 Fascinating both for what it says about dev & what it says about statistics: A gamedev realized Linux users were just 5.8% of their sales, but represented 38% of bug reports. Then they looked at those numbers closer, and realized. Linux users were not experiencing more bugs. Almost none of the Linux-user bugs were Linux-related. Linux users were simply *more likely to file bugs*. Their conclusion: A linux port pays for itself bc it nerdsnipes ppl into giving u free QA 117 comments
@mcc i might be wrong about this but isn't it actually even the other way round, with rats that were bred to be cute and pet-like having a higher cancer risk than lab rats due to being over-bread? bc when me and my relatives had rats that were bread to be kept as pets they all died rlly quickly, but then we got lab rats instead (as pets, i mean) and they lived for wayy longer  @mcc Linux users are immersed in a culture that explicitly views software as a communal effort, working towards common purpose. Maybe that idea isn't explicit for everyone, but when people are steeped in it, of course they contribute bug reports! A bug report is an attempt to help the project! It may also feel like a complaint, but the material effect of it is helpful.  @irenes @mcc brushing the oxidation off my Bugzilla search skils confirms that Linux is responsible for disproportionately more bug reports to the size of the user base as a whole. Windows is 85% of Firefox users on desktop, see https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware. I can write this up as a blog post if folks are interested.   @irenes @mcc And so a much higher proportion know that filing bug reports is important, and a much higher proportion is familiar and comfortable with the process.  The Golden Rule in action: "Well, I'd certainly hope somebody would file a bug report to let me know about an issue in *my* project!" "A recent study performed on the University of Toronto campus with participants selected by responding to a flier offering $5 for participation, revealed that 92% of all Canadians are students at University of Torontoβ¦" (This is a joke; I suspect sociologists have some way of correcting for this already) (EDIT: Note I am not saying I believe the way sociologists have of correcting for it *works*.) @mcc uh IIRC this is a βjoke but not reallyβ in psychology and social sciences. The joke is βadd βamong mostly 18β22yos with the social status to be in collegeβ to every psychology paperβ @mcc People that participate in studies are WEIRD https://slate.com/technology/2013/05/weird-psychology-social-science-researchers-rely-too-much-on-western-college-students.html   @mcc #RandomPedantry @mcc This is a huge, huge, huge problem in personality science. If you want to get any sort of demographic information, about the distribution of traits through a population, you can't actually do it through voluntary testing, because the selection indexes of so many interesting things on "who is voluntarily willing to take a personality test" are kind of astronomical. @mcc It also seems related to the famous case of the analytical error of deciding where WW2 aircraft needed better armour, based on statistics about the location of holes in returning planes. Windows users learn to expect to be shot down because they have no say in what gets armoured. @mcc Yes. I've found this. You get more nuanced, useful, interesting bug reports and genuine desire to help you sort obscure problems out - almost always without the PRESUMPTION that you can or will. It's part of why I intend to release all my future games on Linux, ideally on as broad a set of hardware as possible. @mcc Tbh my next little game uses ncurses to making it work on windows will be a waking nightmare. So I am tempted to just... not. I am NOT trying to make money with these games. I am doing them for fun. If I just release it on linux and mac... I get dedicated players, technically savvy, interested in niche games... and I don't have to support Windows users.  @vampiress probably depends on which versions you intend to target; Win7 would still be hell (or Cygwin which is its own hell), but for Windows 10 (with its built-in VT support) I kind of expect ncurses stuff would Mostly Work? they've been moving towards VT pretty hard recently (I guess it helps that they've been working on it on GitHub where people don't shy away from reporting bugs, too) @vampiress @mcc but shouldn't current Windows versions be fine here due to improved terminal support? π€ Just require Windows 10 with the 1511 update and you should be good to go π @pascaldragon @mcc So I read. Then I tried to get it working and it was a nightmare. So no, not quite that simple. @pascaldragon @mcc TBH I plan to do an SDL based version anyway so I might just wait until thatβs done before doing a Windows version. @pascaldragon @mcc Also just... you make a text mode game, you get linux and mac people interested. My last one HAS a windows version but from what limited telemetry I have almost nobody uses the windows version.  @vampiress @mcc Id so be there for releasing it as a self booting ISO on 75mm CD and novelty-shaped usb stick. @vampiress @mcc well now you've made me curious! What is this ncurses based game you're talking about, and where/when can I get a hold of a copy? @stenpett When it's done. Haha. And it's a roguelike with a few twists. https://eigenmagic.net/@vampiress/111294245569981172  @vampiress @mcc I used to work with ncurses on Windows; had to load ansi.sys in config.sys back then. It was easier to start with the Atari ST port of ncurses than to try to get the plain Unix version working.  @mcc devil's advocate: adding a Linux version not only incurs the cost of developing and supporting a new platform, but also a massive amount of QA and dev time processing low-severity bug reports for issues that probably don't affect the average user's experience enough for them to care *and* all you get is about a 5% bump in sales. So it's almost certainly not worth it.* * Or at the very least, only worth supporting SteamDeck hardware. @tess @mcc You don't need to go through the entire portinh process to get your game on Linux. With Proton you don't even need to compile a separate Linux binary, so you just get a free 5% more sales, and if there are any issues, they take it up with Wine/Proton devs instead of you. Just make sure your anticheat is configured to support Proton     @mcc This tracks for me. I assume most open-source stuff is run by accessible people who care about the software, otherwise why the heck would they bother with any of this? But most corporate bug reports are shouting into the void. One exception is when I filed a Radar ticket for some wacky behavior in, I think, an Apple AirPort WiFi base station. And I *got a call* from someone at Apple, who gave me a special diagnostic tool to collect more data. Never had anything like that happen before.  @mcc can support. I used a music player for a while that had a linux port. Desipte their being like a few dozen Linux users, we filed over half of all bug reports, and most of those were UX/server issues.   @mcc It's always been my experience that most open source/Linux software devs tend to care more about bug reports than most corporations do. Like you'll submit a bug report and it might actually get fixed. ...Unlike most corporate software, where you'll submit a bug report, and it NEVER gets fixed, even if a lot of people are having the same problem. The only time they might actually care about bug reports is if it prevents you from properly using/opening the software at all...   @mcc Except I'm tired of doing free QA (looking at you, Microsoft `usbipd` π  @mcc @lisamelton  @mcc guilty, lol, definitely submitted my share, generally with a patch and debug info. Also i found long ago when reporting bugs in games to often lie about os (gen by omission) as most devs wouldnt take it seriously otherwise, even with it being a known complained about issue with actual windows users and absolute proof. Windows players in general are so used to bugs with no path to get them fixed they complain, but never report!  @mcc I guess when you've filed 26 bugs against device drivers just last week, filing 3 bugs against a game is how you kick back and unwind.  @mcc What an interesting outcome! I remember hearing the computer game Planetary Annihilation have a problem with bug reports being mostly in regards to their Linux port. I guess if this result can be shown to be true for lots of software, then it will be a good problem to have!  I can confirm in #inkscape we get most bug reports from linux users. But. Part of the job of the project has to be education. How to use the tool, how to understand free software and yes, how to report bugs. Which is just a subsection of the broader "you are invited to be a contributor, no small task is too small" and extend that to our windows and mac users.   I don't like the "nersnipes people into giving you free QA" @mcc I've seen a similar situation where the game studio just dropped support for Linux because it wasn't worth the effort. I'm not sure if in that case the reports were indeed Linux specific or if they just failed to see the bigger picture like in your case.   @mcc thereβs visceral joy in helping a developer debug an issue; the more I want it fixed, the more helpful I become.  @mcc Also, I found the detail about the different quality of the bug reports quite interesting, that the reports from Linux users more often contained possibly relevant info like software versions, crash dumps, logs, steps to reproduce the bug etc. instead of "after some hours of playing, the game crashes"   That is #QuiteInteresting; is there any #Data on the #Quality of those #BugReports; i.e. what #Proportion of those #Reports were #JustGarbage...? Or, is the #Statement below merely #Experiential... #Otherwise, we're not #Comparing #LikeWithLike for a #MeaningfulInterpretation. π§βοΈπ€πΊπ€βοΈπ§ | βπ π¦Ήπ¦π¦Ήπ β  @mcc Too bad gamedev twitter's actual takeaway was "Linux ports are a waste of effort" and circlejerk ensued. @mcc Great post. I have long believed that most software problems go unreported. I am not surprised that Linux users might have the determination and grit to buck that trend. @mcc  @mcc Take this example from Return to Monkey Island: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/7360  @mcc IIRC, the same was long time ago conclusion by #Mozilla with bugs for #Firefox. Which is the reason why they happily build #Linux binaries and do a lot to support Linux users even though they are tiny minority of their users. But they do file bugs and more often than others even reasonable and actionable bug reports.   @mcc while this is nice to hear, and not unexpected, i must object to calling this "nerdsniping" as if linux users were somehow bamboozled into doing free work here. the linux community operates under an unwritten cooperative social contract: users co-own the software & in return go the extra mile to improve it. even when the game provided is closed and for-sale, users still hold up their end of the deal; mostly out of habit, but it also renders the developer indebted to the community.  @mcc@mastodon.social That's a really good example of the FOSS spirit, even if the game itself isn't Free Software. |
Gregory's Server
This is the "what if lab rats just get cancer a lot" joke except real
Do you have a correlation in your data? Or is one of your sample groups simply more likely to generate *statistics*?