Electronic Arts At Ubuntu Summit; Linux Games Coming?

[sgtGarcia]

Take a good look on EA Mac game list, cause that's what would Linux probably get.
They list 27 games of which:
- FIFA 12 - 2011 game
- Portal 2 - 2011 game
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - 2007
- Battlefield 2142 - 2006 - I've got Win version, not too much servers left ( but the game is really cool, especially Titan Mode )
- Dragon Age 2 - 2011 game, users on metacritics.com didn't have mercy = 4.2, rather play Witcher 2
- Create - 2010 game, metacritics.com disaster = 54 points from critics & ONE review ( 3pts = negative ) from user
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - 2009
- Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack - 2008
- Spore Creature Creator - 2008
- rest 15 games are Sims o.O

There are 3 maybe 4 games I would MAYBE/PROBABLY buy & none of them are Sims.
If that would be games library for Linux then it would be a quite big disaster, especially if it would be winelibrary, not direct port of the game.

So for now prognosis is : SUCKY SUCKY BIG TIME.
But let's wait till 7th day of May.

[smitty3268]

This will almost certainly be limited to the same set of games they sell on iOS and Android, and will be sold through the Ubuntu store only for that distro.

If you think Madden or Mass Effect is coming, you're going to be disappointed.

[Kivada]

DRM and Online Games that stop working every year!!!!! Yahhhh if they come at us like this they will not only fail but, make major headlines and ruin there name. I can see RMS with one of his yearly speeches on the evils of EA. Maybe we should send someone to prep EA before thay decide to make anything for us.

They've been running the annual release game since the SNES/Genesis era, they've been doing the online killoff since at least the PS2/XBox era, possibly even on Dreamcast though.

Problem is since they are the only ones allowed to make these games and the unending hordes or morons that buy these games yearly, often for multiple consoles. Not even joking there, been to the gamestop and seen a guy buy Madden 2010 for 360, PS3 and PSP...

[numasan]

I remember a similar "partnership" way back between EA and Lindows via Transgaming (wine-based). I think it was an exclusive deal so no way to buy The Sims for general Linux, only through Lindows. It was not a success obviously. I can imagine the same happening here, where you can only buy select EA games through Ubuntu Software Center, probably including CrossOver.

Seeing how Ubuntu/Canonical wants to go after the lowest common denominator of users, the selection of EA games will most likely reflect this. The Sims for sure and maybe NFS, and flash / chrome nativeclient games like Plants vs. Zombies where the porting cost is near zero. People hoping to see "hardcore" EA franchises will be disappointed I think, and the same goes for those of us who want real native Linux ports.

[zester]

So your OS distribution can take care of packaging and distributing the FOSS components that make up your system, then your "
With a proper distro-agnostic platform you could get cloud updates, potentially cloud storage of saves/configs, and easy storefronts for purchasing. The publishers get a decent level of DRM (in license authentication when software is run in online mode) that deters most people from casual piracy, and as long as there's a functional offline mode it shouldn't get in the way of people who just want to play singleplayer games while travelling. EA and Steam's recent EULA updates now allow access to offline mode when your account is "banned", which has been a long-standing complaint against Steam.

If this was the case then I would buy there games.

[grantek]

I think it's coming, but I think Linux needs some good "virtual distros" that take care of purchased/proprietary software, like desura/steam/origin/gog-updater

So your OS distribution can take care of packaging and distributing the FOSS components that make up your system, then your "games distro" keeps its own directory in eg. /opt as a way of getting around the lack of unification of packaging formats by OS distros.

Currently desura is the only one that works, but it doesn't have an agreement with EA. Valve and GOG (and EA) have agreements with EA, but don't do Linux yet. Ubuntu have their Software Center, but it only works for Ubuntu and maybe some other Debian-based distros.

With a proper distro-agnostic platform you could get cloud updates, potentially cloud storage of saves/configs, and easy storefronts for purchasing. The publishers get a decent level of DRM (in license authentication when software is run in online mode) that deters most people from casual piracy, and as long as there's a functional offline mode it shouldn't get in the way of people who just want to play singleplayer games while travelling. EA and Steam's recent EULA updates now allow access to offline mode when your account is "banned", which has been a long-standing complaint against Steam.

[FutureSuture]

Good lord, you're right! How could I not see that? They release their worst selling games on Mac, so they can claim the Mac isn't a viable gaming platform. And now they might use the same strategy to finish Linux gaming once and for all!

That doesn't sound like bad management, but like a diabolic conspiracy!

Let them. When Desura, Steam, and hopefully GOG succeed, people will look at EA again and laugh. EA has a rather bad reputation, so everybody should and probably does take them with a grain of salt.

[FutureSuture]

Good lord, you're right! How could I not see that? They release their worst selling games on Mac, so they can claim the Mac isn't a viable gaming platform. And now they might use the same strategy to finish Linux gaming once and for all!

That doesn't sound like bad management, but like a diabolic conspiracy!

Let them. When Desura, Steam, and hopefully GOG succeed, people will look at EA again and laugh. EA has a rather bad reputation, so everybody should and probably does take them with a grain of salt.

[allquixotic]

I'm Commander Shepard, and Ubuntu is my favorite Linux distribution on the Citadel.

[alexThunder]

In fact it may hurt Linux gaming. They may release tons of crap (just like for OS X), nobody will buy it, and they say something like "there is no gaming market on Linux, we already check this". It's typical logic error for management, Ubisoft talk the same about PC gaming market and piracy.

Good lord, you're right! How could I not see that? They release their worst selling games on Mac, so they can claim the Mac isn't a viable gaming platform. And now they might use the same strategy to finish Linux gaming once and for all!

That doesn't sound like bad management, but like a diabolic conspiracy!