Desura Acquired By Linden Lab

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Desura Acquired By Linden Lab

Desura, the digital game distribution service similar to Valve's Steam that also supports Linux gaming, has been acquired by Linden Lab...

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

[d2kx]

I have nothing against Desura but Steam is where it's at. Not only for the games themselves, but also for the huge Community features, workshop, guides, sales, and lots more.

[uid313]

Desura was a great promise!
They was on Linux before Steam and had potential to establish themselves but ruined it.

It never was packaged and readily available in the distribution repositories, and still is not.
Look in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories, it is not there.

What a loss of opportunity.

[intellivision]

If they could create a cross platform mobile store they might have have some better luck in the market space.
AFAIK the mobile Steam app is just a chat service.

[stqn]

So does this mean that desura will not accept any new game for publishing?

Edit: from the press release: “This acquisition gives us a global platform for serving creative developers of all kinds, and we’re looking forward to growing both Desura’s global community of gamers and its fantastic portfolio of thousands of games, mods, and other content. Our aim is to invest and support the Desura team in making it the most open and developer-friendly platform in the world.”
So it looks like things will continue as before… maybe.

[shmerl]

I have nothing against Desura but Steam is where it's at. Not only for the games themselves, but also for the huge Community features, workshop, guides, sales, and lots more.

Not really, until Valve's tolerant approach to DRM is reversed. Desura are at least opposed to it themselves (they allow you to download the installer), and if the game does happen to have DRM from developers, they warn you BEFORE you buy it. I.e. on the game info page. Nothing like that is available on Steam.

I hope this acquisition won't change Desura for the worse. I agree though, that Desura is way smaller than Steam. The second biggest after Steam (and completely DRM free with that) is really GOG. So when they'll start selling Linux games they'll become the leader in this aspect. So far, they aren't rushing to do it, but I think they might do it during this year, and that would be a real game changer.

[Kristian Joensen]

", and if the game does happen to have DRM from developers, they warn you BEFORE you buy it. I.e. on the game info page. Nothing like that is available on Steam."

Valve does this too with Steam, check out the Steam page for Dirt 2 for example:

Other Requirements: Online play requires log-in to Games For Windows - Live. Click here for a list of countries/regions with service.

(Source)

or Far Cry 3:

Requires a UPlay account

(Source)

[shmerl]

Does it specify whether some games require to run Steam client to play them (when it's so)?

[Kivada]

Desura was a great promise!
They was on Linux before Steam and had potential to establish themselves but ruined it.

It never was packaged and readily available in the distribution repositories, and still is not.
Look in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories, it is not there.

What a loss of opportunity.

Which is strange since there is an open source client for it. https://github.com/desura/Desurium

[Cyber Killer]

Which is strange since there is an open source client for it. https://github.com/desura/Desurium

Which is their second ruined chance - they opened the code and stopped developing it by themselves counting on the community to do all the work. And the code is a mess of wxwidgets and loads of dependencies, just compiling it is a chore not to mention coding anything.

I do like Desura, I think it's a really good service for indie games, where they don't have to be accepted by some convoluted approval process, but its lack of progress is really keeping it back. I hope now something will change for the better.