Game Developer Who Ported To Linux: "I Don't Think It Was Worthwhile"

[profoundWHALE]

That's got performance and other issues with it. Microsoft went to a lot o' trouble for that and I question their sanity in doing it.

For what they wanted to accomplish, I think it works fairly well, and by that I mean the long term goal to get Windows 10 and Xbox One together.

[Svartalf]

For what they wanted to accomplish, I think it works fairly well, and by that I mean the long term goal to get Windows 10 and Xbox One together.

Heh...that's an unworthy goal, unfortunately. You honestly don't want that- and it's artificial...something made by edict, not business sense or anything else. But then...never interrupt an enemy when they make grave mistakes.

[profoundWHALE]

Heh...that's an unworthy goal, unfortunately. You honestly don't want that- and it's artificial...something made by edict, not business sense or anything else. But then...never interrupt an enemy when they make grave mistakes.

Haha, exactly

[Licaon]

Now if China gets up: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150901PD204.html presuming they'll buy the games that is.
Did not bother checking, but these new Linux releases got cracked too, I guess?

[Svartalf]

Now if China gets up: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150901PD204.html presuming they'll buy the games that is.
Did not bother checking, but these new Linux releases got cracked too, I guess?

Heh...that's why I didn't really see royalties for Ballistics. It landed on Pirate Bay almost immediately and that was all she wrote. No different than with Windows, really. Main reason I'm stumping for a few titles to kick-start something for everyone is that I think HumbleBundle's really onto something. There's a threshold at which people will, under most circumstances, not bother pilfering it.

The royalty structures, though, have not allowed it being priced that way. When Loki was a going concern, the pricing was, for most of their titles, too high because they couldn't charge cheaper. Royalties on most of the titles in question almost all but prevented it. Q3:A wasn't one of those problems and was a classic eff-it-up-by-the-numbers play. Civ:CTP wasn't messed up on price either, but the bulk of the titles in question really should've been priced 10-30 dollars less than they were priced.

Same goes for most of the LGP titles. They were good scores overall- but the pricing was against the company. In order to make money on something like Ballistics, for example, they needed to price it at that time at the $10-15 price point (which was still too high, but you could have sold people on the thing in the Linux community)- but because of the royalty deal they had, printing media, etc. the cheapest was the $30-40 it rolled out at. If you can roll it out for about $5 on GoG or Steam, it'll probably sell. Might even sell a good handful to Windows and OSX people at that price point. Good game. Not good enough, though, to sustain the pricing LGP had to roll it out at. Same with a few other titles.

[monraaf]

As for this "little company" you're talking about here...it's Obsidian Entertainment. Let's see what titles they've done over the years, shall we?

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords
Neverwinter Nights 2
Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
Alpha Protocol
Fallout: New Vegas
Dungeon Siege III
South Park: The Stick of Truth
Pillars of Eternity (Duh...)

They've got the Wheel of Time project as well. They aren't small, nor does Pillars represent their first walk in the park (Or their first "not worth it" considering Dungeon Siege III is available for Linux...) If they had problems it's because someone didn't learn from KOTOR II which was less than stellar because of a botch on their part coupled with a rush out the door mentality from the then publisher of the title.

No they don't, Wheel of Time was canceled years ago. Their current announced projects are the next Pillars expansion and Armored Warfare.

Given the fact that they spend ~$1 million US a month keeping the place open and development was stopped for close to a month waiting for Unity to fix a blocking bug in their linux code, linux really wasn't worth the effort.

Also, having played through KOTOR II retail without patching, I think you're full shit when you call the game buggy, but look at where you work.

[monraaf]

The game sold just under 500,000 copies, that puts the linux share at 7,500. Before taxes and store cut that's under $350,000 which doesn't even cover a month of operation at Obsidian Entertainment. Considering they had to wait close to a month while Unity fixed a blocking bug on the platform, it really wasn't worth it.

[anda_skoa]

One of the Obsidian founders thinks it was worthwhile: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gamin...nd_one/cumfr5j

[monraaf]

I totally believe a reddit account with a single comment.

[ElectricPrism]

The game sold just under 500,000 copies, that puts the linux share at 7,500. Before taxes and store cut that's under $350,000 which doesn't even cover a month of operation at Obsidian Entertainment. Considering they had to wait close to a month while Unity fixed a blocking bug on the platform, it really wasn't worth it.

Hmm, so let me get this straight - you & others here are saying to me that their business has a runtime expense of $350,000 to $1,000,000 per month and they spent the whole time "waiting" on Unity to fix a bug?

So at no point did they say to themselves - 'hey maybe we should throw 1-10% of our waiting cost (aka $10,000 - $100,000) at unity to ensure our companies smooth operation.

Neither did they say 'hmm, maybe while we're waiting on this critical bug to be fixed we could work on this other code over here that needs to be done.'

Also - how does someone get in on this making $350,000 - $1,000,000 dollars a month hanging around all day and reading reddit - where do I sign up? uhh, for a friend.