Linux gamers are way better at finding game bugs than Windows users, says game dev

Here's some news that Linux users and supporters would probably really like. Kodera Software, a game developer for an indie title called ΔV: Rings of Saturn, has posted some interesting findings about bug reporting in the game.

The title has been in early access for a couple of years and the developer has noted that about 38% of all the bugs found in its title came from the Linux Community. This is despite just 700 copies out of the total 12,000 units sold being based on Linux, which is just 5.8% of the entire userbase for ΔV: Rings of Saturn. As such, Kodera praises the typical Linux gamer by saying they report back 650% more bugs.

As of today, I sold a little over 12,000 units of ΔV in total. 700 of these units were bought by Linux players. That’s 5.8%. I got 1040 bug reports in total, out of which roughly 400 are made by Linux players. That’s one report per 11.5 users on average, and one report per 1.75 Linux players. That’s right, an average Linux player will get you 650% more bug reports.

For those wondering if the reporting on Linux is simply more due to the platform being more buggier, Kodera is quick to point out that such is not the case. It states that out of 400 total bug reports from Linux, only three were platform-specific.

Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux.

Kodera believes that it is because of how an open-source software like Linux and its surrounding community functions and is the reason why the gamers on the Linux platform are also seemingly more adept at finding and reporting bugs back to developers. The developer compares the gamers' efforts with free Quality Assurance (QA) checks.

the thing is, the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs. That is just the open-source way. This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone. Just like having your own 700-person strong QA team. That was not 38% extra work for me, that was just free QA!

Not just that, the quality and detail for reporting is also exceptionally good in the case of Linux gamers, says Kodera, and some users even get directly involved.

You get all the software/os versions, all the logs, you get core dumps and you get replication steps. Sometimes I got with the player over discord and we quickly iterated a few versions with progressive fixes to isolate the problem.

Source: koderski (Reddit)

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