers, it also kind of cements us in their camp.
There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway, and it absolutely supports their bottom line to attack it.
And, no, it isn’t because of any David v. Goliath tale of a little guy standing up to a brute: it’s because a fellow giant has decided to ally itself with Linux, and all of us have - invariably - been shuffled into their camp.
I think the Epic Games Store has a place in this world as a niche storefront with limited visibility but higher access to sales profits as a result of that.
They’ll never grow to the size of Steam, and that’s okay. The largest storefront in the world supports Linux not just on its platform, but by developing tools for everyone that makes Linux gaming viable. That is enough, IMO.
~[1] Edit: I was throwing around a made up 0.1% number earlier to indicate what I thought the number’d be - wasn’t meant to be factual, and was poorly worded, so I removed that.~
2 is only true because they refuse to support it, and it’s going to be great to see them walk back everything they said once it’s too late. More handhelds are going to launch with official steamOS support, and a new batch of steam machines will come eventually, with a much better support.
In the same way they tell how to side load an apk in android, they can could tell you how to install heroic on the deck.
Hell, through 10-20 K to heroic and they will make it for you simple.
Where are you getting 0.1%? According to Steam Hardware Survey Linux is over 2% of Steam Users. This puts Linux way ahead of Mac which supported by Epic
Totally made up, meant it more as a “this is my ballpark estimation of what their Linux player base would be” - though I agree I worded it poorly. I don’t know what % of Epic Games users would play on Linux if given the chance.
I’m editing my original message, sorry about that!
There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway
Except for the fact that their entire technology stack already supports it and making Linux versions of their games is a compilation step away. Their Tencent buddies at One-Notebook would surely make a OneXPlayer with EpicOS. “Comes with Fortnite and get free games each week”.
They’ll never grow to the size of Steam, and that’s okay.
EGS has a massive installed base because of Fortnite.
It’s not about how easy it is to compile, my first point in my original comment was that they actively maintain an engine for Linux.
The install base is too low right now. Hopefully as our numbers grow we’ll have enough market impact to warrant pushing other store fronts.
Fortnite is great for Epic, but their debacle with Apple kind of proved that one popular game isn’t enough to push the public off one store front onto another.
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Do they officially support Linux yet? No heroic doesn’t count.
They do not, and never will.
“Bite my shiny metal ass, penguins!”
~ Epic CEO (paraphrased)
GOG also doesn’t support Linux. And I’m not gonna hold that against Epic if I don’t hold it against GOG.
Unreal Engine has official Linux support since ages. Unreal Engine running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is what movie CGI creators often use these days. It’s a highly lucrative market they’re not going to give up.
Epic Online Services supports Linux as well: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/eos-get-started/platform-support (which includes Easy Anti Cheat)
So when Fortnite and Rocket League have no Linux versions, it’s just because of lack of will, not anything technological.
Here’s a different take, as a game dev:
Epic actual employs quite a few people who work with Linux. The Unreal engine (and even, to a certain degree, editor) has native support for Linux.
The reasons they’re not including Linux support in their store front are two fold:
There aren’t enough pure Linux users to matter, and whatever percentage of their userbase would use Linux isn’t going to be large enough to make a dent[1].
The only serious Linux user base in gaming relates to the Steam Deck, a product that pushes a rival (and the dominant) store front.
While Valve’s move to push Linux gaming is brilliant for us gamers, it also kind of cements us in their camp.
There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway, and it absolutely supports their bottom line to attack it.
And, no, it isn’t because of any David v. Goliath tale of a little guy standing up to a brute: it’s because a fellow giant has decided to ally itself with Linux, and all of us have - invariably - been shuffled into their camp.
I think the Epic Games Store has a place in this world as a niche storefront with limited visibility but higher access to sales profits as a result of that.
They’ll never grow to the size of Steam, and that’s okay. The largest storefront in the world supports Linux not just on its platform, but by developing tools for everyone that makes Linux gaming viable. That is enough, IMO.
~[1] Edit: I was throwing around a made up 0.1% number earlier to indicate what I thought the number’d be - wasn’t meant to be factual, and was poorly worded, so I removed that.~
And it was just a big coincidence that Epic removed Linux support exactly when the Steam Deck got announced…
2 is only true because they refuse to support it, and it’s going to be great to see them walk back everything they said once it’s too late. More handhelds are going to launch with official steamOS support, and a new batch of steam machines will come eventually, with a much better support.
In the same way they tell how to side load an apk in android, they can could tell you how to install heroic on the deck.
Hell, through 10-20 K to heroic and they will make it for you simple.
Where are you getting 0.1%? According to Steam Hardware Survey Linux is over 2% of Steam Users. This puts Linux way ahead of Mac which supported by Epic
TBH what matter more is revenue. Apple users always pay more
Totally made up, meant it more as a “this is my ballpark estimation of what their Linux player base would be” - though I agree I worded it poorly. I don’t know what % of Epic Games users would play on Linux if given the chance.
I’m editing my original message, sorry about that!
Except for the fact that their entire technology stack already supports it and making Linux versions of their games is a compilation step away. Their Tencent buddies at One-Notebook would surely make a OneXPlayer with EpicOS. “Comes with Fortnite and get free games each week”.
EGS has a massive installed base because of Fortnite.
It’s not about how easy it is to compile, my first point in my original comment was that they actively maintain an engine for Linux.
The install base is too low right now. Hopefully as our numbers grow we’ll have enough market impact to warrant pushing other store fronts.
Fortnite is great for Epic, but their debacle with Apple kind of proved that one popular game isn’t enough to push the public off one store front onto another.
But it is. It is what defines the cost of supporting a platform.
The installed base of Switch2 is 0% right now.
But it’s the year of… Oh no. Rly? :(