Linux Game Publishing Shuts Down PenguinPlay

[gbudny]

It's a terrible news that CEO of LGP probably is spending more time on developing and publishing games as DarkArts Studios instead porting games to Linux as LGP:

http://www.darkarts.co.za/peg-solitaire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3OFqfJ7G-I

https://www.facebook.com/DarkArtsStudios

[Kristian Joensen]

Similar to how GameSpy recently cut service for many "classic" games (NWN being one dear to Linux users), then shut down completely.

You are thinking about two different GameSpy's here. The MP services company was before GameSpy.com the gaming news site shut down recently, according to Wikipedia:

GameSpy was acquired by IGN Entertainment in March 2004. GameSpy Technologies (the entity responsible for GameSpy multiplayer services) was then bought from IGN Entertainment by Glu Mobile in August 2012,[4] and proceeded in December to rise integration costs and shut down servers for many older games, including Star Wars: Battlefront, Sniper Elite and Neverwinter Nights,with no warning to developers or consumers, much to the outrage of communities of those games

Here is a Gamespy.com article about the matter.

[gbudny]

Similar to how GameSpy recently cut service for many "classic" games (NWN being one dear to Linux users), then shut down completely..

NWN for Linux was a terrible version of this game.

Making a company that _buys_ rights to port games to a platform with a comparatively tiny market share is just daft, and this conclusion was pretty much foregone.

Linux Game Publishing established in the time, when many game companies wanted stop make games for Linux.

[elanthis]

Similar to how GameSpy recently cut service for many "classic" games (NWN being one dear to Linux users), then shut down completely.

Everything is moving to vertically integrated platforms in the AAA space. Being a company that paid to port games just sucked when normally a big studio pays a porting house to make ports to oddball platforms like the Wii or PS3 which are drastically different than the original XBox/PC versions (Wii requires an entirely different, low-quality renderer, scaled down tedxtures/models/animations, etc.; no Nintendo platform before the Wii U even supported shaders of any level, which modern renderes all make extensive use of; and the PS3 ports required a lot of work to utilize the SPUs and under-powered GPU properly, as what worked well on the XBox often doesn't work at acceptable speeds on the PS3 hardware, and vice versa).

Making a company that _buys_ rights to port games to a platform with a comparatively tiny market share is just daft, and this conclusion was pretty much foregone. Making a consultation company to be paid to port games, like Icculus does, makes way more sense. Even then, you'll make _way_ less porting to Linux than you will as a PS3 porting house, simply because companies will invest more in ports to platforms that offer way higher revenue potentials, although Icculus certainly makes enough (if not a lot) doing what he does.

[jhansonxi]

The Linux Game Tome web site is online again after I asked about it on IRC in the #linuxgames channel at Freenode. Apparently it's still owned by Michael (lgp-michael) the former CEO and not LGP. It's full of spam but volunteers are working on cleaning it up:

http://www.happypenguin.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=61054

[gbudny]

"Meanwhile, another Linux Game Publishing property that still is online but has seen better days (at least the web-pages are serving, but not necessarily customer orders) is the Tux Games online store."

In 2012 Linux Game Publishing removed Tux Games from thle list of LGP resellers:

http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/resellers.php?

http://web.archive.org/web/20120101233923/http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/resellers.php?

[gbudny]

https://www.duedil.com

"Follow companies and directors to see their recent activity, including filed accounts, returns and appointments."

Linux Game Publishing

https://www.duedil.com/company/04281799/linux-game-publishing-ltd

Tux Games

https://www.duedil.com/company/04289663/tux-games-ltd

[Kristian Joensen]

So is that all they are doing these days? Shutting things down? Do you need a fulltime CEO for that? Other staff(is there any?)?

[stqn]

Goodbye and good riddance. Not that anyone used it anyway.

But is there a working matchmaking service available? I don?t think so, because I searched for one a couple months back, and while I stumbled on penguinplay I didn?t find anything I could use.

[gbudny]

Who's gonna fix my X3 DRM!

I think you will should ask Egosoft about technical support for X3.