BraceYourselfGames: Hi all! I'm Ryan Clark, the creator of Crypt of the NecroDancer.
I'm a big supporter of Linux games, and every independent game I've created (8 so far) has had a Linux version. Hopefully you can see that I'm on your side :) However, I'll let you know that I make Linux games only because I want to support Linux gamers. Less than 1% of the revenue from my games comes from Linux, and yet more than 10% of the technical support issues come from Linux. For small games and small companies like ours, that 1% of revenue just isn't enough to justify the effort of creating a Linux and supporting a Linux build.
Instead, we do this because we want to support Linux gamers. As a result, it is always a bit disheartening to have Linux gamers get upset at us, despite our best efforts. (In the "Release: Crypt of the NecroDancer" thread, one user even suggested that we have our heads up our asses.)
We've been working on the GoG version of the game ever since we launched on Steam. It has literally taken us that long to work out all of the kinks. (We expected it to only take a few days!) It has been a slog. So once we finally got it working on Win+Mac and realized that there is no Linux version of Galaxy, we were faced with a choice: Spend even MORE time to rework the Linux version to remove Galaxy, the leaderboards, the achievements, and deliver a crippled version of the game, or we could wait until Galaxy comes to Linux and use the same code base as Win+Mac, and deliver the best possible version of the game.
I can certainly understand your frustration that our game is not yet available on Linux! But please do try to see things from our side, too. We are a small company. We want to support Linux gamers, despite the fact that it makes little financial sense for us to do so. We intend to post a Linux build if/when Galaxy becomes available on Linux. We hope that you can forgive that delay.
Thank you!
Well, I'm a programmer as well, so how hard can this be:
1. Search for "require AchievementCruftLib", require "SocialBullShit"
2. remove said lines,
3. Search for Do.Achievement({parameters})
4. Write two lines of code: NOP; Return(0)
user@devbox:~$ make compile
Voila, you'll have a ballast free, DRM-free version of your game.
Now that's a lot of effort, right?
If it won't work along those lines, you have your development back to front, making things monolithic where they should be modular.
Pardon my "French( sorry French people, it's just an English expression)" here, but the deregatory naming of those libraries is exactly how many Linux customers will view your product.
I'm certainly not alone here and I have bought a lot of games, embracing the independent voices at GOG, rather Than the FaceBlock And Twitcher crowd.