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treebrary.pone.social
  • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Image transcription. Pasted from source, Reddit Post

    Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from the Linux community

    Article

    38% of my bug reports come from the Linux community My game - ΔV: Rings of Saturn (shameless plug) - is out in Early Access for two years now, and as you can expect, there are bugs. But I did find that a disproportionally big amount of these bugs was reported by players using Linux to play. I started to investigate, and my findings did surprise me.

    Let’s talk numbers. Percentages are easy to talk about, but when I read just them, I always wonder - what is the sample size? Is it small enough for the percentage to be just noise? As of today, I sold a little over 12,000 units of ΔV in total. 700 of these units were bought by Linux players. That’s 5.8%. I got 1040 bug reports in total, out of which roughly 400 are made by Linux players. That’s one report per 11.5 users on average, and one report per 1.75 Linux players. That’s right, an average Linux player will get you 650% more bug reports.

    A lot of extra work for just 5.8% of extra units, right?

    Wrong. Bugs exist whenever you know about them, or not. Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux. The rest of them were affecting everyone - the thing is, the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs. That is just the open-source way. This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone. Just like having your own 700-person strong QA team. That was not 38% extra work for me, that was just free QA!

    But that’s not all. The report quality is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a report? Feel sorry at best. You can’t really fix any bug unless you can replicate it, see it with your own eyes, peek inside and finally see that it’s fixed.

    And with bug reports from Linux players is just something else. You get all the software/os versions, all the logs, you get core dumps and you get replication steps. Sometimes I got with the player over discord and we quickly iterated a few versions with progressive fixes to isolate the problem. You just don’t get that kind of engagement from anyone else.

    Worth it? Oh, yes - at least for me. Not for the extra sales - although it’s nice. It’s worth it to get the massive feedback boost and free, hundred-people strong QA team on your side. An invaluable asset for an independent game studio.

  • WatTyler@lemmy.sdf.org
    3·
    11 months ago

    Reflecting on my first year running solely Linux (as opposed to dual-booting), I think that this culture comes from the fact that, on Linux, problems can more often than not be solved. If not solved, then at least understood. When you want to change something on Windows, or something breaks, you have far less room to maneuver.

    When I was a Windows user, I’d barely ever submitted a bug report for anything, in spite of being very tech-literate. It felt hopeless, as my entire experience with the OS was that if a fix would come, it’d have to be done by someone else.

    Linux treating its users like adults, produces users who are more confident and more willing to contribute.

    • pixelscript@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      When it comes to closed-source software developed opaquely by for-profit corporations, particularly the huge, monolithic ones like Microsoft, I generally have the attitude that, if I do discover a problem:

      1. They won’t take my detailed report
      2. If they do take my report, it goes straight into a shredder bin (or a massive queue where low priority problems go to die, which may as well be the same thing)
      3. If they do read my report, then it’s likely something they already are aware of
      4. If they don’t know about it somehow, the issue is probably so low-priority and niche that it wouldn’t escape the backlog anyway

      Probably not nearly as bleak as I make it out. But when you can’t see the process, how can you tell?

      With open source projects, these things can all still happen, but at least the process is more transparent. You can see exactly where your issue is, and what’s been done to it so far, if anything. Other users can discover and vouch for your problem. And if the dev team takes pull requests, and you are willing, able, and permitted to contribute, you can make the fix yourself.

    • 0xD@infosec.pub
      0·
      11 months ago

      You can do the exact same thing in Windows, just think of the SysInternals Suite and its power. It’s just that people on Linux expect problems, while the overwhelming majority of people on Windows/MacOS is using their device expecting it to work and if it doesn’t they go do something else or buy another device.

      Also this completely untrue notion that you cannot fix Windows or play around with its internals is very prevalent, to the point that it’s a meme, so people don’t even try.

      • Chais@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        11 months ago

        But I have to fight the stupid OS to give me useful information. I have to install 3^(rd) party stuff. By default you only get this useless error reporting tool. Even if you report an error your likely to never hear from anyone and the chance of the error being fixed is virtually nonexistent.

        On Linux the necessary information is usually readily available. The worst offender in my experience is Steam itself. You can get logs from games fairy easily. But if Steam misbehaves things can get more complicated.

  • BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
    3·
    11 months ago

    I remember a gamedev complaining about this on Twitter but the outcome he came to was that he hated that Linux users submitted bug reports, stating the OS itself was broken and he refused to help any of them.

    • 0x0@social.rocketsfall.net
      1·
      11 months ago

      I remember threads like this from back when Valve was pushing Steam Machines. Won’t name names, but there were very successful developers throwing tantrums once the bug reports started to flood in. Many weren’t prepared to actually provide support and spent years regretting it (according to postmortems.) I managed to get a refund on one game after the developer’s Twitter rant went completely off the rails re: Linux being unfit for desktop. Weird that they were 100% fine with Linux when it meant getting my $15, $20, or $30. Makes you think!

  • Adalast@lemmy.world
    1·
    10 months ago

    A. If you haven’t played ΔV, do it. One of the most amazing games out there imho. So good in fact that I just went to find a Δ on the internet so I could use it and not disrespect the dev and the game. B. He is such an amazing dude. I don’t know him personally, but I do know that when Ukraine was invaded he made the game free for months on Steam so people in Ukraine could get it and have something too distract themselves from the conflict. A+ move in my book right there. I had already bought the game at that point, but I wish I could buy it again just to support him further. C. Reading this almost makes me think it would be a good tactical move to offer early access games at a steep discount on Linux if it has this great of an effect. Pay back the “free” QA kindness of the community.

  • AzureDiamond@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    11 months ago

    Interesting take. I wonder if the amount of platform dependent bugs is generally that low for games. I’m a developer, but not a game developer. I would assume that platform dependent stuff comes into play a lot more, when using shiny new tech like direct storage, which is probably used more by AAA titles and less by indie games?

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    remember the other several occasions where developers hated actually getting feedback from these linux users cause they actually would have to fix their shit? but not many actually did

    cause i remember, they only care as far as money goes