Put the wish list for porting projects HERE...

[RobbieAB]

The FreeCraft CnD was 2002 (I think), since than a lot of the real pissing matches have been over as Blizzard had basically won a total victory.

Counter to that is the fact that Blizzard DO like Linux in some respects: It's a better server OS than Windows. So slowly, with time, the real bad blood is seeping away. Give it another 5 years, and maybe there will be a possibility...

[Svartalf]

The FreeCraft CnD was 2002 (I think), since than a lot of the real pissing matches have been over as Blizzard had basically won a total victory.

Counter to that is the fact that Blizzard DO like Linux in some respects: It's a better server OS than Windows. So slowly, with time, the real bad blood is seeping away. Give it another 5 years, and maybe there will be a possibility...

Well, we ALMOST had it with WoW- they DID make a client and Vivendi told 'em NO on making it available.

[Svartalf]

Ouch.. Didn't know things were that bad between Blizzard and the Linux community.. But I didn't see any evidence of pissing matches from the community over Blizzard's games (probably just me)

Much of them were a bunch of hot-headed idiots and if you weren't working in the games space or with any studios at the time you might not even have noticed that we've had dustups before with them.

.. And here I thought Blizzard would be one of the companies that in a few years would port their games to Linux.. :/ Too bad, I always loved their Warcraft series.

They still might be. We almost got WoW (God, I'm sooo glad we didn't though- damned timesink par excelance... ) and it was Vivendi, from what I understand that told 'em "no" on making it available to us. That was a near miss, really- it could be D3 or the next one that we might see a little more melt in that ice they have towards us.

[RobbieAB]

Well, we ALMOST had it with WoW- they DID make a client and Vivendi told 'em NO on making it available.

Any publisher is big enough to tell Blizzard what they are doing? Hell, Blizzard could probably break windows as a gaming platform over night! All they need to do is release SCII or Diablo III as non-Windows, the franchises are probably that strong...

[Extreme Coder]

Any publisher is big enough to tell Blizzard what they are doing? Hell, Blizzard could probably break windows as a gaming platform over night! All they need to do is release SCII or Diablo III as non-Windows, the franchises are probably that strong...

Yeah, then a mass exodus to Linux and Mac ensues :P
I hope we do see their games sooner than later on Linux. What I don't get is why Vivendi didn't want to publish a Linux client when it was already made? It's not like it's that huge of a cost, and they could earn a bit more money.

[Dragonlord]

It's a bit different. WoW is an MMORPG and this means there are different security consideration since money hangs on the fact that players can play safe and without getting cheated, scammed or whatever by somebody deliberately altering his client. For some reason linux clients are look down upon as being "insecure" which is a dangerous situation for an MMO provider, especially one with such an incredibly high market share. That's for sure one of the reasons it got pulled... besides blatant hate that is.

[Thetargos]

Ahh... Thanks for the trip down memory lane, guys!

I had almost totally forgotten about FreeCraft and what it meant for Starcraft and Warcraft II. I did not now know, however that there were actual plans to port those titles over... I'm sure had they break the news of that happening, every efforts in bringing the games on Linux (natively, as they can be made to run on Wine... though not speedy enough at that time), AKA FreeCraft would have stopped and matters shouldn't have to be resolved in court.

Still, as already pointed out several times by me and Svartalf and others, Blizzard seems to be more Linux friendly than many other studios (internally, at least), as much of their infrastructure runs on Linux (and Oracle) and they even had a WoW client. The claims about security, though plausible, are utterly invalid (maybe not for Vivendi, though), as the client on any platform is equally susceptible of being tampered with on any platform with a HexEditor... Maybe the real turn down for them was an accumulated number of different facts: Small market share, more tech oriented users than any other platform (hence more chances for the client to be tampered with), a support nightmare (from many studios point of view this has been argued to be their main reason, even if we [the actual users of the system] may totally disagree with them), etc, etc. So rather than a single reason, there most likely were a hefty number of reasons NOT to make the client available, even though you could argue that many of the same reasons may not be local to Linux and found on both the other platforms... In the end we were turned down.

[niniendowarrior]

Nooo... Blizzard hates Linux. Blizzard is the suxxors. lol.

To be serious for a moment, at the end of the day, how many Blizzard Linux games are there? None? I figured.

[Thetargos]

Nooo... Blizzard hates Linux. Blizzard is the suxxors. lol.

To be serious for a moment, at the end of the day, how many Blizzard Linux games are there? None? I figured.

Then I guess we could simply tell Sam Lantinga to cease and desist from any attempts at further developing SDL, then?

Remember that Sam Lantinga, creator of SDL is also a lead software engineer for Blizzard, so in a way, Blizzard has given us something in the form of allowing Sam to work on SDL.

[niniendowarrior]

That's an if Sam is even working on SDL on Blizzard's work time. My guess is, he isn't. Kudos for further developments. That has nothing to do with Blizzard.