The developers of The Final Station, recognizing the growing market for the post-apocalyptic train ride in the open-source community, have made their hot-selling title available for the Linux OS.
The indie game, which Do My Best Games and TinyBuild launched for PC, Mac, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 this summer, became available for Linux last week.
Although the post-civilization genre is a fairly crowded space, the zombie-killing horror ride has earned generally positive reviews from veteran games critics, who appreciated its narrative and level of detail.
There was no grand scheme to expand the title to Linux.
“Honestly, there wasn’t some specific reason for that — we just want to give access to our game [to] as many players as possible,” said Oleg Sergeev, game designer of The Final Station.
The ability to create a Linux port pretty easily on the Unity platform led the company to make the decision, he told LinuxInsider.
Open Source Demand
The Final Station is the first Linux port for the company, but it appears that the launch so far has been a successful one, with relatively few glitches, based on feedback on the site.
“You don’t typically see much priority on major gaming titles released for Linux, but there are some exceptions, and this is changing to some degree with software such as SteamOS,” noted Jay Lyman, senior research analyst at 451 Research.
“While Linux still isn’t usually treated as a first-class platform, a growing number of titles are adding Linux support without requiring workarounds or additional compatible software,” he told LinuxInsider.
Other major titles that recently moved to Linux include Mad Max, Dying Light, and American Truck Simulator.
Linux has become the operating system of choice in almost every segment of computing except for the desktop, noted Kevin O’Brien, a project manager and Linux enthusiast.
That’s partly due to the fact that so many games are written for Windows only, he told LinuxInsider. “The increasing availability of games on the Linux platform removes that obstacle and makes it more likely that Linux can be the default OS for average computer users.”
SteamOS Platform
Much of the drive to develop games for Linux began in 2013 when Valve Software launched its Linux-based SteamOS system for entertainment use. At the time, enthusiasts began to see greater demand for Linux-compatible gaming titles, but an additional problem over the years has been getting the related hardware necessary to take full advantage of those capabilities.
Currently, there are only about 400 titles that are Linux-plus-SteamOS compatible out of nearly 25,000 game entries in the Steam store, said Lewis Ward, research director for gaming and VR/AR at IDC.
That is indicative of the relative popularity of Linux compared to other operating systems, he told LinuxInsider.
“There definitely has to be a love of Linux and the open-source software movement to make such a commitment,” Ward stressed.
TinyBuild has been busy of late. It released the Alpha 2 version of Hello Neighbor earlier this month.
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I’m sorry but they don’t, nobody is gonna give your OS a second glance because you have some game made by Joe and Bob, I don’t care if its got the name recognition of Super Meat Boy its just not gonna matter.
Until you can say with 100% confidence that the top 25 games on PC can run on your OS and not only that but run at LEAST as good as it does on Windows? Then nobody is gonna take you seriously. Hell even the article points out you have a grand total of 400 out of 25,000 Steam titles, that number is so low its a joke, I can probably find more of those 25k titles that will run on Windows XP, heck probably more than will run on Windows 98, than run on your OS and that is just sad.
Excuse yourself and this article ARE incorrect. As of November 2016 the number of Linux-compatible games on Steam exceeds 2,000. steamdb.info/linux/ and many are current A list titles.
We in the Linux gaming community happen to enjoy our OS of choice for our gaming platform.
If we accept your numbers? You have less than 10%, which again you can probably find more games on that list that will run on Win98, and without a doubt WinXP, than your OS supports…and that gap widens every.single.day.
Sorry but SteamOS is dead, its growth is flatline, and Linux has been stuck at below the margin for error for nearly a decade…still not impressed.