I am a grumpy old man that is/was pissed that we aren’t getting a “real” Baldurs Gate 3, but as it gets close to release I am sadly getting excited about it.
Has anyone played Early Access on the Steam Deck? Is it fun/playable on there? I do nearly 100% of my gaming on that now and barely touch my dedicated gaming Ubuntu machine these days.
Anyone that thought Baldur’s Gate 3 would just automatically release on Linux because it was releasing on Stadia was just delusional. Larian Studios didn’t even support Linux with Divinity Original Sin 2 despite supporting Linux with Divinity Original Sin… why? because they learned their lesson which is:
The biggest issue with releasing any software on a particular platform is whether there is enough potential revenue to make a profit over development and support costs. The only reason BG3 was announced for Stadia was because it had the backing of Google and could deliver up-front revenue to help offset any cost concerns while Larian worked on developing and supporting for Stadia, a fixed platform, that had a finite support structure.
If Stadia did well, larian studios might have released BG3 on Linux, but when Stadia tanked, so did any idea of there being any hope of a release for general Linux.
They arguably didn’t even do that. It was a kickstarter goal and it took them 2 years to add support. Then it broke shortly after on Mesa and they never bothered to fix it: https://news.softpedia.com/news/how-to-make-divinity-original-sin-enhanced-edition-work-with-mesa-on-linux-513089.shtml
Stadia never lead to any native ports AFAIK so this is also pretty unlikely to have happened.