Postal III On Linux Is Kaput For Now

[lexa2]

The UT3 engine is already ported to Mac. It appeared in the Sept UDK release.

Well I guess that's good for Mac users but it doesn't invalidate that it would be interesting to see an amount of sales in case such kind of HiB would be held.

[Hamish Wilson]

Why would the Humble Indie Bundle allow only engine code from Epic when it is supposed showcasing the best of the Indie scene?

You can release games successfully on Linux without being part of the Humble Indie Bundle you know...

[lexa2]

Why would the Humble Indie Bundle allow only engine code from Epic when it is supposed showcasing the best of the Indie scene?

You can release games successfully on Linux without being part of the Humble Indie Bundle you know...

... and also you can simply throw out Linux support and be happy with it, you know.

Read it simple: HiB shown that Linux gamers exist and that they are ready to pay more than Windows folks for the games that run natively on the OS of their choice. There was a statement in this thread that icculus hadn't finish his work on UT3 for linux due to EPIC refused to pay for linux support. So I just had put those two things together and thought about an interesting thing that might content everyone out there. LInux gamers would get what they want; HiB would gain extra publicity and earn some more money to support charity and indie developers; EPIC would get additional sales and +1 to reputation from linux gamers. I know that HiB is supposed to be only about indie scene, e.t.c., e.t.c., but that's another and separate discussion I don't want to flame about.

[deanjo]

... and also you can simply throw out Linux support and be happy with it, you know.

Read it simple: HiB shown that Linux gamers exist and that they are ready to pay more than Windows folks for the games that run natively on the OS of their choice. There was a statement in this thread that icculus hadn't finish his work on UT3 for linux due to EPIC refused to pay for linux support. So I just had put those two things together and thought about an interesting thing that might content everyone out there. LInux gamers would get what they want; HiB would gain extra publicity and earn some more money to support charity and indie developers; EPIC would get additional sales and +1 to reputation from linux gamers. I know that HiB is supposed to be only about indie scene, e.t.c., e.t.c., but that's another and separate discussion I don't want to flame about.

Take a look at what the average price was per game and you would see why companies are not quick to support a port. The revenue generated would hardly even cover one junior programmers salary for a year.

[Hamish Wilson]

Alternatively they could just release the damn port.

Though if we take your idea into account, I think they should really do their own pay what you want sale. Your idea does have merit in that the HIB model is a good way of demonstrating that their is a Linux games market, but I do not see what it has to do with this much, and it is simply not what the bundle is about.

The long and the short of it is Epic just does not care about us and UT3 has basically been forgotten about anyway. On all platforms. Let's move on and look to the future, and support the developers that are still supporting us or wish to support us.

[deanjo]

Your idea does have merit in that the HIB model is a good way of demonstrating that their is a Linux games market

I don't think there is a question if there is a "linux game market" it's more of a case of "is there a profitable linux games market that makes it worth the effort" from a pure financial POV. Humble Bundle does not indicate that at all. HB's show that if you offer something really cheap anybody will take a risk at a purchase and displays how much people are willing to throw away in a worst case scenario. Most of those HB games have been offered for quite some time as stand alone higher priced games (usually still at around 1/3rd the price of your typical AAA title) where they never did great at sales.

[lexa2]

Take a look at what the average price was per game and you would see why companies are not quick to support a port. The revenue generated would hardly even cover one junior programmers salary for a year.

Let's count. Average salary of the average programmer here in Moscow ranges from 1500 to 3000 USD per month, depending the company he works for (Banks, Oil and Gas companies pay around 3k-2k, other companies tries their best to pay less than 1.5k). It sums up to 36k USD per year most. You're trying to say that bundle that had collected around 2000k USD would not cover that? Ok, rough calculation: it would be around 1500k after taxes and other general expenses, let's cut one third of it for charity, HiB cap, e.t.c. It leaves us with 1000k USD divided per ~5 gamedevs, i.e. around 200k per dev. This calculations are rough but I think you've got an idea. I bet that icculus would agree to port UTx to linux in case he would be paid 150k-200k for that :-).

[lexa2]

Alternatively they could just release the damn port.

I wish they would do it. Unfortunately they didn't.

The long and the short of it is Epic just does not care about us and UT3 has basically been forgotten about anyway. On all platforms. Let's move on and look to the future, and support the developers that are still supporting us or wish to support us.

Agreed on this. For example I had ordered OilRush game at the first day they had launched pre-ordering.

[deanjo]

Let's count. Average salary of the average programmer here in Moscow ranges from 1500 to 3000 USD per month,

A jr dbase programmer makes roughly 6k per month (around ~72-75 K per year) here.

You're trying to say that bundle that had collected around 2000k USD would not cover that?

Nope, especially when factor in that the bundle is split between multiple companies and OS's. Going from past HIB bundles linux accounts for about 25% of the revenue. So lets say roughly 3 games in a bundle, and everything went right and they sold 2 million dollars worth. So revenue is split among the games evenly, that gives each game 666,000. Now out of that 25% was generated by linux sales. So roughly $166,000 you have to pay that programmer, marketing, additional platform middleware licenses, ongoing support, any additional revenue sharin that the original programmers and artists may have in their contract, additional publisher compensation, etc. It simply isn't worth it.

Consider that UT3 struggled to manage 1 million copies across the three strongest gaming platforms netting roughly 50 million in sales and it was considered a flop.

[lexa2]

A jr dbase programmer makes roughly 6k per month (around ~72-75 K per year) here.

Yeah, that's the difference between the level of living. Salaries for the same work may differ by several orders in different countries. Ukrainian programmers earn notably less than Russian, programmers in India earn way less than Ukrainian, e.t.c.

OTOH, why not to use outsourcing then, if it's easily possible to cut devcost from 75K per year down to misery 10K per year paying some guy from India or China? Although I must admit that the code quality you get from such employees is often so bad than I had to rewrite half of the project myself to get it functional.

Nope, especially when factor in that the bundle is split between multiple companies and OS's. Going from past HIB bundles linux accounts for about 25% of the revenue. ... gives each game 666,000. Now out of that 25% was generated by linux sales. So roughly $166,000 you have to pay that programmer...

It doesn't matters how much sales had been generated by which OS when it comes to the hypothetical case I've been talking about. So that 25% you mention are not rightfull. In any case there's actually nothing to discuss here because the case I had written about would never happen. HiB would never collect revenue anywhere close to the first week sales amount of triple A titles. And even more: PC sales of triple A titles would never be anywhere close to XBox360 or PS3.

Consider that UT3 struggled to manage 1 million copies across the three strongest gaming platforms netting roughly 50 million in sales and it was considered a flop.

That's just what I had written above. Linux ports of the games like RAGE and UT wouldn't ever bring any noticeable revenue to publisher. The only thing they may get by providing linux port is a better reputation through OSS community (which isn't the target group they sale their product to). Still having linux engine port sold on "it is like an indie-game" basis is a thing I'd like to see in future (though chances are very low that it would ever happen).