Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate 3 for Linux?

I've just seen the announcement, that Baldur's Gate 3 will come out for Stadia, so it means you'll make the Linux version already (with Stadia specific integration).

Do you also plan to release it for proper desktop Linux (on GOG and Steam)? Since you are already targeting Stadia's Linux, making it for general desktop Linux users shouldn't be too hard.

Thanks!

A linux version would be greatly appreciated.

If this game is stadia only I will not be buying. I am not interested in steaming games.

I backed Divinity 1 & 2, and just signed up just to say I hope Baldurs 3 gets a Linux release. Failing that, if it works with Steamplay/Proton I'd be happy too.

+1 for a Linux version. And also no matter if there is a port or not i would love to know from the side of Larian if the fact that they will have a Stadia version makes linux porting any easier than otherwise.

@Raze: any word on this from Larian?



It naturally should make it easier. Unlike the situation with Divinity: Original Sin, where Linux port was problematic due to middleware and such, which caused D:OS2 not to come out for Linux at all, now that Laran are developing for Stadia, whatever engine they'll use (custom or common like Unreal / Unity), they'll have to make it work on Linux.

So to make it work on normal desktop Linux, they'll just have to make Vulkan backend go to screen, not to video, and replace Stadia's SDK input handling with normal SDL and such. A lot less work than what was needed for their previous games. All the heavy lifting would be already done. So unless they'll make some hard dependency on multiplayer over Stadia (I surely hope they don't, and they are already releasing it in other stores anyway so it seems to be a non issue), this should be easy to do.

A native linux version would be appreciated, but Proton is also fine if you just make sure it works.

I hope Google doesn't have any requirement to release on Stadia, that comes with ban on Linux versions coming out in other stores. Exclusivity would be quite annoying. So far, none of the Stadia announced games seem to have announced Linux releases on GOG, Steam and etc. May be a coincidence, but we need some counter example to be sure.

Google's Stadia specs said that Windows, OS X, Android, and iOS would be supported--nothing about a Linux Stadia release for a specific distro.

They are talking about their Stadia client. I'm talking about actual games developed for Stadia, which uses Debian Linux to run them. I.e. Stadia games are all Linux games, but they run on the server. Once developer makes a game for Stadia, it basically just needs some trivial modifications to make a normal Linux version. So when they don't plan to do it (while in case of Larian they are in general positive about Linux releases), it does look like some exclusivity ban. I surely hope it's not though.

It's very exciting to hear that Baldur's Gate is getting another sequel! However, I very rarely boot to Windows and have no real interest in streaming games at this time. A Linux version would be much appreciated!

Intuitively that is what i believe as well. But i would love to hear their experience directly. One thing that i am sure though is that using Vulkan for the game (i assume the windows version will also use vulkan) it would be straightforward to whitelist on Proton. Even DO:S 2 with all the issues you mentioned works perfectly fine (using the GOG copy and Lutris).

Go onto steam and look how many people use Linux.
You'll be very lucky to get BG3 because 99% of the market is on Windows.

I'm not using Steam, while I play on Linux. So what does that tell you? I'm not part of those numbers. And your argument is not relevant to Larian, who were already supportive of Linux releases in the past, when Linux market was smaller than it is today. Since then it has grown. So if you think market size is the indicator, it should be better than in the past.

Also, please read what was said about Stadia above. It addresses the needed market size for decision making. I.e. Larian are already making the Linux version for Stadia. The question is about releasing it for desktop users, not about "whether to make it or not".

+1 for a desktop Linux release

Link for "all Stadia games will be natively written for Debian"?--I mean, hundreds of popular games have no Linux version available at all, so Stadia will of course be running Windows on their servers as well as whatever other OSes they may run. Stadia will also be selling games *at retail prices* as well as Streaming them--and of course Windows games will be sold through Stadia--just like any current distribution service. Here's the thing I can't understand at all: running a Linux distro native game (not emulation because I can''t recommend that at all...;)) doesn't mean the game is going to look/run a bit better than it does on Win10--indeed, because of a number of factors it could very well run and look worse than the Win10x64 native version of the game.

So what's the attraction to computer gaming on a Linux distribution? Basically, emulated Windows games on Linux make up a big share of the total number of Linux games, and compared to native Windows game development, native Linux game development is a very tiny percentage, indeed. I'm not making any sort of judgment here--just stating the objective facts as I've seen them develop over the years. What I have noticed is that people who insist on gaming on a Linux distro (Ubuntu on Steam--which you apparently don't use--since you don't use Steam for Linux gaming, you say) are not "hobbyists" or "enthusiast" computer game players--they are much more what I might call "casual" gamers who can generally take gaming or leave it as gaming just isn't a large priority for them. Conversely, the people who are very involved with computer gaming are almost always Windows users--for many of the reasons I've alluded to and several other reasons I haven't mentioned like backwards compatibility stretching back at least three decades supporting early Windows versions and even MS-DOS, and commercial device-driver development for GPUs and all other devices--the importance of which cannot be overestimated, imo. (I mean, Open Source driver development generally does not compare, imo.)

Summing up, I've run as many as three simultaneous OSes before for multiple machines for extended periods (Amiga OS--Workbench up to 3.1, OS/2--several versions, Windows several versions--and DOS, of course) and I can testify that it's much nicer/simpler/easier to choose a single OS and stick with that...;) So if your choice is a Linux distro and nothing else I can't argue with that...;) But the fact still remains that for people for whom gaming is much more than a take-it-or-leave-it proposition--and Linux distro rather than Win10 (this latest build, v1903, build 18362.1000 is probably the very best Windows OS I've ever used--better backwards compatibility than Windows 7, for instance--if not the best OS I've ever used, period. The hardware support and software compatibility of Win10x64/32 is simply the very best available at any price of any OS I can think of atm. Linux distro can be great for certain tasks--no question about that! But for gaming?--nothing beats Win10 atm, imo.

Not having to pay for a Windows licence is a good starting point: I only use Windows for gaming so it does irk me somewhat that I have to pay "the Microsoft tax" if I don't want to use a console: which isn't something I've ever gravitated towards as I've never liked controllers much, ever since the Atari 2600 was a thing, and I like modding and tinkering too much.

I don't think there's any good reason why Linux or the other various types of Unix shouldn't be used for gaming, but it seems to be that thing that never really takes off. Developers are too wedded to DirectX, whether as their primary focus or the means of doing a "bad console port".

Admittedly if games did typically run on Linux I'd probably just have the one PC instead of My Gaming Rig™ and a much more low-power desktop, so I'd instead moan about how much power it was gobbling up instead.

Can you use Chrome on Linux, if so you can use Stadia on it.

Not only that. I have dual boot. Divine Divinity just din't worked on M$ Win 10. Same with Sacred 1/2 and Dungeon Siege 1/2... On Linux, almost all old games worked easily. Diablo 2, no matter how much i try, can only play windowed. On Linux i can easily run. Since i hate most modern games, i rarely use M$ windows.

That's an interesting point. From my perspective one of the main arguments for Windows continuation as the PC gaming platform is backwards compatibility with older games, but if Linux is beginning to eclipse it in that regard it's lost one of its biggest bargaining chips. I think game devs really need to start moving away from DirectX-only support, though I dare say many of those decisions are inflicted on them by publishers after getting a cosy deal with MS...

They of course won't be running Windows, when they explicitly said they'll be running Linux So let's avoid taking the discussion into some unreasonable speculations.

See: https://stadia.dev/intl/en_us/about/#software-stack

See also more technical details here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdz4b5psrhE&t=16m15s