The Witcher 3 for Linux

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Obligations? Maybe they have other priorities. Console and PC seem to be more popular. Not CDPRs fault Linux isnt the most interesting. They might work on it if demand is high enough.

Let's not start this topic of "not popular". We are long past that. CDPR clearly said they wanted to release TW3 for Linux, so popularity or demand weren't the issue. They released TW2 for Linux when Linux gaming was even smaller than it is today.

This is more about keeping their somewhat strangely expressed promises indeed.

This is their first game that they released to 3 different platforms on day one. They've come a long way, and they did a hell of a job on the game, so I won't be holding it against them. If they do the same thing with CP2077, then I'd make a case against them for it. Until then, however, they've outdone themselves.

I'd say, they have enough money to keep their promise. Wine developers are doing this job for them so far. CDPR can for example go ahead, and pay to CodeWeavers (primary developers of Wine) to allocate more resources to it. Or whatever.

I agree however about CP2077. If they'll blow it and will fail to release it for Linux, that would be seriously bad.

 

[Guest 4074840]

I'm wishing for a Linux port of Witcher and Witcher 3 also. I'm playing through Witcher 2 now and I would love to play through the first one so I can get the story better.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Elderking : Just for the reference, the first Witcher works perfectly in Wine.

 

[Guest 4074840]

Just for the reference, the first Witcher works perfectly in Wine.

Yeah, I know, I've been reading about it. For my physical games I have on disc, I'll use Wine for them but for digital games like this, I'd rather get a Linux version. I'm the kind of guy that votes with my wallet, for what little its worth. If theres no Linux vesion on GOG or Steam then I won't buy it.

I have a PS3 for other games I can't get.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Elderking: I didn't buy TW3 yet either. However thanks to snerdt who gave me a spare GOG key, I can test it in Wine. But TW1 I didn't mind buying, since by now there is no chance CDPR will care about releasing it for Linux.

 

[Guest 4074840]

Gilrond-i-Virdan I am curious about something. Couldn't CDPR just hire an outside company to do the porting? Like Feral Interactive for example? It their job to port games to Mac, iOS and Linux. They've already ported Hitman, Tomb Raider 2013, Mad Max and a few other games to Linux. I'm sure they'll be happy to port the Witcher games too assuming CDPR will do it.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Elderking: CDPR hired Virtual Programming to port TW2. But they probably see TW1 as easily playable in Wine, and don't expect Linux users to be specifically interested in such port.

A much bigger question is, why CDPR couldn't hire Feral of VP to do that work for TW3. That is pretty weird, given they wanted to do it all along. Waiting for who knows how long isn't going to improve their sales potential.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Wine staging 2.5 with workaround for crash regression. Not much has improved, it looks basically same as before.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I do not think it is likely by CDPR themselves, the game is basically done and dusted by now. No new expansions, enhanced edition, modding tools, ports to more platforms, or - as it has just been confirmed - even patches. It might still appear one day here on Feral's radar, though.

Oh, that's for sure. CDPR made it clear, that they won't be doing it themselves if ever. But until now they left the possibility of others doing it open. I was just poking them to remind about the issue

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Wine 2.6 finally upstreamed CSMT support. Here is TW3 running in Wine 2.6 with a couple of additions from staging to prevent crashing and low performance:

Visually, there isn't much improvement. Outside areas are still broken (sunlight related shaders apparently).

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Wine had some more DX11 features added a few days ago, but it looks like they aren't affecting TW3, it's still the same.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

More than 10,000 votes!

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Marcin_Momot: See above. With 10,000+ Linux users voting for TW3 and current GOTY version at $50, it could give you $500,000. Which I think should be enough to cover porting expenses, don't you think? And I'm sure more than 10,000 Linux users would be interested in buying the game. That wishlist entry is much lower than actual potential. Can you please direct this to your bosses? Not sure who decides that (Marcin Iwiński or someone else?), but I think it's enough of a demonstration of existing demand. Over time I expect this will grow to 20,000 and more.

 

[iCake]

Marcin_Momot: See above. With 10,000+ Linux users voting for TW3 and current GOTY version at $50, it could give you $500,000. Which I think should be enough to cover porting expenses, don't you think? And I'm sure more than 10,000 Linux users would be interested in buying the game. That wishlist entry is much lower than actual potential. Can you please direct this to your bosses? Not sure who decides that (Marcin Iwiński or someone else?), but I think it's enough of a demonstration of existing demand. Over time I expect this will grow to 20,000 and more.

Damn, you're relentless. Don't take me wrong, I don't disapprove. Your determination warrants some admiration here. I can't understand where you take what's needed to keep it "lit" though, so to speak. If I were you, I'd have already given up and installed Windows and completed the game ages ago.

 

[volsung]

Damn, you're relentless. Don't take me wrong, I don't disapprove. Your determination warrants some admiration here. I can't understand where you take what's needed to keep it "lit" though, so to speak. If I were you, I'd have already given up and installed Windows and completed the game ages ago.

Well that's the thing. It would be the easy way out but not a real, long-term solution. PC gaming is about having choices, and the operating system is one of them. It should not be so complicated if cross-platform technologies are used. TRUE, the Linux gaming market is small. But it won't be allowed to grow either as long as major games remain tied to Windows.

So if any one person likes and uses Linux only, should they be expected to purchase a Windows license just to play one game? Imagine if I sent you an important email attachment in a proprietary file format only some particular expensive program can open. You wouldn't be very happy about it and you'd be right to protest.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

volsung: According to some recent posts by former Virtual Programming developer, CDPR were seriously interested in releasing TW3 for Linux (I can assume it means they communicated with VP about it), but then cancelled it (he implies it has something to do with what happened with The Witcher 2). Not sure what that means though and if it's even correct to begin with, since CDPR put TW2 for Linux as a positive result in their past yearly reports.

My own understanding is, that if that indeed happened in CDPR, something has changed in their studio management. If previous folks were Linux friendly, later ones became legacy publisher minded and Linux hostile, and if so, we won't see CP2077 for Linux as well, despite Linux gaming market continuing to grow.

 

[sv3672]

According to some recent posts by former Virtual Programming developer, CDPR were seriously interested in releasing TW3 for Linux (I can assume it means they communicated with VP about it), but then cancelled it (he implies it has something to do with what happened with The Witcher 2). Not sure though what that means though and if it's even correct to begin with, since CDPR put TW2 for Linux as a positive result in their past yearly reports.

Perhaps it was positive financially, but it was bad PR for the company (because of the initial complaints about the quality of the port), so they do not want to risk that again for relatively small increase in revenue. Another guess is that they no longer want to give third parties access to their IP, which would also explain why the REDkit was not released, and why plans to license the engine to other developers were dropped as well. Although as far as I know, VP ports are not done at the source level, they are wrapping the Windows binaries.

 

[volsung]

That's all sad news not only for Linux gaming but for CDPR supporters as well. I don't know why this once open minded and customer-oriented company now has all sorts of secrets and refuses to simply state things clearly. People expected products like TW3 for Linux or the RED Kit which appear to be simply abandoned, there's no information and we can only speculate.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Perhaps it was positive financially, but it was bad PR for the company (because of the initial complaints about the quality of the port), so they do not want to risk that again for relatively small increase in revenue. Another guess is that they no longer want to give third parties access to their IP, which would also explain why the REDkit was not released, and why plans to license the engine to other developers were dropped as well. Although as far as I know, VP ports are not done at the source level, they are wrapping the Windows binaries.

Being scared of bad PR, when they actually worked on fixing those issues in TW2 and fixed them (it works quite well on Linux) is weird. It's like saying that they shouldn't have released TW3 to begin with, since it had bugs and required many patches to bring it in better shape. Bugs are always possible, as long as they are working on it, bad PR isn't an issue.

And regarding IP, I don't think it's a problem when they aren't planning to do something in-house. Porting companies aren't going to run around and releasing their engine to others. That would undermine their own business. So it's not the same as not releasing REDkit for the public. So I really still don't understand what kind of hiccups CDPR encountered. It all looks to me like legacy publishers' mentality creeping into CDPR's top management.

That's all sad news not only for Linux gaming but for CDPR supporters as well. I don't know why this once open minded and customer-oriented company now has all sorts of secrets and refuses to simply state things clearly. People expected products like TW3 for Linux or the RED Kit which appear to be simply abandoned, there's no information and we can only speculate.

I agree. As I wrote many times, CDPR failed completely in their communication with the community, and they are now same distant corporation, like your WB or EA, where no one answers anything.

 

[sv3672]

Being scared of bad PR, when they actually worked on fixing those issues in TW2 and fixed them (it works quite well on Linux) is weird. It's like saying that they shouldn't have released TW3 to begin with, since it had bugs and required many patches to bring it in better shape. Bugs are always possible, as long as they are working on it, bad PR isn't an issue.

It is not exactly the same, not releasing TW3 at all would have resulted in a huge loss of revenue, while not releasing it on Linux only lost a small percentage of it. Also, the game was never received as badly as the TW2 port was initially. Thus, what I meant is that CDPR might not want to risk bad PR for small amounts of extra profit.

And regarding IP, I don't think it's a problem when they aren't planning to do something in-house. Porting companies aren't going to run around and releasing their engine to others.

In theory, it could be "released" unintentionally if it was leaked (like it happened to CDPR themselves with the documents in 2014 and later the whole REDkit, even if not in a functional state). Of course, the chances of that happening are very low, but again, the port is probably not expected to bring much additional revenue either, so, with a "legacy publisher" mentality, it would not be that surprising if the IP was kept secret as much as possible unless there was a really good reason to do otherwise. Then again, I am not saying this is the main reason, and it is obviously all speculation. There are many reasons why publishers refuse to release games on Linux, even things like customer service costs have been brought up by other companies as explanation. In the end, it usually boils down to "the market is not large enough to make it worth it for us".