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Cyberpunk 2077 runs on Linux through the Proton compatibility layer (twitter.com/plagman2)
438 points by haunter on Dec 9, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 317 comments



To be perfectly fair, it’s working on Linux natively. Since it runs on stadia.

I was part of the efforts of putting The Division 2 on stadia and it really is “just Linux” for the most part.

The elf binaries ran essentially flawlessly on my linux machine (although my machine was under powered for the game.)

Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.


> The elf binaries ran essentially flawlessly on my linux machine (although my machine was under powered for the game.)

> Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.

That's an improvement over not having a Linux port at all, as it reduces the investment needed to publish the game to Linux eventually. Once the Linux gaming market is big enough, studios might consider to release the game.


I'm not sure that's much of a distinction between not available and nearly available. Rumour is, WoW had an internal linux client for years, and that didn't help gamers.

That said, I wonder if being low-key not released multiplatform might actually mean there's likely less compatibility issues when playing with wine/proton.


WoW ran fine under Wine many years back, building a native Linux client would not make much sense.


The post you are responding to was pointing that this client actually existed - if I had to guess probably to allow people working on the server to test it directly on their machine - but was never released.


Absolutely, but my point is that even in that case, it would make more sense to run it under Wine anyway, instead of maintaining an entire build for a platform that is not officially supported.


I run Linux, and play games, but all in all, I strongly believe that Wine ports are the only realistic, less-worse, alternative. I'm not the only one - Carmack expressed the same (although, to be fair, I've never read other high-profile devs discussing this idea).

This is a real-world Linux game production story: https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760. Note that the developers tried hard to release the native Linux port.

Crucial excerpt (from https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080214424474906624):

> We eventually laid out a guide with known good versions of Linux and graphics drivers, but it didn't matter. Part of the allure of Linux is the customizability, so few actually stuck to it, and generally wanted to run the game on older hardware we didn't support.

In order for Linux games production to be economically viable, there should be a Linux gaming standard, but because of the Linux culture, there will never be (there's nothing wrong; it's just its nature). Even if somebody came up with a gaming standard... xkcd explains what would happen: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/927:_Standards.

I'm not considering adhoc Linux gaming distributions like SteamOS, as they would have to be treated as an independently installed, separate, operating system.


Same here, and I've also noticed the library churn is a problem: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Neverwinter Nights both have had official Linux ports/releases, and neither of them run on modern Linux distro's because of library incompatibilities (in the case of NWN, it's because of libSDL, don't remember the issue with HoMM3).

Even my recent purchases on GOG where there's plenty of native Linux to be found, I usually download the Windows version because WINE is a more stable platform in the long run, in my experience.


The latest version of Neverwinter Nights Enhanced runs without issue on Linux Mint 20.

The Beamdog Client no longer seems to work (pango lib issue), but GOG installs just fine. I like Beamdog and appreciate their ongoing support for Linux and have in turn purchased NWN gift keys for many people, but man - fix the Linux client please.

(Beamdog, feel free to contact me and I'll fix the broken client for free - seriously).


To be honest wine is so awesome it makes games run better even on Windows.

On another computer I had, with the supremely buggy nVidia Optimus, SimCity 4 and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura both worked correctly only with Wine DLLs on their folder, preventing them from using Windows normal APIs.


HoMM3 has an open source port, and NWN not because of LibSDL, which still works, but maybe with GL functions, something solveable with an env var. If it's OSS related, wrappers exist.


There is the steam linux environment [1] which is pretty standard for native linux builds on steam. And that works independently of the distribution steam is actually installed on. I think it should be possible to use it without steam too..

[1] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime


The libs in the steam-runtime are often times very old. The newest compiler for building inside the runtime seems to be gcc 5. I understand the need for stability, but why isn't this stuff updated from time to time?


because you would need multiple runtime versions and games would need to target a specific runtime version.

because if you don't keep your game up to date, it would not run. in windows you basically can run games for way longer because libraries are way more binary compatible. for running webservers/cloud whatever a breakage doesn't hurt and removes old crud, but sometimes the old crud is used in xyz in a way that nobody tought and without it the game would crash, that's why you would need to target a specific runtime.

the same thing more or less did windows up to 7 relativ well, via the version selection. unfortunatly windows 10 broke some games even with the version selection.


Hollywood sees it otherwise with the VFX standard.

https://vfxplatform.com/


What you linked is more about programs relying on the same computer graphics libraries that then need to rely on the same system libraries.

Games stand alone and don't need this integration.


If you compile everything statically yes, otherwise yes they need this integration.


Games can have their dependencies shipped with them with or without static linking. They aren't transferring data to another game that has to line up exactly.

CG programs and renderers need to have subdivision surface data be the same and image filtering be the same. They may be able to architect their way around standard library versions, but games don't need this same treatment because they stand alone.


> because you would need multiple runtime versions and games would need to target a specific runtime version.

Yes. Steam already supports multiple Proton runtimes, why not multiple Steam runtimes as well? With the latter, native Linux games could say in their metadata which one they need and the user wouldn't even notice.


> And that works independently of the distribution steam is actually installed on

Not entirely, it still relies on some system libraries, and you will see there are times where games do not run on Arch despite using the steam runtime. It is known.


> there should be a Linux gaming standard

As bizarre as it sounds, it is looking like the "Linux gaming standard" is really the Windows API. And that's where we are.


Thanks for the links, that's quite revealing.

> auto reported crashes and support tickets (most gfx driver related)

I wonder if open-sourcing the game would see those same support tickets come in with patches.

Part of linux has always been about patching it up yourself. Rather than being a time sink for the developer, these linux bugs could actually be a way to crowdsource code improvements.

I know there are intellectual property concerns that prevent open-sourcing commercial products, but maybe there's some sort of hybrid solution to be found.


Disclaimer, I love Ubuntu server.

I hate that Linux philosophy for a daily driver. I remember being age 16, 17,18,19 23,26, and 27 and being told to figure it out. Every time I'm vastly more fluent and the community is just as unhelpful.

There's nothing intuitive about computers, a human came up with the rules. The negativity is cancerous.


Wine has a non zero overhead compared to Linux or Windows. Maybe one could come up with a mix of the Win32 API and Linux calling conventions? IDK. Or design something from scratch entirely, but then you have to write and maintain a translation layer like Wine for the rest of time :). Ideally one would take Wine and remove the overhead causing parts but keep most of it intact.


If the Windows program uses the Vulkan API, I imagine the Wine layer wouldn't be doing much work, would it? My guess is that the function-call conversion doesn't cost much on modern CPUs.


It's not just the graphics API. These phoronix benchmarks show worse Wine performance even on CPU only tasks: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=wine-ubu...


Interesting link, thanks.

It's curious that Wine outperforms Windows on some CPU-intensive tasks, but is far slower for certain others. The article just gives the numbers, but doesn't give a deep analysis. Perhaps cache issues?


Most Android games could be easily ported to GNU/Linux, that just doesn't happen because studios don't see any commercial value in doing so, versus the development costs of supporting yet another platform.


I'm doubtful about this. Even though Android uses the Linux kernel, its userspace is completely different; There isn't much overlap in the APIs you can use on Android vs ones you can use on desktop Linux, besides a few things like openGL and syscalls.


I am fully aware of it.

ISO C, ISO C++, OpenGL/Vulkan, OpenMAX and OpenSL ES are certainly available on GNU/Linux.

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis

Just as Cocos-2dx, Unreal and Unity are, the main engines used on Android games.

However, having 2% of users responsible for 50% of support requests + extra development effort, is what puts GNU/Linux off their plans.


>having 2% of users responsible for 50% of support requests

If you're referring to [1], you might be interested in reading [2] as well.

[1] https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080213166116597760

[2] https://twitter.com/bgolus/status/1080544133238800384


I am aware of those tweets, although my remark was based on experience among game developer friends all the way back to the Loki days.


Having native support for Linux seems very fitting to a cyberpunk game, but given the kind of crazy reactions you get from some people in that community when things a. are not open source and/or b. exhibit the tiniest of flaws, it's probably not worth the bad PR they would generate.


This is like saying Red Dead Redemption is like running a farm in Texas. Linux is more popular among techies/programmers/hackers. Cyberpunk is a genre focusing on being cool and special, an attempt to steal computers from introverts and hide the boring stuff they find exciting. It's a computer Wild West.

Check out the game 'Duskers'.


I disagree with your overly strict definition of cyberpunk :) I'd rather say that Cyberpunk has a focus on what is cool, rather than on "being" cool, with the disitnction that the former definition exploits the inherent coolness of all things cyber, where the latter is much more superficial.

Look at the people and works that founded the genre, they looked at REAL stuff and extrapolated, not because the real stuff was boring, but because it was cool as hell and the future stuff would be even cooler as heller. ;-)

Success in such a setting is not determined entirely by the luminosity of ones hair, the gnarliness of ones implants, but also the deep technical understanding of all the boring stuff, it's so deep, and so understood that one can do it swiftly and make it look both easy and cool. What we get to "see" in cyberpunk novels, movies and games, is mostly an abstraction sice we're not that cool dude or dudette, we don't have that deep deep understanding or those amazing skills, maybe we just lack the right implants, but nevertheless, the author is forced to portray some hybrid between the "concept of what's going on" and what observers would see.

Also, Duskers is a great game. Ps I'm a Linux user and I'd love to see more native games for my platform of choice, but I also know that there's a reason I can't always have nice things, and I don't blame anyone for that.


I think the worst that has happened to Linux games was that DirectX has won. Vulkan gives me some hope.

Cyberpunk is superficially about technology, but I think Noita is a much geekier game. Made in Finland, the country that added demoscene to Unesco. Every pixel is simulated, lots of tinkering, emergence; you craft your 'weapons' all the time. The game's requirements say: "The more cores the better".

Note it's common among reviewers to say Cyberpunk is NOT about technology but rather about capitalism in overdrive. The game's technical themes are all old cliches: Johnny Mnemonic, brain machine interface, computer viruses.


You do realize that Steam is available for Linux. Steam is not open source. Steam has many flaws. Yet Steam is really popular amongst many Linux users. Don't spread FUD.


I'm using Steam on Linux, and I've read the support threads when stuff breaks. :) I'm not spreading FUD, just commenting on a percieved attitude problem with a small but loud subset of my community.


Discord too, its not as ubiquitous as steam but its popular here too.


> Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.

Do you know why? Linux is my primary OS and it always breaks my heart when companies decide to not support it.


Because if you start to support Linux you actually have to support all the major distribution (Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) with their different idiosyncrasies, package format, libc implementations and/or version, etc.

Basically your testing coverage explodes exponentially. That's why in a former gig the team I was part of decided to go from Linux to only Windows since it way easier to test only for ~3 majors OS versions.


> Because if you start to support Linux you actually have to support all the major distribution (Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) with their different idiosyncrasies, package format, libc implementations and/or version, etc.

Feral and Paradox for instance only support one (1) distribution. If you fall outside that, you're on your own for support, but you get runnable binaries.


"Sorry the game doesn't work, we don't support your distro" is a really crummy thing to have to say to your customers. Fact is Linux doesn't have a stable ABI that you can build your game against (no, the Steam Runtime doesn't solve this problem). The only stable ABI that is supported on Linux is... win32 via Wine.


I've had some serious crashes with Feral games (see [0]), but other games have been working really well (Risk of Rain 1, Factorio, Stellaris).

[0] https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/pull/646 ; yes, LOCALE_* env variables make games crash; also, yes, Feral has been totally unhelpful.


Better than "Sorry the game is not available for your platform."

Linux does have a stable ABI. The kernel ABI is stable. The glibc ABI is stable. The OpenGL ABI is stable. The Xlib ABI is stable.

What you can't do is link with a random libpng or whatever that you found on your system and then expect that to work for others. But that's the same on Windows.


No, Windows provides a stable ABI for decoding PNG images, it's called the Windows Imaging Components library[1]. I don't think it's sustainable to expect every application to ship effectively an entire distro to provide stability. Consider if my app shipped an old version of gnutls, would you be happy to use that? Should it be my responsibility to update it for eternity? With win32, on both Windows and Linux via Wine, you can just use the win32 bcrypt library and assume the underlying implementation is secure and up to date.

Win32 is the only solution for a usable, stable, application-level ABI on Linux. I don't like that fact either.

[1] See CLSID_WICPngDecoder here, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/wincodec/...


I disagree. Steam officially supported only Ubuntu for the longest time. I'm not sure if they still do that, but this is a possibility.


Steam is supported on Ubuntu and Fedora. That gives it .deb and rpm coverage, enough for the rest of the downstream distros to make it work.

Anecdotally I've had great success with it on Fedora and Linux Mint (Mint being a spin-off of Ubunutu).


> That gives it .deb and rpm coverage

Package formats are mostly irrelevant for Steam. The only thing that is packaged is a tiny bootstrap script with the proper dependencies to make sure you have stuff like 32-bit system libraries installed. You don't even need to use that.


> Because if you start to support Linux you actually have to support all the major distribution (Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) with their different idiosyncrasies, package format, libc implementations and/or version, etc.

That is plain wrong. I don't know who started with that line of reasoning, but it is very wrong.

The only good reason for not supporting linux are the drivers. And they will change more with time then with distro.

And no, solution is not flatsnaps. If there even is a problem, the solution is much simpler.


> That is plain wrong. I don't know who started with that line of reasoning, but it is very wrong.

Looks at old Linux binaries not running because of glibc incompatibility or dependency version mismatch.

There is a mountainful of valid complaints for Microsoft, but SXS is one of those "its the least worst but realistic solution" to dependency hell. Someone saying that they are running old Linux libraries (without recompiling or patching) are either lucky to not use dependencies (usually terminal-based programs) or plainly lying.


Did you ever wonder why some programs work and some don't ? Luck does not have much to do with it. I have some games that were made many versions of glibc ago, and they still work. Why is that ? (that is a rhetorical question)


> Did you ever wonder why some programs work and some don't ?

Not really. (Also older games can also stop running on Windows. It's not really Microsoft's problem except in the XP to Vista transition where several APIs were emulated but in general games (on any platform including consoles) tend to poke everything and use APIs they shouldn't touch at all.)


But there is now an actual solution to dependency hell: nix and guix deterministic build tools.

Though I agree with you that binary compatibility itself is/was not that stable on linux as it was on windows.


I ship binary software on Linux. I assure you, it is not wrong.


I also ship compiled binaries for Linux. I assure you, it's wrong.


That's sad, but you'd think the business would see the Linux user base is skilled enough to handle this. If you say you only support X and put a warning on other distros, you're basically employing the community to get it working properly on other distros for you. Some companies do this and it seems to work just fine.


uh, gonna disagree respectfully on that one.

you can buy an expensive GPU from nvidia that technically supports linux, for some values of "supports".

> Basically your testing coverage explodes exponentially.

well.. not really? i guess it's the difference between unit & integration testing. all i'm trying to say is that if you need to test out 50 different hardware & software configurations to feel confident that some character interaction happens in some obscure part of the game.. that's obviously untenable :)

in any case, i expect the linux crowd are far more likely to grapple any with issues that may arise, than the windows lot.


Isn't that the reason flatpaks or snaps exists?


You could argue that flatpaks and snaps exists because Debian (and Ubuntu) aren't rolling releases, but desktop users want continuously updated software.


They don't fix driver issues.


I'd think it's because of tertiary costs like customer support, etc. It's feasible to have support staff that would listen to customer complaints for releases on one uniform platform. It certainly won't be feasible to do the same for Linux releases as they and their problems will vary as much as the distro fragmentation.


Too small of a market. Most people don't use linux as a desktop OS. Those who do tend to use Chrome OS, which isn't well suited to gaming.


That doesn't make any sense since all development for Linux is already complete.


The problem is cost of support, including hard to quantize things like reputation.

It's one thing to do it like idSoftware used to, with silent releases done by one guy that were accepted as unofficial and you'd buy the windows release to get the missing files, and another to make a proper purchase of a game for linux with all kinds of expectations about it actually working.


> Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.

What was the justification of ignoring Linux gamers, when you already went through all the trouble of creating the Linux version? Are support costs so high that Linux sales won't cover them after that?


In this case it will be mostly the fact that Ubisoft Connect does not have a Linux client, so it would be hard to get the game to users and keep it updated. Obviously not insurmountable but you're again running into the issue of it just not being worth the cost - the PC sales are tiny compared to consoles, Linux would be just a small percentage of that again.


> the PC sales are tiny compared to consoles

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Cyberpunk sold more on PC than the consoles combined!


What is the relation of Ubisoft with Cyberpunk?


My original post was about The Division 2, which is a Ubisoft Game.

Also, Gambiting is right, the blocker was Ubisoft Connect (Formerly Uplay) as it uses a lot of Microsoft technology internally, it would have to be completely rewritten to support linux.

Ironically; I had raised this concern when I started working at Massive. I am a heavy linux user myself.


Ah, sorry, I misunderstood the chain of messages, my bad.


I don't get why. Aren't you and CDPR using Vulkan rather than DirectX by now ? If a small studio like Wube can afford to develop for Windows, Linux and even Mac, why can't you??


Anything I say to this is speculation, but making an engine like Snowdrop is a very-many year effort and usually quite tailored.

PS4 (OpenGL) is possible because there are shims provided by Sony which make OpenGL have similar behaviours to DX11.

Smaller studios don't have a legacy, usually they're highly targeted or they're using an engine provided by someone who can produce builds on multiple platforms.

Engines are simultaneously the most liberating and the most restricting thing in game development.

Obviously the Engine was ported to Linux to support Stadia, which is where the major investment would have been if we ever saw a Linux release of that particular game. Since that's done the only conclusion I can come to is financial back-pressure (PC sales are honestly not worth the headache, cheating, piracy, support issues; but are still provided, Linux support would likely be many times that effort again), and there's also Ubisofts platform distribution systems (which is intermixed with entitlement and authentication systems) and does not provide linux support.

In all, it makes me sad, because I'm a linux enthusiast and adamantly refuse to use Windows. But I've seen how the sausage is made and I have high sympathy for people making games.


Right, so I guess we'll need to wait at least until game engines are Vulkan-native...

By the way, are the new consoles Vulkan-native?


Only the switch is.


What do the new PlayStation and Xbox use?


Xbox uses DX12, PlayStation uses a customised version of OpenGL


> Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.

That is a bummer indeed :/


Do you work for Stadia? How is Cyberpunk doing on that system? I'm hesitating buying it there instead of on console.


I'm running it on GeForce NOW with all settings turned to highest possible (Ultra where possible, High, and one Psycho). I also have ray tracing on Quality mode and I am at an utter loss for how well this thing runs. This is the first game I've played through GeForce NOW and to be honest...I'm not sure if I need to drop money on a new GPU like I had planned to. I really wanted ray tracing support to replace my aging AMD card but the shortage of GPUs meant I couldn't find one. I'm on FTTH and my goodness even at 1080p it runs at what I'm guessing is 50-60 fps and looks stunning. There are very rare audible pops/hitching when I guess there's a network hiccup...maybe once every 30 minutes or so. But I'll take it, the game runs flawlessly for me otherwise.

I'm so sorry to hear a bunch of gamers on Reddit are having issues getting this thing to run well on their systems. There appears to be an older Nvidia driver issue that's limiting utilization to low tens causing weird glitches in the rendering for people. But I tested it on my aging AMD card in an eGPU on my MBP i9 at 1080p with all the settings turned to Ultra. Even there it runs well for the complexity and liveliness of the city; about 30-40fps.

Comparing the GeForce NOW remote rendering with ray tracing against my locally AMD rendering, I much prefer the GeForce NOW version with ray tracing. The game makes really good use of lighting and seeing subtle reflections throughout the game as they would be in real life makes me prefer the GeForce NOW version.

NOTE: I went with GeForce NOW because it supports ray tracing. Stadia does not, so just be aware of that.


Im a huge fan of GeForce now, the quality is fantastic and obviously you just play the games you already own. I don't understand how Stadia can even compete with it, it's just a much worse proposition every which way. But also I'm disappointed GeForce now tops out at 1080p, it's great on my laptop but I'd love to play it on my desktop 2k monitor.


Yeah, I'm a huge fun. I used it to play few games before I got into Shadow, but GFN is better for more GPU heavy games so I'll play CP2077 there.

The only downside I see is that there is no Linux client (or a browser one, which they promised) and I need to do a strange setup of:

1. Starting game on Android

2. Connecting bluetooth mouse there (so it won't kick me out because I'm not doing anything on the phone)

3. Starting Steam and using Steam Remote Play

(Thank you a anonymous user on reddit for letting know that Steam Remote Play works there)

(with each step cursing Google for not enabling video out on Pixel 4 USB-C)

It is a bit of PITA, but I'm glad it works (other option of using a VM was even worse).


They didn't promise a Linux client. Idk where you saw that, but whenever they said future clients were coming, I never saw Linux mentioned.

A couple months ago though (if that), they did say Linux support was coming in the form of a browser client, though that's already a thing, you can already use GFN on Linux w/ a chromium-based browser.


You can now run GFN in the browser on Linux (It might need Chrom(e/ium)).

The downside is that if you have a non 16:9 resolution you will have to change your desktop resolution to support fullscreen with black borders, otherwise the content renders off the bottom of the screen.


Nice, thank you.

I tried it just now (with 16:9) and unfortunately mouse doesn't work in game and I see a window bar at the top (half of it actually, I can double click on it and then I see full bar + game inside this window).

I'll need to experiment with it more, I'll try to make it work in Firefox as it has better codes under linux.


Yep, might also need to set the browser agent to a chromebook. Haven't tested it recently but it worked well enough a few weeks ago.


I do this in stock Chrome (running in Pop!_OS) and it works totally fine. Fantastic experience.


Isn't it possible to play under linux directly using chrome or chromium?


I bought it on Stadia and played for about 4 hours tonight. It ran pretty flawlessly, though I did have a problem where the game would think I was holding the attack button (heavy attack/auto fire) instead of tapping it (light attack/single shot). So there I was trying to line up a single headshot and imagine my surprise when I ended up dumping the entire magazine instead. To be fair to Stadia, I don't know if this is a Stadia issue or a Cyberpunk issue.

Pro tip: I thought my Stadia stream was having issues, turns out that motion blur and lens flare just make the game look like ass. Turn those off and it's gorgeous.


Not OP but Stadia user. Played only a few minutes, but it ran well. There's a few people over at r/stadia claiming to be stuck, but I didn't read to much into whether it's true...might be worth it to check out.

I'm an absolute Stadia fanboy. I wasn't really interested in Cyberpunk, but they offered a free controller/chromecast if you preordered, so it's kinda hard to say no. Let me know if you have any questions.


> I'm an absolute Stadia fanboy.

I'm horrified of Stadia. Google does not need to be in the games business.

I'm a twice-burned Google Play Music user with thousands of dollars in music purchases.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I'd be willing to bet money that Stadia is going to be shut down and all of your purchases, saves, etc. will be deleted.


Whenever Stadia conversation comes, I always wonder if I'm missing something. Why subscribe to Stadia and risk losing your games when you can subscribe to GeforceNow and play your own games in the cloud. If GeforceNow goes under ... fine, you still have your games.

I don't get the appeal of Stadia and I'm wondering what am I missing.


Geforce Now, due to developer/studio backlash, removed the ability to play most AAA titles. No Rockstar, Bethesda, etc. The only big name I can think of that remains is Ubisoft.


IMHO, nVidia has fallen into the very definition of a monopoly - They have instituted practices where they've cornered the industry in a variety of ways through..strategies that have made them a monopoly. I choose not to give them my money for this reason right now.

I have no doubt they will redeem themselves, but right now, I'm not excited about supporting them.

(Yes, my $10 a month doesn't have an effect, but meh)


Google is 10x worse though.


It's the same argument as buying digital copies of your Music via iTunes or something vs Spotify. And we all know who won. The convenience of streaming games is too hard to give up


The problem is that Stadia is streaming only, so no downloads or offline play, but you still have to buy each individual games.

So it doesn't fit either side in your analogy since it cherry-picks the bad parts of both alternatives.


I don't think Spotify will actually sell you music that you will still need Spotify's servers to keep running in order to access.


That sounds like an argument against Stadia, which forces you to rebuy all your games instead of just paying for the service like with GeForce Now.


Yeah I mean the cost can be argued about but buying individual games is going to be a thing of the past is what I am saying.


The difference is that Google has a well-known reputation for killing products.


Geforce Now free tier has limitations that make it near unusable without the subscription service. Mostly the one hour session limits, but the queue is inconvenient too. Stadia's free tier limitations is 1080p.


I'm almost 100% convinced that sooner or later Google will start to turn the thumbscrews on the free tier as well, they are not a charity. Either by annoying you with an increasing number of ads or otherwise mining your data, or by technical restrictions that make it almost impossible to enjoy without upgrading to a paid tier. The most likely end game I see is to apply the YouTube model to Stadia as well. So the question is if and for how long Stadia will have that advantage...


> fine, you still have your games.

.. in theory. In practice, I like most other people don't have access to most of the games I ever bought, or no convenient way to access them, or no desire to.

This goes for almost all of what I consume to be honest with the exception of some LPs I actually take very good care of.


But if I understand correctly, it seems like the added bonus of Geforce Now is that you can still access that content in the same way as Stadia. The difference is you also get to own the games and have a potential way of playing them on your own computer if the service ever goes down, no?


I don't get it. I am still regularly re-installing my favorite more than a decade old games from optical disks...


I like Stadia despite Google, not because of, sadly. I don't like having so many eggs in one basket, but it really is by far the best streaming experience. I gave GFN and Luna a fair shot. I wanted to love Luna before it was even released.

All that said, sure it could be shut down. But so could PS5, or XBOX. Sure it's probably less likely, but I've come to expect nothing is forever and to enjoy what's here while it's here. And personally speaking, this is probably easier for me since the number of times I go back to play an old game is essentially zero. I'd imagine most console folks are similar.


There's no way Stadia will succeed. Sure, Google care now, but they are gonna drop this like a hot potato once the promotions come through.

From speaking to devs who engage with Google on Stadia, it appears to be a tire fire, in that the Google people don't appear to care about how much work the gamedevs need to put in to keep up with their API changes (much like lots of Google services, actually).

Because of the poor devrel, I will be incredibly shocked if Stadia survives another two years.

Without a financial incentive, I'm not sure Stadia would have any games, and financial incentives don't fix the extra work needed when google change things for no reason (or not for a reason that gamedevs are likely to accept).


It sounds like Google has plenty of plans for Stadia in the years to come.

> What I can tell you is that we’ve built a roadmap of about 400 games in development right now from 200 developers. So when those games land, whether it’s in the calendar year of 2021 or beyond, is something that you’ll hear more from us in the future. Will there be more developers and more games on the platform? Absolutely. But frankly speaking, my team is almost done with 2021. We’re thinking about 2022 right now — that’s our focus. 2023 is really kind of where we’re aiming our sights. 2021 is in incredible shape. Hopefully, that gives you a sense of the scale of where we’re moving.

https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/11/19/google-stadia-jack-buser-...

And Stadia Games and Entertainment, the publisher arm, mentioned "special bonuses" for RPGs coming in 2023 and beyond.

https://9to5google.com/2020/11/16/stadia-games-entertainment...


Sorry, this just seems unrealistic. This isn't some half-arsed software project that would be used for promotions and out. This required real, big, physical investment.

And they are charging. I have no idea how many Stadia users exist, but let's use 1 million since I've seen that number thrown around. If even a quarter of those are paying for pro, that's >25 million a year in revenue. A drop in the bucket to Google, but not something you'd just throw away. I expect this number to at least quadruple next year, based on their recent uptick in advertising and hardware giveaways.


Alphabet made 38bn dollars in revenue in Q2 2020.

$25mn is probably a small(er) advertising client. And note that the Stadia revenue mostly gets sent to game developers, and developers only build for Stadia because they are paid a lot of money by Google.

I actually think the purpose of Stadia is to demonstrate that this can be done, and it will be dropped by the end of 2023.

Come back and prove me wrong then :)


Stadia as an idea appeals to me but i just can’t see myself signing up for those exact reasons.

I’m expected to pay retail for the games i want but in effect i only get to rent them. Nah, no thanks.


I think this is a very valid concern. I've bought 2 games on Stadia so far, and the solace for me is I don't ever really re-play games I've finished like I relisten to albums. Same with books, tv, movies, etc. It's just not my style, so the potential for Stadia to go poof in a year or two is fine by me, assuming it was a good value while it was still going.


Didn't Google play music allow you to download the music you purchased there? Because I had to option to download mine and I did.


Google Play Music purchases couldn't be exported?


Play Music purchases could be downloaded directly through the service when it was still running.

They were also transferred over to YouTube Music (and I think can be downloaded from there also), and I believe are/were accessible through Takeout as well.


That sounds pretty fine then. I have zero expectations of any Stadia user getting anything once the service goes down.


Yeah, I wouldn't expect users to be able to get anything "out" of Stadia.


At best I can see Google throwing like a year or two worth of some Google One tier service as compensation if they kill it.


>I wasn't really interested in Cyberpunk, but they offered a free controller/chromecast if you preordered, so it's kinda hard to say no.

I think that offer is still active for a bit. I'm tempted to buy it at 60€ and then sell off at least the Chromecast to offset my Stadia rental. Google has a data center in southern Finland (about 150 km away), so maybe I won't even suffer that bad of a latency.


The latency is actually affected more by the codec you’re using. (Surprisingly).

If you make sure you’re using vp9 hardware decoding then you shouldn’t notice it- I didn’t (and I’m right in the middle of the two main European DCs and nowhere near a google PoP)


I want to play it on a Mac so I don't think VP9 hardware decoding is an option for me.


I play on mac, I just installed the Stadia+ chrome extension and it told me I was using vp9, though maybe not hardware decoded? I don't really have a way to verify that for you though.


I don't think hardware VP9 decoding, and therefore 4K, is available on a Mac.


Stadia is bad, fortunately it's an Alphabet's baby so one day they will axe it without warning.


I like it, it works really well for me.

With 600mb fiber the UX is outstanding in my experience. The library was really limited at the beginning but it's slowly starting to take off. It's been a great low-cost entry point to a bunch of games that I was interested in. I can seamlessly play at home on my big screen or even sneak in a quick game at my desk in the office.

Why would anyone desire that it dies? If you don't like it you can ignore it.

Your comment is very low-effort. It's borderline disrespectful to the parent, a dev who has kindly shared some insider knowledge, in that it contributes nothing to their point and merely goes off on a petty tangent.


If you want a superior Google Stadia experience, buy GeForce Now.

It is subscription based like Stadia, but allows you to play games from our Steam account (assuming that game devs haven't blacklisted it from GFN).

You don't need special hardware or premium membership.

> Why would anyone desire that it dies? If you don't like it you can ignore it.

Because it's everything wrong with games industry wrapped in a neat shitty package.

Subscription - checked.

Buying games on that subscription - checked.

DLC on top of that - checked.

Doesn't allow you to transfer games - checked.

Only thing it's missing is a lootbox system.


Just a small nitpick - the subscription to Stadia is not necessary. You can buy a game and play that game without subscription until the service shuts down, assuming you are fine with 1080p.


I imagine GeForce Now can't match Google when it comes to the servers. None of the servers seem particularly close to me (Finland).


From my EU friends, I definitely heard good things about it. Did you actually try or are you just basing that on server's geo location?


Just looking at the server lists. There doesn't really seem to that much geographical variety there. Although Google has not really given us details on where the services are running, at least the graphics in their announcements promised a lot.


Really like GFN, unfortunately the developer backlash renders it pretty useless since I can't play most of the games I want to on it - pretty much only Ubisoft games in my Steam library show up these days. Wanted to play Borderlands 3 - nope, not on GFN. Conveniently on Stadia, though......

I have a new (2020 model) Philips Android TV, and unfortunately GFN has an experience-breaking audio bug on it, and I hazard that it probably won't be fixed anytime soon, if ever, because "it's not supported hardware" despite them developing the Android TV app and it having a really common MediaTek chipset. Don't really want to fork out more money for a Shield after buying a brand new TV!

I tried Shadow last year and I really liked that, despite it being a little pricier. Regretfully cancelled my subscription, so I can't get it back until NEXT JULY according to the preorder page!

What I've tried so far:

- Moonlight (so, local streaming): Best experience, hands down... For local network, and assuming you have a decent computer anyway. So, great if you want to stream from a PC in your office to your living room. If you're lucky enough to get fiber to the home in your city, latency might be low enough and upload speed high enough that you can stream games outside your home. My cable ISP tops out at 10mbps though, so not for me. I use it as proof that there's nothing wrong with my Android TV's hardware though, since it's happy to stream at 4K HDR 60fps H265 from my PC with only ~30ms latency.

- Shadow: Good quality, good virtual PC specs (GTX 1080 baseline), surprisingly little latency, lets you play any game that runs on PC. My friend even managed to play through all of Half-Life Alyx on his Quest using Virtual Desktop streamer on my Shadow instance. Unfortunately your subscription can take _months_ to become active -- might improve in future if the company scales up?

- Stadia (sideloaded to Android TV): Playable. Played a bit of Destiny 2 and Borderlands 3. Both in 4K and HDR. Picture quality a little muddy at times. Latency a bit too high to comfortably play first person shooters, but probably okay in other games.

- GeForce NOW: Playable, but the picture quality was also a bit muddy and the latency was higher than Stadia, and on my TV it suffered from the audio glitch (distorted audio, like the buffer chunk's being played back at 44100 when it should be 48000, or the bit depth is wrong, or something). What really stops me from using it though - disappointing absence of most of my games from its library.

- Parsec, Blacknut: OK, have a bunch of free to play games in their respective libraries. The streams are only like 720p though.


> unfortunately the developer backlash renders it pretty useless since

Counter backlash then. You don't have to support people that don't support GeForce Now over Stadia. GeForce Now is no different than renting some server and streaming to another device.

> - Shadow: Good quality, good virtual PC specs

From what I've heard people are able to play Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX on using GFN (GeForce Now).

> Moonlight

That's interesting, I'm surprised you can't use Steam to stream games. But interesting nonetheless.


> Counter backlash then. You don't have to support people that don't support GeForce Now over Stadia. GeForce Now is no different than renting some server and streaming to another device.

Can't really backlash considering I already own the games of those publishers who initially supported GFN and then pulled their games from it :P I already paid for the Mafia trilogy, Fallout & Elder Scrolls, GTA, Red Dead Redemption series, DOOM, Wolfenstein, Borderlands series, .....

FWIW I paid for Stadia for a month but I wouldn't sink much money into it, either. The games I want to play are mostly missing on Stadia too. Wouldn't pay for either GFN or Stadia at this point.

> From what I've heard people are able to play Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX on using GFN (GeForce Now).

Yup, CD Projekt Red are one of the publishers of AAA games that seem to have no beef with GFN.

> That's interesting, I'm surprised you can't use Steam to stream games. But interesting nonetheless.

Oh, I forgot about Steam Link actually. I've used that too. It was... okay, but I experienced more bugs and couldn't get the same quality I got with Moonlight. Moonlight has higher framerates available (90fps, 120fps) and is more actively maintained than the Steam Link app (the Android TV version, anyway). Moonlight does depend on you having an NVIDIA GPU though.


You can avoid buying new games from publishers that don't allow you to play their games on GFN.

I'm sure they have data analysts that will notice the pattern if enough people are doing this.


Stadia is the most impressive tech recently released, it's clearly the future.

I was very sceptical at first but when I tried Doom 2016 over the wifi on my tv I was realy impressed.

Just think about it for one second, the game runs over the wifi on 30$ Chromecast on my 10y/o TV and it looks great with almost no lag, I'm an avid FPS player and it's really ok lag wise to play on Stadia.


And then it goes away and you don't get refunded.

You have no physical copy, no downloads option and no recourse; you're effed.

And it doesn't have to be the end of Stadia scenario either. You lose access to your account and you are similarly effed, the algorithm decides you are suspicious and, you guessed it, you're effed too.

The idea that you pay for a game and get a video stream is a scam.


The technology is not any different than Steam Link or Playstation NOW. Both of those were too laggy for my taste.


Latency is a dependent on how far away you are from the datacenters and Google does have many datacenters. You can play Destiny 2 for free on Stadia to see what the latency feels like on the service. Also there are differences between games it seems with different games experiencing different amounts of latency. The Division 2 and the Doom games are some of the best games in that regard on Stadia.


I'm running it in the country in the Midwest with 100mbs down on a mesh wifi and it's practically flawless. Not any noticeably different than when I lived in Chicago with a fiber connection.

It's impressive and way better than I thought it would be when they first announced the product.

I recommend people try it out for free and judge for yourself.


As if there wasn't other attempts done before it.


I actually had a lot of fun playing Stadia games.

I think FPS and reaction type games are not it's strengths, but some third person action / adventure games have been super fun. Sometimes I forgot it was not running games locally. Impressive tech.


I've heard mostly positive things from those who have tried it. What turned you off? Latency issues?


I'm turned off by the very idea of paying for access to streaming a game.

The big players are already doing all they can to convince you you don't buy the game when you buy the game. This will make the situation much worse.


I hate to break it to you but since you keep bringing it up.

You don't own your game even if you buy a physical disc. On steam, or any pc digital distribution platform you are paying for a license to play said game. You are always effectively renting the game. Same goes for consoles. In this regard you are getting the same deal on Stadia.

Another thing you seem adamant to impress on anyone who dares suggest they like Stadia is that if the other streaming platforms go down then you still have your pc games available on other services. This is true, but one of the primary benefits of a streaming service is that you no longer need expensive hardware. If a user decides to use only streaming services then they are unlikely to maintain a decent gaming rig. So over time this becomes a moot point. If you have and maintain a good gaming pc then why would you even bother with ANY streaming platform as they will always be somewhat inferior.


Do you also abstain from going to movie theatres?


I unironically enjoy the experience, because until I can replicate the movie theatre in my living room this is what I'm paying for.

I go mainly to the festivals, premieres, sometimes there is a prelection before the screening, or Q&A with the director.

As an aside, this year I enjoyed an Asian film festival at home and was able to see more movies than any other year... 2020 is weird.

I recognize that streaming has its place in the world, but I'd hate it to be the only option, like it is in Stadia model. Also, if you don't buy the game then you shouldn't have to pay like you'd be buying one.


>Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.

There was a lot of bad feedback after W2 was released on Linux. It was full price, but full of glitches, bugs, crashes, unexpected dying, invisible sword... and this list can go on. A lot of users released anger on CDP who took offence and said they're not doing anything for linux any more.

From what you're saying, CP2077 is more closer to native desktop Linux than W2 is now after years, so CDP could drill into this market of fanboys and try to regain trust of the community.


> anger on CDP who took offence and said they're not doing anything for linux any more.

I have seen no such statement by CDProjekt RED. Only employees of the porting company decried the criticism they got.


I dont know how much you know of the politics of the situation, but I'm curious if what is stopping games from being released on Linux is due to the lack of anticheat software?


If I have a 2019 Macbook Pro and want to play Cyberpunk 2077 without buying a PS4, should I use Stadia or Geforce NOW? Is the MBP powerful enough to run it natively on Windows?

What controller should I buy?


They are imo very different services and both have trial time.

Test them both and decide for yourself.

I personally prefer nvidias service because I actually play games in my steam library. Stadia has few games and you're always forced to use their services. No way to play locally even if you have decent hardware


Ok, so I buy Cyberpunk 2077 through Steam and then Nvidia NOW can stream it to me?


Exactly.

As of today, you can also buy on gog.com and stream from Geforce Now. Gog releases DRM-free versions of games, so that's worth supporting.


Ah, I got it through Steam as I already had a Steam account. Been playing around with HL2 and the input lag is there but not horrific. I probably wouldn't use this for multiplayer. Just need to source a gamepad of some description.


Both MBP and PS4 aren't capable enough to run it without serious problems (PS4) or at all (MBP).

Best solution is cloud streaming, geforce now seems more capable.


> Sadly we never released the game on Linux to the public.

Then sadly I won't purchase it at full price. I expect a full experience at full price.


I was just playing it on a haswell machine running Arch. But I was on stadia so I was cheating :)

That being said I like stadia. No hardware investment, play anywhere. Works on Linux Chromium. No downloads or patches. I don’t typically revisit games so I’m not really concerned that in 5 years it may go poof.


Why Stadia instead of e.g. Geforce Now? You can play your existing purchased library via other streaming platforms, and you can switch to playing them locally if you ever buy a gaming PC without having to repurchase them. With Stadia you're locked in to having to buy your games again if you ever want to play on a different platform.

(not trying to criticize, just curious about the differences)


>Why Stadia instead of e.g. Geforce Now?

For me it is the game I most want to play in this fashion, Elder Scrolls Online, isn't available on Geforce Now, but is on Stadia. I kind of remember it was in the category of games that were launch/beta titles for Geforce Now, but withdrew from the service shortly there after.

Not sure what is going on there with IP rights and whatever, but I don't really care since Google/Stadia worked it out.

>You can play your existing purchased library

Sort of. I notice that Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Immortal Fenix Rising are available via Geforce Now if you bought them via Epic or Uplay, but not Steam. Earlier AC games are fine, so this is probably a "latest release held back if you bought on Steam" thing.

But the thing is, I don't want to pull out a chart of who supports what and deal with this BS. Stadia routes around this problem since their store sells games while Geforce Now doesn't and instead sells you cloud access to another storefront, and that storefront can withhold rights.

I totally get that, any particular game might have its own plans for cloud or mobile or whatever - for example another favorite of mine, Slay the Spire, in the process of rolling out mobile versions, does not appear in the blessed Geforce Now list. No doubt because Megacrit doesn't want to undercut future sales. So I can't stream StS to my phone because they want to sell me another copy.

Nevertheless it's a game in my library, one of many, that Geforce Now doesn't let me play. Saying Geforce Now lets you "play your existing purchased library" is not fully accurate.

edited to remove extraneous info


Valhalla & Immortal are not on steam. They were made Epic exclusives (with an exception for uPlay of course due to being the developer's platform). So that example doesn't really count. I'd imagine they will come to Steam eventually.


If they are like me, I've never even heard of Geforce prior to your comment ... but am very aware of Stadia ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Bingo! What on earth is that


It's bundled with the nvidia shield. I played witcher 3 and it was well within the realms of good enough given I had little other option.

You wouldn't catch me trying to play multiplayer on it though, and obviously playing locally on a high performance machine would be better.

Main difference vs stadia is I had to own the game, though there were some free ones.


This does seem to be the problem. Stadia is basically the worst game streaming service, but they make up for it in marketing budget and googles existing name recognition. Unless I'm missing something - which is why I was asking the question.


Meanwhile I've tried every streaming service outside of Amazon's Luna and by far Stadia has been the best experience.

You can buy games and just play them, 1080p60 on hardware you never have to pay for.

Or pay Pro and get 4K, HDR, 5.1 surround sound. Which actually works great.

Stadia has a ton of hate from the gaming community it seems though, articles came out the first few months bashing it but I've had at worst visual hiccups on a wireless mesh network...


> You can buy games and just play them, 1080p60 on hardware you never have to pay for.

Honestly, this worries me the most. There doesn’t seem to be a way to transfer the licenses out of stadia, which means, even though you “bought the game“, you’re still at googles mercy for your continued enjoyment of the game. What if they decide that the hardware costs are too much for Google, and you now have to pay a monthly fee? What if they decide that stadia is not the success they hoped for and close it down (which Google is not known for doing at all…). Unless there are clear migrations paths away from stadia, I’d stay away from it because Google have shown that they are not afraid to change/EOL any of their products with no regards to their existing customers (just look at their lifetime free photos service, etc)


I agree, for the most part, but this is a separate problem to what the grandparent post was talking about. This is a common problem to most streaming services (except, as noted, GeForce Now) while GP was claiming that Stadia was the worst game streaming service. Honestly, of the ones I've tried, it's the best; games look good, perform well, and control with no noticable latency.

Now, why do I buy games on Stadia if I agree with your point about not owning the game? Well, portability is sometimes nice. I can throw a Chromecast in my bag and play a game anywhere. It's a supplement to how I game, but I don't think it will ever be the primary way.


One of the bigger differences to me are the limitations of Geforce Now's free plan. You have a queue to start a game, and a one hour session limit unless you pay up 5$/mo. So Stadia is cheaper at that point.


since i preordered its coming with a "free" controller and chromecast, so i can play on the couch once it arrives. i assume they do this to lure me into purchasing additional stadia content and since this has been so smooth i just may.


You can play Stadia and PS Now games? How does it work?


Hmpf, play anywhere seems to only apply if you are in one of the supported countries [0]. I was getting my hopes up but it appears Australia is not supported at this point.

[0] https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9566513?hl=en

> United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary


Also India. Electronics are severely taxed and building a gaming rig costs a fortune over here. Stadia would be a blessing.


it is pretty impressive, but the lag really kills games for me.


I was actually really impressed with the Stadia lag when playing Destiny using a Chromecast and the Stadia controller. I saw image compression but the lag and framerate were very good. Not just playable but good.


That then kills the "no hardware" argument though.

Afaik the Stadia controller talks to the service directly and not to the chromecast. Any other normal setup will be more laggy than the Stadia Controller + Chromecast setup.


If you play on any platform with the official Stadia controller, it also connects the same way (unless you're connected via USBC).

There's no bluetooth with the Stadia gamepad, so it's either wired via USBC or WiFi direct to Stadia servers.

You can bring your own bluetooth gamepad if ya want, though.


probably depends on the game, for things like this, probably less of a detriment.


It depends on the gamer too. I played around with various game streaming services. The games are definitely playable, and look good, but the lag is in there. Outside of fastpaced FPS games, most gamers will probably never notice it. If you are used to 30 fps gaming, then it will feel normal to you. But if you run a 144 Hz monitor at home, streaming will feel sluggish and delayed in comparison.


I find I'm fine with it if I'm using a controller, but it's much more noticeable when mouse aiming.


You can check the status and user reports on this site: https://www.protondb.com/

This is the report for Cyberpunk 2077: https://www.protondb.com/app/1091500

When there are bugs, you usually find also corresponding GitHub issues. E.g. here for NVIDIA issues with Cyberpunk 2077: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/4450


Key caveat here is that it only works on AMD cards currently.


Aah that’s a shame... but not surprising given Nvidias track record with Linux drivers


My, how the times have changed.


Its been like this for about the past 5 years since AMDGPU was added to the kernel. AMD cards are better for everything except compute where they failed to support the 5700 series.


Compute is pretty bad all around no matter what card, but it is egregious that their flagships aren't even supported by ROCm to begin with.


>AMD cards are better for everything except compute

Ive heard this, but Im not convinced. Don't they have more memory, so while the processing is slower there is less fetching of memory outside of the card?

Of course this would require custom compute kernels for same throughput like matrix multiplication, but still.


it is a driver and software problem with compute, the hardware is fine. things just don't work right


What does that mean? I have an RX5700 card in my Linux computer. I'm not very interested in benchmarks but it works well so far. I mostly play simple games like Dead Cells, Caves of Qud and such.


It means nothing at all for gaming. The 5700/xt is a very good card for gaming on linux.

Where it fails is things that use the compute functions (not vulkan) like blender and many neural network tools. Basically AMDs version of cuda called ROCm. They only support ROCm on a few of their cards while nvidia has cuda on everything on day one.


How I would like to use the OpenGL 4.1 support of fxglr instead of "here OpenGL 3.3 and not complain" from the open source driver.


radeonsi supports OpenGL 4.6 just fine.


Next ROCm is supposed to support RDNA1/2.

It's supposed to be out, and still isn't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Compute sucks on AMD no matter the OS. CUDA is so far ahead.


Runs on nvidia too but nvidia takes a bigger performance hit


edit: just realised i replied to a comment i didn't intend to..!

RTX2080Ti, ryzen 3800X, 32gb RAM, uninteresting vanilla ubuntu 20.04 install.

i bought the game at midnight not thinking it’d work straight away, and it “just worked”. completely unexpected.

that said:

* frame rate is.. less than ideal (managing 20-40fps). i can hear the GPU isn’t too stressed because there’s basically no coil whine, so i expect this will improve over time. i set it to highest settings, though.

* the character selection step had the player model under-illuminated. not impossible to use, but a lot more challenging. also the colour selectors didn’t look right.

edit: some more infos,

- i'm _not_ using the experimental proton build, rather GloriousEggroll[1]'s custom proton build. it's usually a bit ahead of proton in terms of support, and, most importantly for me, allows raw mouse input for games.

- i have ran on both nvidia driver 450.80.02 and 455.45.01, and i've not really noticed a difference.

[1]: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases


Comments in op seem to indicate some are able to run on NV cards.


Nvidia here, not quite there yet.


Well, at least my Windows 10 trial has a few more weeks left.


Does Windows stop running at that point, or does it just nag you with the text on the desktop?


There are some minor restrictions in addition to the nags. I think you can't change your wallpaper and some other silly stuff. You might also be limited in the types of updates you get.


As far as I know you get all updates (and definitely all security ones). The "trial" never expires. If you're okay with the watermark and not being able to customise your desktop, you can use the trial forever.


Is it illegal, or contract-breaking etc., to run the "trial" forever?


In theory, you would most likely be in violation of your license to utilize Microsoft’s intellectual property. In practice, they don’t seem to care much. I suspect most of their Windows-related profits come from enterprises and OEMs.


Do Microsoft even still "care" about Windows these days? I speculate they will eventually make it freemium to hook new users so they grow up and subscribe to their real cash cow - Office.


According to their 2018 reporting, Windows and Xbox is actually making more money than Office. In reality, they have an almost even three way split between Productivity, Azure, and Personal.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/19/heres-how-microsof...


5 years ago they changed their reporting segments and buried Windows in with devices because they knew which way it was heading

Low-margin high-volume sales of Xbox and Surface etc. really distort that segment to the point where it's almost useless to attempt to derive what Windows is worth anymore

This reflects Satyas move and shifts away from Balmers attempts to claw onto Windows as a profit center


They probably care if someone does it large scale, but for individuals it seems fairly clear that they'd prefer people running a current Windows they didn't pay for over them sticking with an outdated version or switching elsewhere.


EULAs are not contracts.


> EULAs are not contracts.

Literally the first sentence on wikipedia:

>An end-user license agreement (EULA, /ˈjuːlə/) is a legal contract entered into between a software developer or vendor and the user of the software

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement


Contracts have negotiated terms. You can't redline an EULA.


Contracts require both parties to agree not negotiation. I think your idea that EULA are not contracts is wishful thinking.


>Contracts have negotiated terms

Is that a mandatory requirement for a contract? There's this, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract#Contrac...


Yes and no.

For a contract to be binding, there has to be consideration [1] from both parties.

[1]: https://www.australiancontractlaw.com/contractlaw/formation-...

>Consideration is the price that is asked by the promisor in exchange for their promise – the price for a promise.

>In many jurisdictions consideration is not an essential element of a contract – it is sufficient that parties have reached a binding agreement. However, the common law requires that (subject to limited exceptioins), for an agreement to be binding, the promisee (or promisees) must provide consideration (payment of some kind) for the promise they have received.

>As a result, gratuitous promises are generally not enforceable.


Consideration doesn't have to be monetary, in the case of the Windows EULA Microsoft are receiving someone who may or may not go on to buy other Microsoft products, while the end-user is receiving a copy of Windows they can use for the period of the trial.


Ok, but the question is, would a legally-knowledgeable, unbiased person say I’ve done something legally “wrong” if I use Windows without entering a license key?


I am sure many will applaud this but it encourage developers to not bother with an actual native build as it tells them that Linux users will be happy with "proton compatible". Games don't run as well IME (even ones where they claim it runs as well or better). I've given up with Games on Linux.


The alternative is "games don't run on Linux at all". The Linux desktop market is tiny as is, the alternative isn't developers suddenly investing in native Linux ports. Even the more popular Macs OS gets severely neglected.


I don't think it makes sense for developers of games like these to even support macOS. Apple's ARM chips are pretty fast but their GPUs aren't capable of rendering intensive 3D games at native resolutions yet, partially because Apple's displays are so high-res. Previous generations Apple devices all had GPUs in them that I honestly consider lacking for the price you pay for the hardware.

The best macOS gaming rigs I can think off are the mac Pros, but those aren't what most people are running macOS on.

At least Linux users can use the powerful NVIDIA cards in most of their machines. I suppose it's possible to hook up an RX 6800 through Thunderbolt, but that's quite a bulky and expensive solution that even fewer people use.

You can see this in the Steam survey. There are more macOS gamers than Linux gamers, but the gamers on macOS are almost always running on an Intel GPU whereas Linux gamers are much more common to run a dedicated GPU from AMD or NVIDIA.

It makes sense to port Tabletop Simulator or Cooking Simulator to macOS, but for Cyberpunk you're just not finding enough customers. Where Linux lacks the stability of the software stack, macOS lacks the hardware to run the stable-ish software stack on.

With CD:PR being generally reasonably DRM-free, I do wonder how much "hidden" Linux customers they have in their sales. Trying to get AAA-games from Steam to run in Linux is usually a fight with DRM software and the only way to win that fight is to pretend to be running Windows. If you can download the game from GOG without DRM, like CP2077, you'll probably end up with more Linux customers than other studios manage to gather and your OS statistics will make more sense. There's no way in hell that Linux will get any significant margin on the gaming market any time soon, but if the market will ever begin shifting, we'll probably see it in a studio like CD:PR.


>Apple's ARM chips are pretty fast but their GPUs aren't capable of rendering intensive 3D games at native resolutions yet, partially because Apple's displays are so high-res.

I don't think people really care about running the games at native resolution and the Mac Mini doesn't even have a native resolution.


I can confirm that I do care about native res as a mac user and heavy gamer (but I mostly end up gaming on windows for obvious reasons).

Scaling has never failed to look utterly terrible for me. Scaling from eg 1920x1080 -> 2880x1800 looks utterly awful, even on a 15" display. It's not so bad on 3D rendered titles for the 3D content, but for 2D elements such as the GUI it's awful.


Most modern games allow for the rendering resolution to be different from the resolution the UI runs at. Usually, "even" values like half the native resolution tend to look pretty good.

The feature is usually called "render scale" or similar.


Like the sibling poster said, try setting 1440x900 as the game resolution. It seems counter-intuitive, but it looks better.


I have a feeling those Steam hardware surveys are total bullshit. I've been using Steam on two Linux systems for the past several years and never got a single request to fill a survey, not once. This experience mirrors what I read from other Linux users.

But when I reboot into Windows to spend a couple of hours in that one game which refuses to work under Proton, I immediately receive a request to fill a survey. I've seen at least a half dozen of them in that very same time frame.


I don't know what to tell you. I've gotten two on my Linux laptop over the last while, two on my Windows setup and one on my Linux install on my desktop.


Anecdote but I get asked yearly and I've been running steam on Linux and windows for the past 11 years (Linux much later after this).


I get yearly prompts as well, on each of my 4 OS, only one of them being Windows. I might skew the results a tad !


MacOS is neglected because Macs don't have the video capability. I can't speak to the capabilities of the new M1-based machines, but historically no Macbook or Mini had the hardware for 3D-intensive games. Statistically-speaking, there are zero Mac Pro users, and none of their other hardware is up to the task.

I'm a Unix nerd. My first PC ran Linux for years before I ever installed Windows on anything. I've maintained a Windows-based game PC for the past 20 years solely for gaming. It's my most powerful and capable hardware. I wish I could get something remotely as powerful from Apple (for a comparable price) because I prefer MacOS as my daily-driver desktop for professional purposes.


Presumably Stadia is using a native Linux build


You can also watch someone else play on Twitch with a native built browser.


> The alternative is "games don't run on Linux at all".

I would prefer that over false hope.


I think it's a decent start to get through the chicken and egg problem (there are not enough linux players so devs don't bother and people don't switch completely to linux because there are games they like which don't work) and if proton brings enough people to linux slowly we might get through this hurdle. If let's say 30% of gamers are linux users the devs might care to do a native port even though they don't right now. I only use linux and mostly only play natively supported games but sometimes also through proton also I think if you play using proton steam reports as a linux user.


To be fair, there's also developers that technically release an actual native linux build with bugs and then offer zero support for it. At least games on Proton still get worked on by the Proton developers.


And often it only works on the 2016 LTS release of ubuntu because they depend on specific packages that happen to be on that version of ubuntu and any support requests get ignored with the response "We support ubuntu 16.4".

At least when you use proton you can whinge at a whole community of developers and typically one of them will care enough to fix it. These days I find for a lot of the games I play, proton is literally flawless to the point if you didn't tell me, I wouldn't know it isn't native.


And often the "native" build is using the developer (or porter) closed source buggy wine-like compatibility layer (sometime seven using Windows PE binaries directly). Wine is usually superior especially in the long term.

Some native ports are high quality though, like everything Croateam does and a some of Feral ports.

At the end of the day the only thing that it is important is support. Community supported wine/proton is vastly better than an unsupported "native" version.


> everything Croateam does

You mean eveything Croteam did. They stopped doing Linux ports after Alen Ladavac left for Stadia.


Oh! I did not know that. That's unfortunate. Hopefully they are still committed on vulkan.


As rjn said, it is also a way to lure players to Linux. I've personally switched three weeks ago, and I'm not looking back: every game I want to play works, ranging from almost flawlessly to just perfect. All thanks to Proton, and of course the decades-long efforts of Wine.


> As rjn said, it is also a way to lure players to Linux.

It has the opposite effect (on me at least).

> I've personally switched three weeks ago, and I'm not looking back: every game I want to play works, ranging from almost flawlessly to just perfect.

"Works for me" logic. Every game you want to play works. The games I wanna play don't, or they do so with resorting to tonnes of hacks. In the end I just say sod it and reboot in Windows.


I don't understand your logic: you'd rather there be no games on Linux at all instead of some working well, some with hacks, and some not working?

There is a hypothetical reality where all game developers target Linux natively, but in our flawed reality where economics exist, Proton is a godsend

Edit: regarding the "works for me", I see your point but what else would I do? Stay on Windows because some games, not the ones I play, don't work on Linux? Of course I'm switching.


> I don't understand your logic: you'd rather there be no games on Linux at all instead of some working well, some with hacks, and some not working?

Other than the false dichotomy. Yes. I would rather not have the game on Linux, than have to rely on proton.

> Edit: regarding the "works for me", I see your point but what else would I do? Stay on Windows because some games, not the ones I play, don't work on Linux? Of course I'm switching.

Dual boot. It takes seconds to boot to reboot into another OS, drives are dirt cheap. There is also GPU passthrough (which I am going to try with a Geforce 1030 or similar card).


> Yes. I would rather not have the game on Linux, than have to rely on proton.

So just ignore it and don't play the game.


The context in which we are speaking is whether proton is a suitable replacement. It cannot be ignored in this context.

The point is that people pretend everything works perfectly, when it doesn’t. On some games literally moving your mouse out of bounds can crash the game. In other situations there is performance problems that go much deeper than average framerate. None of this is mentioned and it gives users a false impression and is ultimately misleading (I've had gamers ask me if they can ditch Windows for Ubuntu and they had no experience with Linux before).


>I've given up with Games on Linux.

Proton is pretty amazing. Because of diversity in "Linux" (lots of distros to test) having it is better than not.


>lots of distros to test

Nobody forces developers to test under anything but Ubuntu. The community will work around any remaining problems on other distributions if necessary.


You should really try again if you haven't tried in the past month or two. Steam recently released proton 5.13 into the list of proton releases, and since then, a great percent of games that didn't work in earlier 5.* releases have started working. Including Doom Eternal and now this game. Guessing they were prepping for this game.


I might try GPU pass through. Proton is too much faffing and I stream games a lot on discord which barely works on Linux.


I think it might be good. As I believe steam count as Linux sales even through proton. Kinda solving the chicken egg problem for linux games.


No it doesn't solve the chicken and egg problem. Because the games are just being tested to work on proton.


If a game runs fine with Proton, what does it matter if it's not native? Either way you get an experience that's tested against a Linux based system.


They don't work properly. Things like alt-tabbing out of the game crashes the game for example, or performance with streaming is utter shite. So it doesn't run fine.

The few games I have native linux ports for, I can alt-tab out of and I get consistend performance.


I know they don't, that's why I wrote "if". I wanted to express that I don't see the difference between a perfectly fine native Linux proprietary build, and a perfectly well executed, proton-backed user experience. I think I get what you're saying, that currently Linux builds behave better than whatever proton can provide, and I agree.


I don't get why more games aren't being directly released on Ubuntu considering that Vulcan now seems to be even better than DirectX??


Native clients almost always have worse performance so we dont lose anything.


My thoughts after 3 hours on play, on Linux.

- Worked out of the box. Purchased the game on Steam, and ran it using Proton experimental (a version you can pick via Steam settings > Steam play > Run other titles with: "Proton experimental"). Running with a prior version of Proton throws a Qt error.

- The announcement mentions AMD cards but I have an NVIDIA GPU card and it worked just fine. I used the NVIDIA driver version 455.

- Changing graphics settings or switching windows cause major graphical artifacts, which are fixed restarting the game.

- Noticeable sound glitches sometimes, but the game is playable. Tried adjusting pulseaudio priority, a trick that helps with these kinds of issues sometimes, but it didn't work.

- Performance is more than OK for me, and I am not using 2020 hardware. I wouldn't try running on 4k + high graphic settings unless you have a high-end box.

- During these 3 hours, the game crashed twice.


For those talking about a native port, the drama involving The Witcher 2 native port and the absolute negative reaction from Linux users along with the disappointing progress of Steam Machines had made CDPR hesitant to develop for the platform.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-witcher-3-didnt-c...


But they did develop for the platform - there is a Stadia version which essentially is a Linux runtime.


There has been absolutely no word from CDPR as to why they did not port any of their other games. Both commonts in your article are from a developer from the porting company, not CDPR.


TW2 port was a bad eON wrap job wasn't it?


Apparently it was but that doesn't justify the harassment described in the article. Hate mail and stuff like that. I guess people got too emotional and both parties ended up with a bad taste in their mouths.


This is a person running the game on Linux, on an NVIDIA card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBH0iY-Jx6U

According to the video description the low framerate is due to the streamer OBS setup rather than game performance.

Some people report that the game works better with the 455 version of the NVIDIA driver.


I am running the game now on Linux without issues. Had to select Proton experimental as the Steam play version to make it work.


I had some crashes that were fixed by lowering some settings, and still a crash every so often where I have to kill the game, then restart steam. Small price to pay to play something on linux I've been looking forward to so much.

Nvidia 455 on proton experimental arch


Where as I can't get it to run at all with proton 13.4 and nvidia-450

Where's proton experimental?


In Steam, in the Steam > Settings menu, go to Steam Play and select "Run other titles with: Proton Experimental"


Righteous. It'd probably help if I was using the 455 driver too heh.


Yeah weird. Pop_OS 20.10 with a 1070ti and the nvidia-455 driver doesn't get me past the initial launcher. That's annoying alright.


I can't launch Steam with 455.


You have to install 32bit driver libraries to run steam. On Debian/Ubuntu/Mint it's libnvidia-gl-455:i386 package.

I couldn't run steam after upgrading to 455, and noticed it was because CUDA and some other unofficial display driver PPA in my sources.list was blocking simultaneous 64bit and 32bit install. After removing those, I could install the package again.


Nice work by vkd3d-proton and Mesa developers! It's not perfect yet, but it's a great start. There are some bugs to fix in vkd3d-proton still (various glitches).

And CDPR can release the game for Linux natively, since they already did the heavy lifting of releasing it for Stadia. At the very least they can add the Vulkan renderer to the Windows version.


Good news, but for best experience it would be wise to wait a few months until most of bugs in the game are fixed. Then probably buy the game on sale.


I've always wondered. Games usually have pretty low kernel access. What doesn anti-cheat do to detect its not running in native Windows, assuming we ignore the outright obvious signs that may be able to be obfuscated

Ditto for UWP. Seems destined to stay Win10 Only


Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't have DRM or anti-cheat.


I was going to disagree with you because I only read a headline and moved on, but it appears that only the Review copies of the game were protected by anti-cheat[0].

[0]: https://torrentfreak.com/cyberpunk-2077s-use-of-denuvo-to-pr...


When TF says something positive about DRM, it’s a good time to double-check what is going on ;)


anti-cheat should not exist for single player games.


Most games don't need kernel access. Which is good as it enables security aware users to play games.


Anti-cheat goes pretty deep, actually: some games, such as Valorant and R6, do VM detection as part of their anti-cheat checks.


I had the distinct displeasure of running into Riot Vanguard (Valorant's anti-cheat engine) just yesterday. I had to start fiddling with bcdedit to get my install of Windows 'compliant' enough for it to even activate. Monstrously invasive in my opinion.


Not quite. I tested this and it crashed about 15 minutes in. Also there are graphical errors like missing faces, no sound, T-posing NPC's, etc. I'm using both the latest stable Proton and Experimental.


The launch build of Cyberpunk is still very buggy, in some cases Proton may be accurately reproducing bugs that would have happened anyway on Windows.


Their future two year roadmap includes a multiplayer version. I suspect it will take them that long to fix all their bugs.


> I suspect it will take them that long to fix all their bugs.

It's long been the norm to release a game in a buggy state and patch it up later, to the point that I'm surprised so many people are still willing to buy on (or even before) release day.

I'd rather wait 8 weeks, say, than be an unpaid tester.


I've seen that a few times today on Windows, along with a TON of UI glitches. I don't even bother with the hacking UI -- it doesn't register button presses, especially in that weird hacking attack where you need to select a hex code from a character matrix in a limited amount of time. It's easier to just shoot the enemies anyway.


I'm also noticing a massive performance drop (in comparison to Windows) on my RTX3080. Which is amplified even more by lack of DLSS option.


Cyberpunk 2077 compiles and runs perfectly fine natively on Debian, but it lacks a renderer (there was OpenGL but it was dropped years ago and Vulkan is a very specific implementation for Stadia only).


CDPR owns GOG, a Steam competitor. Steam and GOG worked together to help bring a big game to Linux. You just love to see that.


anyone gotten the GOG version working? lutris was a flop, innoextract-ing the installer now to try adding it to steam manually


You can add the GOG executable to steam as an external game and run it through Proton that way. Bit of an odd setup I suppose, but it ought to work.


I didn't even get it to launch by doing this. but I am a newb to this kind of thing. I am hoping the direct DL from GOG instead of from gog galaxy will work better for me and run proton in lutris with it.

I tried to run Innoextract on the 'Launch Cyberpunk 2077.ink' but I couldn't get it to work either.


I kinda got it working, ish; I ran:

     innoextract --gog setup_cyberpunk_2077_build_3214677change_4155897_\(64bit\)_\(43299\).exe --language en-US
then added bin/x64/Cyberpunk2077.exe to Steam, then got it to start with Proton-5.21-GE-1. It looks like there's a big performance hit w/ nvidia-drivers 455.28-r1, though, and it's pretty crashy (~1 crash / 15 minutes until I gave up).


No it crashes constantly for me. Created my character and now the game won’t load. Resinstalled and it still doesn’t work.


Impressive that CD Projekt accommodated them. In the bigger scheme of thing proton is decidedly niche


Shocked at the amount of HNers still playing video games!


"Still" as in "it's a kids thing"? Or as in "it's known to be bad for you"? Or maybe "it's archaic"?

Regardless I disagree.


Still? You mean I should spend that time building my next billion dollar business instead?


Yep.


Why are you shocked? Video games are an awesome way to unwind and get lost in other worlds. They can appeal to folks of all ages and backgrounds.


Why?


Awesome if proton can make something like cyberpunk work on day 1, why not others? Why do they have to pretend theirs is some mythical special sauce unable to work on Linux ?

That said, why don't these mmo games give a Linux mode ? Pubg for example has mobile app, a lite app and a desktop lite app based on mobile. They are the same but they are matched with similar people only. Apply the same here. Give Linux users option to play the game, without the anti cheat and only match with similar Linux users. I get to deal with any potential cheaters


> some mythical special sauce unable to work on Linux

I think it's the other way around, if you have a software company full of Windows and console programmers, you now need to get some of them to learn how to build and deploy a binary Linux app that runs on all major Linux distros and configurations, or you need to hire some who already can. How many game engine/deploy developer salaries can you afford on the income from all of the Linux users?


there was last time an appimage thing where they packaged a specific working wine and it should work everywhere all the time


According to ProtonDB, 40% of the top 10 games are "borked". So if Proton is a serious attempt at making everything work, why do 40% of the top 10 games still not work at all? Clearly there are some Windows APIs which WINE/Proton can't emulate yet. So now your developers have to specifically avoid those syscalls and system libraries. What if a third-party library you want to use uses those syscalls? Now you need to work with the vendor to get them changed. Okay... as if that isn't bad enough... Only 20% of the top 10 games are "gold" meaning they work 100% correctly, with some tweaks. Okay, so now you have to tell users what those tweaks are, or they might refund. Never mess with an angry Linux user! And then, 20% of games work "okay" meaning there are glitches that don't affect gameplay. But... you now have to field support calls from users who see these glitches and think their game is borked. And if you're wondering why I went with the "top 10" list and not the "top hundred", it's because most Linux gamers I've seen complaining about the lack of Linux ports are complaining about the AAA top 10 games, not the simplistic 2D tower defense games. Packaging a game that already works great in Proton is beside the point.


Because they put approximately 0 thought or care in to supporting linux. There are hardly any linux users who would have got the game anyway compared to windows and half of them will still buy it and reboot to play it.


Cyberpunk 2077 is a single-player game.


PUBG - a game where you need at least 50 players for a match - would be quiet empty when you're only playing with Linux players.


Why would you assume that they wouldn't be able to play with Windows players??


OP said:

> Give Linux users option to play the game, without the anti cheat and only match with similar Linux users.


It's a shame they went 1st person. I know that some people have a different opinion (e.g. [1]) but unfortunately, I immediately get motion sickness with any 1st-person game, but curiously not with 3rd person games.

I loved The Witcher, and was really psyched when Cyberpunk 2077 was first announced. Kinda bumped that I won't be able to play it now, but I guess such is life.

[1] https://www.thegamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-first-person-shooter...


Yep, I'd also love a third person mode for this game. Not even for motion sickness, it just feels wasteful to put so much effort into character creation and then basically never see your character during gameplay.


I disagree. I personally prefer first person in games, and first person only games. My steam library is almost completely dominated by first person games... but some games clearly have been built for a certain perspective, wether that is first or third, and I consider cyberpunk to be one of them made for first person. Especially when it comes to multiplayer, thirdperson is so often abused as a mechanic, and there are other issues I could cite, that my main criticism of this comment is why should devs change their entire design just to suit someone who has an edge case issue?

That said, I never really thought about first person causing sickness for some people, so my condolences for the vast swath of amazing games you must miss out on.


Thanks, and yes, it is totally annoying. There's tons of games I'd love to actually play but just can't.

By the way, I agree with your assessment that some games are simply better suited for a first person perspective. I don't know if I perhaps created a wrong impression before, but I have never said that game devs should change their designs just so folks like myself can play all games under the sun (although jumping through hoops to tailor to small minorities is very much en vogue these days in other fields).

For Cyberpunk 2077 specifically, it's just a bit disappointing for me personally because I am a huge fan of The Witcher, and I'm sure a sci-fi RPG story could have been told using a similar mechanic. But, yes, it would have been a different game -- sadly, one that I could have actually played.

I also liked the old Resident Evil titles, and that series has now turned to first person too. O tempora, o mores!


Maybe mods will make it a reality in cyberpunk soon enough. I know that I,ve been planning on trying a witcher 3 playthrough with the first person mod.


I know it's unrealistic because it probably adds a lot to development time, but I really wish more games would allow both 1st and 3rd person perspectives (i.e. Skyrim).

There are two highly acclaimed AAA titles in my library not being played (fortunately bought on sale) that I just can't get into because I have the opposite problem-- they are only in 3rd person, and it totally kills immersion for me.


Getting motion sickness from FPS is an interesting issue I don't see mentioned very often.

I have this problem when I play an FPS after a long time of not touching any, but it goes away after a few sessions.

I suspect input to reaction latency might play a huge role, as it does with VR.


Interesting, I know quite a number of people who have motion sickness issues. I find in general they just don't tend to play games, or at least 3D games, so much, so I guess it doesn't come up all that often.


I suppose my parent post got downvoted because it is strictly speaking OT. Fair enough, but thanks anyway to the folks who took the time to write interesting replies.




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