A Prey Update For Linux, But Still No UT3

It's not too frequently that Ryan Gordon updates his blog (finger), but when he does it's usually to announce a new Linux game port or an update to one of the titles he has ported. In this morning's update by Ryan Gordon, he mentions that an update is now available for Prey.

Prey is a game that was released a while ago for the Windows platform, but it wasn't until last December that the Linux client was finally released after a demo client had been around for a while. This update to Prey on Linux brings support for up to eight mouse buttons, an installer fix when using the Polish locale, allow the Linux installer to import your key from an existing Prey installation, and more locale improvements within the installer. The download files for the retail client and game demo can be found on his blog.

What failed to be mentioned in Ryan's update was any word of Unreal Tournament 3 on Linux. It has been 463 days since this video game was released in North America for Windows, and there remains no sign of when it's coming for Linux. At first there was a chance the UT3 Linux binary would even ship on the game's DVD, but then it was promised to be made available for download after the game's release. Then there was some sort of legal troubles with Unreal Tournament 3 and Linux, which to this day remains a mystery...

Last September though he showed screenshots of the game on Linux, but failed to provide anymore details. Even on the one-year anniversary there were no details available. Needless to say, we still have no details today.

Whatever the situation is with Unreal Tournament 3, it's blasphemous to let Linux customers of Epic Games just sit in the dark. Linux will not surpass Windows in popularity or market-share unless it is able to attain more native games at release-time, and acts like these pulled by Epic Games will not get this platform anywhere.