5 Months And Still No UT3 For Linux

[D0pamine]

Considering that the Windows market is "over 100 million" large, for starters.... You're only talking about 1/10th to 1/5th the whole Windows market. They sell Windows titles. Make a lot of money at it. It's a known. Moreover, I will observe that of that 20-30 million worldwide, HOW many are gamers? How many of the gamers run WINE instead of holding off for a Linux client? I think you're going to be disappointed in the results. You're going to have to wait at least another 2-3 years while Microsoft costs them more sales and hope they don't just go console only before the types of numbers you quote off are compelling enough to make them start considering things out of the gate. As it stands, YES, it's that difficult to make money out of a market like that- the deck's stacked against you because the royalty deals on a port typically is predicated on the scale of selling at least 10k to 100k units to be really profitable. Just because there's 20-30 million or more people using Linux doesn't mean you're going to have 10k people interested in playing most of the games out there. If you're talking that, you're talking something like UT3 or Rage- which you'd better have roughly 250k burning a hole in your pockets to make the rights purchase, and you'd better HOPE you sell all 10-20k units to just break even.

We are talking about ports of games though arent we , typically done by one guy ( the names icculus and TTimo spring to mind ) , not games developed from scratch , i'm pretty sure neither mr. gordon or TTimo get 250k for porting a game - i could be wrong though they are demi-gods after all. I have a windows copy of x3 the reunion here , my kid brother bought it me for my birthday because he read somewhere that it will be linux native ( bless his cotton socks ) but i do not play it in windows or wine because its not a game that appeals to me , likewise with coldwar which i just tried the demo. Perhaps LGP should contact team17 and ask could they port something simple yet effective such as worms world party , a multi-player game that people can play on their tea-break and is highly addictive also spread the word in OS forums and news sites rather than just have it here http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ ( which has been down for a while now ).Saying that ports of games tank is down to warez isnt right , a GOOD game will sell , a BAD game wont. In no other market i can think of is there a large group of people wanting to spend money which the retailers ignore. On the issue of copy protection - cd copy protection is utterly useless all it does is damage the cd/dvd over time ( if used properly ) and we all know how easy it is to visit megagames or gameburnworld to preserve ones purchase , even the most hardcore copy protection can be thwarted by simply using a mini-image mounted on a virtual drive.

[Svartalf]

We are talking about ports of games though arent we , typically done by one guy ( the names icculus and TTimo spring to mind ) , not games developed from scratch , i'm pretty sure neither mr. gordon or TTimo get 250k for porting a game - i could be wrong though they are demi-gods after all.

You are right after a fashion and dead wrong overall.

In both cases you quote, they were EMPLOYEES of Epic and iD, respectively, under contract. That is WHY those titles happened, not because they wanted the things to be there and acquired the rights like Linux Game Publishing or Runesoft has been doing things. Being that they're employees, they didn't need to spend a dime and they actually got PAID by the respective companies to do the work. But that's the exception, not the norm. The norm's where someone has to retain the rights from the publishers and studios and then do the work. Retaining the rights costs money. Publishing it incurs a cost owed back to the rights holders as well.

For X3, I suspect LGP incurred something on the order of $20-40k just to get to the point where they could do a production run of about 5k units legitimately- not including any costs of resources and whatnot.

As for them being down, I suspect his ISP's screwed things up and he'll be back up in another day or so.

[D0pamine]

You are right after a fashion and dead wrong overall.

In both cases you quote, they were EMPLOYEES of Epic and iD, respectively, under contract. That is WHY those titles happened, not because they wanted the things to be there and acquired the rights like Linux Game Publishing or Runesoft has been doing things. Being that they're employees, they didn't need to spend a dime and they actually got PAID by the respective companies to do the work. But that's the exception, not the norm. The norm's where someone has to retain the rights from the publishers and studios and then do the work. Retaining the rights costs money. Publishing it incurs a cost owed back to the rights holders as well.

For X3, I suspect LGP incurred something on the order of $20-40k just to get to the point where they could do a production run of about 5k units legitimately- not including any costs of resources and whatnot.

As for them being down, I suspect his ISP's screwed things up and he'll be back up in another day or so.

The fact that a company like LGP exists at all proves there is a viable market , if game companies would remove their heads from the sand for a moment they might realise that paying LGP to port their titles (rather than LGP paying them) would increase sales but like i mentioned earlier tie-ins with certain LARGE (and crappy) software vendors who frown on FOSS is the reason imo , not copy protection , market size and so on. Just look at this ut3 fiasco - legal problems , some company doesnt want their code running on GNU/Linux. In the end it will be the game companies that suffer as many of these highly intelligent gamers write their own games for nothing more than the fun of it such as cube2/sauerbraten , nexuiz , wormux , ppracer/tuxracer , stormbaan coureur and so on. Sure these titles may seem pretty crappy compared to their closed counterparts but as time goes by they'll be improved slowly but surely until something that costs nothing with full access to the source code is better than something that costs $50 that comes with useless copy protection

[me262]

I can't even begin to count how many forum posts I've seen that say. "If there was a native Linux client I would no longer need to run Windows."

There is the demand, I guess companies will have to take a leap of faith before any of this happens.

Don't even begin to open that can of worms labeled "copyrights" ...

[me262]

Just look at this ut3 fiasco - legal problems, some company doesnt want their code running on GNU/Linux.

It could be that by now they're free and clear of the legal problems. I don't think they'd be "working on it" if there was a legal tangle.

[gilboa]

I can't even begin to count how many forum posts I've seen that say. "If there was a native Linux client I would no longer need to run Windows."

There is the demand, I guess companies will have to take a leap of faith before any of this happens.

Don't even begin to open that can of worms labeled "copyrights" ...

There's a -vast- difference between (empty) forum posts and actual revenues.
As long as vast majority of gamers buy Windows titles, most titles will be Windows only. Simple economics.

- Gilboa

[D0pamine]

It could be that by now they're free and clear of the legal problems. I don't think they'd be "working on it" if there was a legal tangle.

No way either you or i could know seeing as they wont say anything , the only snippet of information regarding the hold up is the irc conversation with mr. gordon in which legal problems were blamed. I wonder if he got shouted at by some high 'n' mighty at epic for even saying that ( dont worry ryan i'll slap him for ya )

[me262]

True, but that's because most of those games end up without native Linux titles, and those people end up buying it anyway to run on Wine/Cedega/Crossover, or dual-booting.

[me262]

No way either you or i could know seeing as they wont say anything , the only snippet of information regarding the hold up is the irc conversation with mr. gordon in which legal problems were blamed. I wonder if he got shouted at by some high 'n' mighty at epic for even saying that.

No, but it certainly makes sense.
Would you continue developing if your project could be taken out by legal troubles?

I'm guessing PR put duct tape over his mouth after that slipped out.

[D0pamine]

No, but it certainly makes sense.
Would you continue developing if your project could be taken out by legal troubles?

I'm guessing PR put duct tape over his mouth after that slipped out.

No but i'm sure if they suddenly turned round and said 'linux client is off' there would be an even bigger stink and legal argument