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PC gamers buy way more games that cost less than $30 at launch compared to PlayStation and Xbox players, analysts say, and it's "reshaping the PC market" (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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Schedule 1, Peak, and REPO lead a big year for small games

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[+] -13 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Because a lot of indie games don't come to consoles (or at least Xbox — I see a lot of Steam/PlayStation releases or Steam/Switch releases).

I see a ton of cool indie games I'd love to play, but I can't because they require Windows. I don't think a game should be able to be called indie if it requires you to use Windows (or macOS, what I use), exclusively. Like if you're "independent" of Windows (macOS or Linux) or "independent" of Apple (Windows or Linux), they should be making their game available to you. That means, of course, supporting all three platforms. Linux and macOS are both based on UNIX (if you go back far enough). Switch and Mac use the same CPU architecture (ARM64). Linux has the best handheld support. And Windows has the biggest install base. So it's really worth it to support all four of those. And then Xbox and PlayStation use the same architecture as PC gaming, x86-64 with a GPU. So it's really all connected and, unless one platform is sponsoring the game somehow (at which point, it isn't indie), no platform's players should be left out. JMO

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  • [–] 21 points 6 months ago

    "Indie" doesn't refer to independence from a platform, it's supposed to mean independently published (in other artistic industries, this has become slightly muddled as "indie" is more of an aesthetic these days). The fact that these games are directly supported on one platform over others is a symptom of being indie more than anything, as a large publisher would require support on multiple platforms to ensure maximum market penetration.

    Also, proton is incredible these days, so windows lock in isn't as much of a thing anymore.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago*

    If you have an x86 cpu Mac, install Linux, use steam/proton and you can play pretty much any indie Windows game out there. Or you can just install Windows. If you have an Apple cpu Mac, there are still tools out there you can use to play the game.

    You can't fault Indie devs who have a day job for not wanting to spend time supporting a ton of different platforms (AAA, is a different story)

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    You're only about 10 years too late for anyone to give a single crap about native linux

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Proton's a little more recent than that. I still remember the bad old days of Steam on Linux from 2013-2017 where Proton didn't exist yet, and running the Windows version of Steam through WINE was a PITA. Heck, Proton didn't really start to get good until about 2021.

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