Linux Game Publishing Is Hitting A Bumpy Road Again

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Game Publishing Is Hitting A Bumpy Road Again

Linux Game Publishing, the UK-based company that's ported a number of game clients to Linux but last year had a pretty quiet time (nearly going the way of Loki Software) after their only server went kaput and was offline for months. Earlier this year, LGP said they were working on a new Linux game port, but they failed to comment further...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTc1OA

[Xilanaz]

Its probably me but it feels to me that you go out of your way to report news as negatively as possible, so from your side of the world a server is hard to reach and bang we got a whole company hitting a bumpy road.... sigh, maybe you got some personal issues with lgp or something ? I dunno.

anyways, from this side of the world, http://linuxgamepublishing.com/, http://www.tuxgames.com/ and http://www.happypenguin.org/ are all loading perfectly fine.

I enjoy Phoronix in general but its this sort of made up stories almost always negatively in spirit that make me look more and more for other linux news sites.

[Luke_Wolf]

And that's why DRM should never be supported in the first place... EVER. Companies like GOG and Wolffire/HumbleBundle have it right, Steam and LGP have it wrong. Particularly when LGP is retailing these games at IMHO unreasonable prices, Sacred Gold for instance is listed at $27, you can pick it up on GOG for $10, less if it's on sale at the time, with NO DRM, runs perfectly in wine, and you get a bunch of free stuff with it too. If LGP was like GOG it could be successful since it is not, it is doomed to be another Loki. On top of which if they really want to reach their market they should be negotiating with the top distros to have their store integrated into the package manager.. Maybe as part of Project Bretzn

And actually bundles and sales are a really great way to get people to buy stuff online..

[liamdawe]

Its probably me but it feels to me that you go out of your way to report news as negatively as possible, so from your side of the world a server is hard to reach and bang we got a whole company hitting a bumpy road.... sigh, maybe you got some personal issues with lgp or something ? I dunno.

anyways, from this side of the world, http://linuxgamepublishing.com/, http://www.tuxgames.com/ and http://www.happypenguin.org/ are all loading perfectly fine.

I enjoy Phoronix in general but its this sort of made up stories almost always negatively in spirit that make me look more and more for other linux news sites.

"+1", the sites are loading perfectly for me, if anything faster than usual like they have just completed server upgrades or something.

Mike does have a little beef with LGP though and so do i, the constant "we are working, no really!!" and then nothing for a year or more.

The other guy also hit the nail on the head, they are extremely overpriced for what the games are, they see it as "well they are new to Linux", so what? They are so old nearly all of them either working flawlessly in wine for a couple dollars/pounds/whatever or they have been ported elsewhere for Linux and are dirt cheap in comparison again.

Is it time for LGP to throw in the towel? No. Is it time for LGP to grow up a bit and get with the times? Yes. What do i mean by that? Scrap their boxed copies, stick to downloadable copies (saving themselves and all of us money and time in the process) and get themselves out their actually porting games and get them included into things like the HIB's, Desura when it is released, the now masses of Linux games stores (more crop up every couple of months, gameolith is the most recent).

[Wyatt]

Speaking of porting things to Linux, has anyone heard from Svartalf lately?

[Azpegath]

Who cares about a game from 2003? It's soon 10 years old, the only game that people would care about for that long would be StarCraft, WoW or CS.

[gilboa]

I second the above.
LGP is working just fine here.
(Including X3 DRM server access)

Michael, I would suggest you retract the story. It unnecessarily damages a company that has done great deal to advance the Linux gaming cause.

- Gilboa

[elanthis]

Who cares about a game from 2003? It's soon 10 years old, the only game that people would care about for that long would be StarCraft, WoW or CS.

Or Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Street Fighter, Sonic, Final Fantasy, Tetris, and tons more that I could keep listing were I that bored.

Old does not mean bad, nor even undesirable or not worth much.

The particular games that LGP ports, however, do tend to usually be the kinds of games that hit the bargain bin shortly after release...

Regarding the previous poster asking why LGP doesn't remove DRM, it's quite possible that LGP doesn't have that choice. They don't own these games, they simply have the rights to publish Linux-compatible binaries and accompanying game data under some specific set of terms we do not know.

[Kano]

Well when you look at the price tag it is not unlikely that somebody would prefer to pirate those games - especially as they are completely overpriced compared to the win originals. Maybe they should consider a better deal and sell win+linux(+osx) as bundles just like the frozenbundle without drm. I dont think overpriced linux only games reach a huge enough number of ppl, multplattform is definitely the way to go.

[elanthis]

Maybe they should consider a better deal and sell win+linux(+osx) as bundles just like the frozenbundle without drm.

LGP doesn't have the right to do that, unfortunately. They only have rights to the Linux binaries. The Humble Bundle has a lot more flexibility on account of them selling indie games only, rather than trying to sell ported copies of games from major publishers.