Okay 505, Holiday's over. Time for some answers. (Linux/Mac)

absorbnix as I said more than once before I'm very disappointed in the handling of this whole matter by the team, especially concerning the lack of refunds.

But attitudes such as yours are beyond irritating. I won't shrug off legitimate disappointment especially from the ones involved, but this is ridiculous. If they don't give a response at all, they're at fault. If they do give a response, then you twist every word into the complete opposite because you think they are obviously scammers always lying through their teeth. Just stop. It's nauseating.

This is the last thing I'm going to say on the matter.

Thank you. I know you left the forum before and didn't do so in some immature way. I honestly hate when when I can't bring someone to a point where they are looking forward to playing Bloodstained. I had already counted you as a failure in my efforts to bring understanding.

I don't see contradictions. I just have a different understanding on what 505 has and hasn't said. Explaining those differences is something we can talk about, but it won't be anything I or someone else probably hasn't already said.

The question about what my solution would be is a good question. A tough question. I've thought about several routes to either get backers their version that works, or a refund. I don't believe the refund route is possible. I've tried my best to make it happen behind the scenes and I'm convinced beyond doubt it's just not possible.

So, since refunds aren't possible I don't have a solution there. I feel it would be counter productive to start a crowd sourced refund campaign without a good means of verification. I believe this mostly out of the number of people minimum that I think would make a claim. Also, at the very least I'm looking at transfer fees that would hurt. Let's not dwell on refunds, because unless someone can come up with something I haven't heard yet or thought of, they are never going to happen. No solution on that route from me.

The other route is getting those platforms at the very least working and at the best, supported. I have never used Linux or Mac. I'm not the best person to make a solution here, but I love the way Browen stepped up to the plate in that regard. It's a super slim chance that would happen and I know that offer is hitting the ears of the team behind the scenes. Even if that doesn't happen (I think it has a snowballs chance) it certainly makes the right kinda waves I like to see. The community is willing to tow the weight that gets left behind. The community made all this happen in the first place. It shows "the brass" at 505 Games how creative and passionate we are, and that this is important to us. Sure, your backer dollars said that loud and clear enough for me the first time, bit this offer for a solution is being made at a perfect time.

Until the game is tested on WINE (which I've never heard of until this mess happened) we won't know what we need to do to progress this. We can't even effectively approach a campaign for getting them to officially support the game post launch until we know more, right? I don't know. I'm not the tech guy on this stuff.

I can promise this though, when the time is right I will help the community be heard loud and clear about it. Right now, I don't think that time has come and might need to wait until launch.

There are the demos out there on Steam and I think on GoG soon if not already. Can Linux testing be done with those? We were able to hack resources in and out of the game, so if it's not totally locked down, maybe peeking in there will give the community more ideas on how it will go even without the source code (which will never be given to the fans at any level I'm sure.)

Well i got half of what i wanted...

Answers...

The other half is a refund, But it seems like i won't get it for now... So, I am going to keep pushing for public reach-out.
At the moment, On the platforms : steam discussions, reddit, kickstarter comments and even youtube, The negativity is increasing, And i will do my part to apply more pressure.

Also, since I remember someone mentioning Underworld Ascendant in one of these threads, which I also happen to be a backer of, here are some posts from their forum on the topic of Mac and Linux builds to show how things should be being handled here:


Transparency:


Platform Support:



NOTE: These weren't replies to me. I don't currently have time to do a proper job of playtesting something, so I'm letting more worthy people do that.

I think that's more project timing, size/scope and cultural differences of development than it is 505 being bad about it. We may hear more details sometime later, but right now Bloodstained's development team is/has been/will be glued to their desks for some time. On top of Bloodstained being Japanese, comparatively Underworld A has been released for a few months now. Those guys have a good bit more time and ability to openly interface with their much smaller project.

Beyond that...it seems the release it did get was extremely problematic. It seems they should better gauge the time and care necessary to work on or say they're working on something. I wish them the best, those numbers are very damaging.

purifyweirdshard Ah, well, pardon me for misunderstanding already. Thanks for clearing that up though. It's 1AM here and my brain isn't at its best condition.

As a PC and PS4 gamer, it's hard for me to care about the lack of Linux/Mac support. Not to sound like an asshole, but I can't help but think the sudden cancellation of Linux/Mac is understandable. Sure, it's unfortunate that the devs couldn't live up to the promise. But, yeah, there is bias from my thought process because I was never keen about gaming on Linux/Mac systems. When I was scrolling through the boards, I read stuff like people justifying that 505Games has violated stuff. But there are also folks who justify that 505 provided a reasonable solution like using Wine to emulate Windows games. It sounds like a half-baked solution, but it's at least doable.

I personally think they should just offer refunds like how they did for Vita. I realize that the developers will lose a significant amount of money by offering refunds. I don't want to think about it at this point to be honest. The only thing I can offer is pity. Linux users could just dual-boot for Windows, but eh, it's gonna be a considerable amount of money just for an OS that they don't want to use. Plenty of solutions to be able to play the game non-natively.

If only people will let the game prolong its release just for native Linux/Mac support, things would be so much easier. But the team is pressured and inclined to release the game as soon as possible. Or is it just me that thinks that way? With all the different things people are talking about, it isn't hard to think that a lot of people are making mere speculations. I've never been in a dev team's shoes, so I can't really tell just how hard it is to develop a game. Though, it's a universal fact that game development is absurdly difficult and takes time. It's just that not a lot of people realize that and most of them are quick to point their fingers and say "it's an excuse for mediocrity".

It's nice to see what people write though. Gives me a good grasp of the situation at hand. But it still hasn't changed my extreme anticipation for the game.

You're going to have to come up with a new line because Question just confirmed this is not the problem.

If "good" is being misleading and wrong, yes you are.

sigh what he said exactly was "Yes, there is an issue in the surveys with discerning backers who want mac/linux from PC users, but while it may be a contributing factor, it's not the main one. That's why I don't bring it up in our statements. It's also an issue that likely has workarounds that could be figured out if needed."

So apparently it is not THE problem, but a problem. The point in my response to lepstadder was to make it known that the Vita and PC situations are not 1:1 cases. I think that should be obvious. You guys keep making it harder to advocate for you.