14 DAY TRIAL // CD Projekt Red has announced that the upcoming The Witcher 3 action RPG is also arriving on SteamOS, which means that it will feature Linux support.
The interesting fact about this announcement is that the studio has yet to make a formal statement, and they chose a more indirect way to tell Linux users that they will be able to play the game. If you happened to open Steam today, you might have noticed that The Witcher 3 promotional image also said that the title was coming to SteamOS.
Unfortunately, that particular image is gone now and there is no indication whether it was a mistake or something intentional. In any case, getting a Linux version of this game is likely, especially after the studio chose to release The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings for the open source platform a couple of weeks ago.
The port for Linux wasn't stellar and it was revealed that, in fact, the developers used a wrapper, similar to Wine, to make the game work. This caused a series of problems with the title and most of the complaints from users about this port were about performance issues.
It’s impossible to tell for certain whether the third game in the series will benefit from a native version and not some half-baked release that runs terribly even on very good systems. The new Witcher title will most likely use DirectX 11 on the Windows platform and the existing wrappers are nowhere near ready to make that port work.
This means that it is very likely that the CD Projekt Red studio will choose to develop the game for Linux right from the start, although it’s not yet sure how they are going to pull it off.
From what it has been revealed until now, The Witcher 3 promises to be one of the best-looking games ever made, no matter the platform, be it Linux or Windows. The fact that developers chose to remove the SteamOS text from the image is not encouraging, but the blunder may have revealed more about their plans than they intended.
The Witcher 3 is scheduled to arrive on February 24, 2015, which is actually in nine months’ time. It was initially announced for 2014, but the date has been pushed back. It’s also possible that Linux might have been the cause, but it’s also likely that the company wanted a more open month that would ensure better sales.
We will keep you updated with more information about the Linux version of The Witcher 3.