Will we get Witcher 3 on Linux with Vulcan API?

And for windows too :) Vulkan is awesome!

No never.

Linux PC video games market on Steam is at 0.74% and on gog.com it's probably at like 0.90%. So a total of close to 2%.

For AAA video games 2% of a market is not good enough when you spend hundreds of millions of dollars (USD) for both developing the video games and marketing the video games.

Vulkan is also trash at least on Windows DOOM I can't get a steady 60FPS or 200FPS, while with DirectX 11 I can get a steady 60FPS in the PC version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Battlefield 1, and in Overwatch.

If you really want to play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt just get Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit already.

Linux will never get the huge market share of 5% or even 10% of the PC video games market.

I already know there will be Linux users to counter my comment with saying Linux is growing and Linux has a big PC video games market share and a poll of 24 people equals 24% or something like that.

Lets see 2017 AAA video games releasing for sale for PC that are Windows only that have DirectX 11 and DirectX 12.

Possibly Age of Empires Definitive Edition

Call of Duty: WWII

Destiny 2

Fifa 18

Middle Earth: Shadow of War

Forza Motorsport 7

Project Cars 2

Need for Speed: Payback

Star Wars Battlefront (2017)

For 2018

Possibly Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition

Possibly Age of Empires 3 Definitive Edition

Possibly Red Dead Redemption 2

Battlefield 5

Call of Duty 2018

Fifa 19

Possibly Shadow of the Tomb Raider

For 2019

Possibly Age of Empires 4

Call of Duty 2019

Fifa 19

So who wants to use Linux for playing video games? When Windows gets all of these video games exclusively.

I do. I don't care about "all of these video games". I care about my privacy and freedom, about being in control of my computer, which has inexorably become a hugely important part of my life. Videogames are a nice extra next to that. I'll play those that are available for Linux, and ignore those that aren't.

But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth it - every so often - to inform video game publishers that I'm out there, and that I'd be happy to give them my money. Much less competition from other games, too, so a higher chance that I actually will (and award them some loyalty points for future games, too), if they act before it's become mainstream.

Your freedom and privacy doesn't matter when the Linux video games market share is at about 2%.

Windows 10 has been installed on 600+ million PC's so far and MicroSoft had a statistic saying 71% of Windows 10 users are happy with the telemetry and tracking thing.

Linux isn't worth it at all.

The AAA video game publishing companies don't care about your money or the 30,000+ Linux users who purchase PC versions of video games on Linux, when they can get 1+ million PC gamers purchasing the Windows version of the video game(s).

You might not care about some of those video games, but a lot of PC video gamers who use Windows do.

They matter to me. Have mattered to me for 10+ years now, and the videogame situation has only been improving along the way, so I feel I'm in a pretty good place. It is for me. Good for them. I personally think that the attitude of knowingly choosing to live with certain choices of the Windows ecosystem is shortsighted (and I realize that the vast majority of windows users don't even know they have a choice, so that the number of users knowingly making that choice is relatively small), but if it gives them happiness, then I'm glad for them.

Microsofts stats show that a majority of their users are satisfied with the telemetry collection? Of course they'd have no vested interest in the stats showing that...

To the OP: you'd be better served asking over on the official Witcher forums.

Linux is a good, useful OS. I run it on my server at home, some other servers I rent, etc. While I have a distaste for those who treat their use of it as a religion, I certainly have nothing against the OS itself and am, as I said, a user. (I'm also a Windows user and a MacOS user. They are all good tools when picked for the right job.)

That said, from a purely financial point of view, investing in Linux development when it comes to games is pretty much not worth it. Sometimes it might make sense to lose money for publicity and to gain some good will among a given vocal minority of enthusiasts, but overall it's a bad business decision. The man-hours will still need to be paid for, but the platform sales will not recoup them.

There are exceptions to that rule. For instance if a game is being written using a cross-platform technology to begin with, it makes sense to spend an extra hour and ship a Linux build. Such games are mostly simple indie ones and not what you'd expect from a AAA studio.

I'm working on a small game right now, and once I'm done I'll, of course, make a Linux build, as well as a Windows and MacOS ones. The truth, however, is in that I will be doing that pretty much to brag about releasing on multiple platforms. I don't expect to make any money off of the Linux build whatsoever. Let's say it will take me an hour of tinkering to get it running. That's $100 approximately. It will require 143 sales (at $1 each, minus 30% Steam cut) to pay me back for that hour. I know I won't sell 143 copies on Linux.

So... yea. Sorry for the wall of text. Just my 2 cents.

I'm honestly curious - how do you expect the financials of this project to work out on the Windows side? How many hours initial development versus how many projected windows sales?

By the way, do you remember a hypocritical twat of a user who mass-posted long-ass screeds how not selling this or that product was like literally rape, jaywalking and blasphemous libel, how dare they, boycott boycott boycott sign petitions call your congressperson? I wonder what happened to him.

Very true!
Couldn't say it better myself!

I don't actually know.

Gamedev is a hobby for me. Not even a major one, but I do enjoy it. The way it stands right now, I don't actually care to make money off of it, in fact I am happy to lose a few grand here and there, so long as the experience is fun. The expense example was just to illustrate the low financial viability of Linux as a gaming platform for serious developers (who are not me.)

More specifically, I will be completely overjoyed if I happen to sell enough copies to recoup the money I paid to the artist I hired. Once again, I don't care if the money is lost - I have plenty as it is, it'll just be kind of a milestone where I can feel extra good about myself for achieving it.

Still, if I don't sell a single copy, this has been a pretty neat process so I'm happy.

Definitely the tech being aligned across platforms is what will enable easier quicker work for devs, more games produced, expanded sales and many being able to enjoy more gaming. But I have to say that I can't see how the comparison can be made regarding very small game production and multi-million dollar companies, who have large teams, advertising across all kinds of media, and a very big audience. Linux gaming has developed massively, and fast, over the last few years, and the message is that there are many who are keen to buy and support, and do. Even Valve have recognised that MS locking things in more is a threat to them, and that it serves them well to focus more on Linux, and there are 1000's of Linux games in the store, including many AAA's. I don't use Steam, but it's clear that there are plenty of Linux sales, and it is more than worth supporting Linux, for many more reasons than gaming also eg privacy, freedom and reliability.

My post was not an attack on Linux or its users. Of course, there are plenty of them and quite a few are willing to pay. However, as Johnathanamz pointed out, the percentage is miniscule. it's not worth it developing for Linux in the PC Gaming space, same as it is not worth it to deliver for Windows Phone in the Mobile space. Plenty of people use Windows Phone (I was one of them for a while) but the market share is tiny and therefore not worth investing into.

The bigger the company, the more people they employ, the higher the expenses. This sort of stuff doesn't scale very well at all. As a single indie dev, my expenses are nearly non-existent. A team of 5 would be quite expensive, though. A team of 10 a lot more expensive. And a huge corporation is IMMENSELY expensive. It simply doesn't make good financial sense to target an audience that has a 2% market share overall.

As to Valve's foray into Steam OS / Linux gaming, I was there to see it from start to finish. At this point, I think everyone agrees that it failed spectacularly. Steam Machines never took off, Steam OS is used by 3.5 people and while I commend Valve for trying to make Linux more prominent as a gaming platform, I still maintain that it made zero financial sense and was overall a loss in terms of time, effort, and money.

At this point I think is better to just wait for full wine support. Many old games play really good on wine, and I'm sure the witcher 3 will be 100% compatible at some point in the future (it's already working better than months ago).

Still I'm disappointed that cd projekt does not support cross-platform (mac and linux)... I think freedom is also decide if you want to use windows, mac or Linux and I thought that cd projekt was able to understand the importance of support multiple platform, but I guess I was wrong.

Also the witcher 1 and 2 support mac and linux (I know they used eON but the witcher 1 is an old game and they started cross-platform support with the witcher 2, and I was sure they created a future proof cross-platform engine)... that's what I call betray the trust of their customers (with no reason).

Finally in 2017 (but it was already true before 2015) we have multiple engine that already support mac and linux by default (just think about unreal and unity, you just need to be carefull with shaders... and linux/mac version... even ios/android if you can... it's just an "export to that platform" automatic process), so why create a new one with windows-only support? I just don't understand.

I know that many AAA games still don't have cross-platform support, but there are more than in the past with mac and linux support (and it only slow down because of denuvo/change of API, but it's growing again right now), and almost 90% of indie support mac and linux so there is no reason to say that you cannot play on those platform (of course if you want a mac you don't buy it to play, but if you just want to play some old games in 2017 you can even on a laptop with no dGPU).

And I have to say that I don't care about Fifa XD... (or any of those cod, destiny cheap multiplayer of the year "same shit" games).

I care about Pillars of Eternity 2 (and it will be on mac and linux).