Linux

With Steam moving to a dedicated linux OS gaming set up (for those that choose to use it) and with the likes of Ubuntu becoming as easy to use as Windows is CCP going to look into once again making EVE for Linux?

I think it's possible, but it needs to be done right if it's going to be done. No more wine wrappers; a native client may be a pain in the ass to make, but a) OpenGL has better performance than DirectX, and b) it would increase their subscription numbers more than I suspect most people think. As a side note, I've often seen DirectX and OpenGL implemented side by side, usually with an option to select one or the other at a launcher. Starbound is a good example. Starbound isn't as complex as EVE I suspect in terms of graphics, but that said, it can (and should) be done. I'd love it if CCP would expand EVE further this way.

I think that this is a realistic, attainable goal. It's possible that it doesn't make much business sense, but then again, not everything that CCP does makes business sense.

Note that what CCP could do, that will profit everyone in the long run is to change the gfx API, not to the soon to be deprecated OpenGL, but Vulkan. That way, it get faster and better one all there supported platform too.

Vulkan is an Open API made by the Khronos group, the same group in charge of OpenGL but it's designed to be near the hardware, Like AMD Mantle, Direct3D 12 & 3DFX Glide. Way less CPU overhead and all currents videocard and OS will support it.

Switching to OpenGL now that vendor are devlopping and deploying drivers for Vulkan is totally non sense.

I'm using linux at my office and I would love to have native linux client for eve.
I have high hopes with the new steam machines hopefully it will have enough variety so I can dump windows as my main OS.

As long as Eve continues to run on Linux with Wine, there is no point in official client. Last time they've tried it, it did not go well, primarily because Eve can't be native on Linux due to usage of DirectX. Wine is as native as it gets.

Maybe it could help if they knew how many Linux users we have.....

And what about beta launcher?
It runs beta than the regular one.

As someone who can't launch more than 1 client (launcher freezes) and trying to learn linux it really makes it hard. I would love to see Linux native support, but it's the only addiction that forces me to bootup windows.

... and did some market research to find out how many Linux gamers there are that they could tap into.

Valve ported a bunch of games to Linux and now this Steam thing. They clearly believe that Linux is the gaming OS of the future.

My Radeon R9 390 would love native client. Gobble it up with the latest drivers that Linux has.

CCP never ported Eve to Linux - they just bundled it with a proprietary wine fork, and then dropped it again because the linux community can do better with actual wine.

Porting Eve would take quite a bit of time and money. Spending money and dropping the fee - how is that supposed to work?

After all these years, I'd expect the fee to rise as a form of inflationary adjustment, not to fall. And in fact, CCP has been trying to make more money for a while now: Aurum and apparel, SKINs, Transneural Skill Extractors ...


As for the linux port: This discussion has come up every few months since 2008 or whenever they removed official Linux support. It's not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. One does not simply write a new OGL Engine, especially not for a game like Eve. That sort of thing is a major undertaking, and it simply cannot be justified by gaining better access to maybe 10% of the potential costumers at best.

Yes, Gaming on Linux is on the rise, but even with SteamOS, it will take years before Linux will have a substantial market share as far as Gaming OSes go.