Blizzard Entertainment Planning A Linux Game For 2013

[ChemicalBrother]

It's getting hot in here, so get out all the announcements...

Or so.

Yeah, that's why I'm not a rapper. Also where is the announcement? Still waiting.

[blackout23]

They are busy squeezing money out of the ruined Diablo franchise by launching it on consoles with all the features you wanted in the PC version from day 1. Like no eBay Simulator, higher droprates etc.....

[ChemicalBrother]

So, summer nearly gone, gamescom was last weekend, but still no announcement from Blizzard regarding a Linux port of one of their games. I want to point this out specifically because of this (in January 2013):

A public announcement should come out of Blizzard by this summer. So for the usual skeptics and those not fond of my unconventional approaches in writing thousands of articles annually, if you don't want to believe it now, you should see action in the next few months

Damn straight I am one of those "usual" skeptics. Also the reports on Portal 2 already out, CS:GO should be the next in the beta (months ago and still isn't) or Metro: Last Light already out just show that the skepticism for Phoronix is justified and continues to be justified because of ongoing bad research. Some of this research takes only 5 min and still... *shakehead*

[oliver]

I haven't done the investigation myself yet (I was planning on it, but busy) but this post here: http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/gene...ml#post2818807 makes a reference to C# indicating .Net? Also it may be done using Unity3D.

Now take these two data and then considering that Hearthstone is a new game, making it very easily portable using those 2 frameworks. IF it really is (partially) in .Net then it would be rather easy to port to any platform. It's not a heavy game so 'why not'.

So besides the obvious 3, there's now a very disappointing 4th contender.

[ChemicalBrother]

Blizzard already said in one of their own forum topics, that they "might consider" Linux support for that game, if there is enough "support", whatever they mean by that.

That is not what I call an announcement for a Linux port of one of their games. And this is not about speculation, well maybe the article, respectively the author, was speculating, but this was about an announcement this summer and I don't see it.

[DanLamb]

Phoronix: Blizzard Entertainment Planning A Linux Game For 2013

Blizzard Entertainment, the game studio behind wildly-popular games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft, is planning for a Linux game announcement in 2013...

any update on this? it doesn't look hopeful. I'd love some native Linux blizzard content.

[araxth]

Most likely it will be Blizzard All-Stars which is still kept in closed beta, Blizzard internally. Quoting the English Wikipedia "..." In August 2013, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said that the game had reached a significant internal testing milestone, and was going into wider internal testing "..." I am not sure it was wise for Michael to advance also a date for the delivery but then again i am just a game dev, not a journalist

I have little hope one of their bigger franchises will reach Linux soon anyway (*Craft, WoW, Diablo) but BAS should be a good start. With their big games, long live WINE. The Blizz devs are taking Wine into consideration when they are developing the Windoze build and the outcome is visible even for the latest titles (that lack OpenGL support). Ofc there are problems every now and then with Blizz + Wine games but they are getting solved in due time and nobody denies that. I am playing currently some Blizz titles (WoW, W3 and Diablo II + III ) trough Wine and i can't complain. I would love native binaries but well, it's hard to persuade stock holders to pull money into projects designed to lead trough unproven business environment.
I suppose for now i would be just glad i can have Blizz games working through Wine, i can have Valve who are actually leading the Linux gaming wave and i can have indie developers considering Linux for their target platforms.

[b15hop]

+1
I've been a huge Blizzard fan up until D2. Nothing worthy came out after that. Well, maybe SC2 if you're into that (I'm not), but even so people complained it's just more SC to begin with.

SC2 was good about 6 months to a year after it was released. The shear amount of patches to the game makes me believe it was released unbalanced and buggy. But in saying that. I've not played it for a long time. I might start playing it again just for mods, but so far no mods have pulled me in. I might consider playing through it again on Linux just because. D3 was a blasted waste of money. I'm pissed off that I bought it.

I never ever will play WoW. So don't care if it is ported. Also I thought WoW was on it's way out?

Blizzard have been a pretty big disappointment in the last 5 years. SC2 being the only good game, that felt very short for what it was. The old Blizzard was better. I sure hope valve learn from this mistake. Too much control kills the gamers. KISS principle valve... Learn it well!

[araxth]

I can understand your point on Blizz's creative choices. Right now they are owned by Activision (even considering their creative independence and the current pending issues after breaking from Vivendi) and i can hardly see Bobby Kotick pulling money on *nix. And i am afraid that S2+ and D3 are just examples of Activision's influence in the whole Blizz thing. I've stopped labeling them as pioneers at some point in the past and i can hardly see them redeeming in this industry. Right now my eye are on CD Projekt RED team. They seem to be hell bent on keeping their creative autonomy from the big publisher houses they are working with. It might take some time to see CDP guys adding *nix on their list of platforms given the limited resources they can pull but well... They moved on MAC (along with consoles) from they traditional WIN PC tradition and if we are to believe Ryan Gordon, and i have little reasons not to, the port from MAC -> Linux shouldnt be a big issue (aka costs) . Ref on Gamasutra

My eyes are focused on on valve as i said and indie devs (those greenlighted on Kickstarter for instance) who are actually doing something on *Nix.

Best,
n.

[blackout23]

Blizzard can suck a bag of dicks. It will be funny seeing all those other companies twisting and turning to get their software on Linux after Valve already conqured the Linux Gaming Market with SteamOS/Steam Machines. Give it 3 years.