Not entirely true. They did, they do right now, they likely will keep doing it.
Lots of CCPers use/play on Linux. And even if the company stopped official support on April 2009, their employees historically and currently are going the extra mile to help us.
Case in point: the recent update of Launcher 1.10.0 and the effort they made to mitigate its impact for Linux users.
Considering the work they’re doing on Proton, I wouldn’t even complain that only Alyx is non-native - and for good reasons.
Can you elaborate what you consider was done? I don’t see a new launcher version available and also the 1.10.0 was not replaced. So reinstalling that leads again to a crashing launcher?
You sound as it already was fixed and i did miss the fix. Deleting app-1.10.0 was not a tip from CCP, it was trial and error by the users. If CCP blocks the launcher app-1.9.4 from accessing EVE tomorrow, then it is over for the time being.
My point is this, the game is not a Linux version. When they toss WINE at us ( Proton is a version of WINE ) this is not really Linux support. I would be very shocked, if they take the time to contact any WINE developers to assist in this or the 1.10.0 issues. Codeweavers would be a good place to start, assuming as you said,
However it is my opinion, a Linux client is the real solution here and in all games that want to say they are “available on Windows, MAC, and Linux”. As it stands now, most of the apps on Steam should read “available on Windows, MAC, and *Linux” with a footnote stating it is really the Windows piped through an overlay, that may have issues from time to time.
Imagine if a company made an online game for Linux only, and left it up to 3rd party software to operate it on Windows. Now because it somewhat operates on Windows, can they really claim it is available on Windows? Do they support a Windows client? No. They allow you to use the 3rd party software to scoop up the loose change dropping on the floor.
CCP might surprise me and tweak the launcher in the next revision to function again. However I think it is more likely, the WINE developers at Codeweavers or Steam will get WINE on track instead. Although this might not show up for several versions down the road. Meanwhile I will be stuck using the 1.9.4 version until it expires.
A Linux client would require them to have another build team. This would cost CCP more money and the company is not made of money these days. I appreciate WINE, without it my Windows gaming wouldn’t exist.
Meanwhile, EAC works just fine for me. Not here of course, I sometimes play Apex Legends by EA, who has it setup properly to function with WINE or Proton. It is still my opinion, EA should make a Linux client to impress the hell out of me.
I don’t “consider”.
I know - because I was there testing it with the devs.
Since they released 1.10.0 (and 1.10.1 yesterday), on Linux we have to revert to 1.9.4 to prevent the Electron framework to crash on startup. Known issue, known workaround, etc.
But if you roll back to 1.9.4 manually, the Launcher is designed to update again to 1.10.x, putting you in an endless circle of rollback/update.
Launcher devs changed the behavior of the Launcher itself so, when detected running under WINE (and ofc under Proton), it will NOT try and update to 1.10.x.
Which is extremely useful for us, as we need to rollback only once and not all the time, so for the time being 1.9.4 can and will still access the game.
This change they implemented exclusively so that Linux users can keep playing once the workaround is applied once was nowhere as granted, because, in case someone is still wondering, Linux is NOT supported, and in no way, shape or form, Linux users are entitled any form of special treatment to deal with specific, Linux-only quirks. But in this case, like in many before (think T3C textures), CCP devs went an extra mile to help.
In summary:
If you want to bring something costructive to the discussion, you’re welcome to join me, a lot of other Linux users and most of Launcher devs in the thread I created two years ago on the official discord.
For example, you may want to help us debug why Electron v36.1.0 (the one bundled with Launcher 1.10.x) does crash under WINE/Proton, and what’s different with v35.3.x (the one bundled with Launcher <1.10.0), and if the current v36.3.0 (released today) may solve this problem once bundled with the Launcher:
No, it’s not. Nobody every claimed it was.
Even when CCP officially supported a Linux version (from December 2007 to April 2009), it was just the Windows client wrapped in Cedega, developed by Codeweavers. That route proved unfruitful, as the game worked a lot better under regular WINE than with Cedega anyway - so Linux users were not actually using the “official” Cedega-wrapped Windows client, and instead preferred using a WINE-wrapped Windows client.
The client was never natively running under Linux without a compatibility layer whatsoever.
And most likely never will.
Considering the relative market split, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Companies are after profit, and a 98% market share (Win+Mac) may be good enough, considered the added difficulty of supporting with a dedicated team the remaining 2%.
That’s exactly what they did when they tweaked the Launcher to NOT update 1.9.4 if running under WINE/Proton.
I’m fully confident that after Electron is updated, the Launcher v1.10.whatever or v1.11.x will work again under Linux.