One of the key take away items here would be:
(The following is representative of MY views and does not reflect any entities' views such as LGP (for which I have a tag on my name here in this forum)...)
Rage will happen for us, but only on their time- and WE, the people out there using Linux, have only ourselves to blame.
Why do I say this?
Each time you lot goes and bitches about the "age" of a given game or compares the price of the Windows version versus the Linux one and bitches about that you do yourselves and everyone else a serious disservice. We're being watched. And this is the results of some of that sort of thing.
Spare all of us the "more money" line, folks- it's not valid, really. Do you think iD cares about a piddling 1000-2000 users' worth of money? In their minds, that's about all they think they can sell based off of what people can publicly see and the past performances we've given them in this area (Q3:A only sold 200 copies for the official Linux version because of the kinds of thinking I've seen espoused in these forums...)- which makes it not worth their while. The main reason he's been doing Linux titles is that it made sense to make the stuff cross platform and we were an underserved market. Unfortunately for us, we also seem to be an arrogant and ungrateful one as well, presuming that we're entitled to stuff.
You're NOT their customer. At best, you're a user of their software if you're using one of their official or unofficial platforms they've chosen to target.
Their customer is the publisher.
The publisher's customer is the retailer.
When you buy from a retailer, they don't care about what OS you're running- they're selling you a little box with a bit of paper and a bit of plastic in it, that purportedly does something when it is stuck into a Windows or MacOS based machine or a console.
So we've got over 30 million users worldwide. Great.
How many of that are willing to buy games? Hundreds? Thousands?
If it's not the same scope and scale as the Mac crowd has been (and we're not there, gang, because of that sense of entitlement we all seem to have here...) they're NOT going to be interested, being a seriously underserved community and all. They've got to see a return on things and for most players, they're not seeing anything except a LOSS from making stuff for us.
What we've shown is that we're not interested in buying games- and in a manner that leads people like iD to not consider us being on the radar and like Epic who's delayed the release now some 10 months if we even SEE the thing in the case of UT3.
Spare me conspiracy theories of Microsoft. Sure, they might have had SOME hand in Unreal not being in our hands- but it's unlikely all the same.
We're our own worst enemy, if you honestly want to know the truth. This is the fruits, folks, of the "it's too expensive", or "it's too old", or "that tanked" lines of thought and the resultant actions.
You run Linux. WHY would you ever want to run a Windows title?
In the infancy of things right now, WHY would you ever commit an infringement on a given title?
Because you can? Because you can't be bothered to hold off for a better situation or to get an actual native binary? Because the game's "too cool" and you can't stand not being able to run it?
Because you don't think the game's worth the price, either because the Windows version is cheaper than the Linux version or "you've already bought it"?
Each time you use WINE for a contemporary game you vote for Windows, even if we're as large a userbase as we think we are.
Each time you buy a Windows SKU and "convert" it to Linux when there was an official Linux version, you make a vote for Windows.
Each time you choose to make an infringement of a current selling Linux title, you're actually HURTING things- yes, I know it's a no-sale, but the problem is when the "no-sales" comprise what would have possibly made for a break-even or a profit sufficient to get the next and cooler title that might have sold, you defeat yourselves. The people doing the infringements seem to think it was worth spreading around- but not worth enough to buy. Each time someone does this, it gives the impression, right or wrong, that we aren't interested in buying games. Moreover, it lends the impression, right or wrong, that we're more interested in infringing upon their rights that paying the money for things...
Look well at this folks. This is the fruits of all of our labors here.
Just at the moment we're winning one fight for things, we're losing it for at least the next 3-5 years or more on the gaming front.
Because of the things I've just said.
I hope all of the people that are guilty of the aforementioned things are PROUD of themselves. They're succeeding in doing for Microsoft what they couldn't do otherwise- deep sixing gaming on Linux for some time to come.
Question: What are your current views on the Linux situation [...]?
Answer: I can’t say I have really high hopes for it. If Quake Live does well, Mac is our next target on that, but I would not be shocked if we wind up with a Linux target on there. It’s an under served community [...] and I’m happy to see Quake Live there. It is unlikely that the big titles [Wolfenstein, Rage, Doom 4] will have anywhere near simultaneous releases. If one of the guys internally says I want to go port to Linux on my weekend or whatever, I’ll be supportive of that, but it’s not something we’re probably going to devote company resources to on there.
The bright spot for Linux on gaming might be Android, mobile space. There’s still no real sign that that’s going to take off, but if it does that could be a significant and useful thing. People wrote about the death of PC gaming, but PC has problems relative to the consoles, but all of those problems that the PC has are just an order of magnitude worse on the Linux space. So it’s not really a good target.
Every year or so somebody comes up with or plans some Linux-based set-top box that has gaming features, and it never really amounts to anything, and I don’t see any conditions that are going to be forcing that to change in the future. There are certainly aspects of it that I would like, there’s Linux on my flight computer, it’s a good tool for a lot of things. And it might make a useful tool, more so than being Linux, there’s nothing that I think Linux would bring to a console operating system, but there is something that open source would bring to it: those two days that I spent frustrated about my deadlock against Microsoft’s video codec on there I’m sure could’ve been solved much more rapidly if all of it was actually completely open. But there’s nothing that really bothers me about Microsoft or some of these operating system levels there; they’re done competently. Linux would probably bring more trouble than benefits to those things. If the world changed and there was a huge uptake of Linux on PC’s all over the place, it’d be nice, I wish the platform well, but it’s not even on our radar right now for our current projects.
Answer: I can’t say I have really high hopes for it. If Quake Live does well, Mac is our next target on that, but I would not be shocked if we wind up with a Linux target on there. It’s an under served community [...] and I’m happy to see Quake Live there. It is unlikely that the big titles [Wolfenstein, Rage, Doom 4] will have anywhere near simultaneous releases. If one of the guys internally says I want to go port to Linux on my weekend or whatever, I’ll be supportive of that, but it’s not something we’re probably going to devote company resources to on there.
The bright spot for Linux on gaming might be Android, mobile space. There’s still no real sign that that’s going to take off, but if it does that could be a significant and useful thing. People wrote about the death of PC gaming, but PC has problems relative to the consoles, but all of those problems that the PC has are just an order of magnitude worse on the Linux space. So it’s not really a good target.
Every year or so somebody comes up with or plans some Linux-based set-top box that has gaming features, and it never really amounts to anything, and I don’t see any conditions that are going to be forcing that to change in the future. There are certainly aspects of it that I would like, there’s Linux on my flight computer, it’s a good tool for a lot of things. And it might make a useful tool, more so than being Linux, there’s nothing that I think Linux would bring to a console operating system, but there is something that open source would bring to it: those two days that I spent frustrated about my deadlock against Microsoft’s video codec on there I’m sure could’ve been solved much more rapidly if all of it was actually completely open. But there’s nothing that really bothers me about Microsoft or some of these operating system levels there; they’re done competently. Linux would probably bring more trouble than benefits to those things. If the world changed and there was a huge uptake of Linux on PC’s all over the place, it’d be nice, I wish the platform well, but it’s not even on our radar right now for our current projects.
Rage will happen for us, but only on their time- and WE, the people out there using Linux, have only ourselves to blame.
Why do I say this?
Each time you lot goes and bitches about the "age" of a given game or compares the price of the Windows version versus the Linux one and bitches about that you do yourselves and everyone else a serious disservice. We're being watched. And this is the results of some of that sort of thing.
Spare all of us the "more money" line, folks- it's not valid, really. Do you think iD cares about a piddling 1000-2000 users' worth of money? In their minds, that's about all they think they can sell based off of what people can publicly see and the past performances we've given them in this area (Q3:A only sold 200 copies for the official Linux version because of the kinds of thinking I've seen espoused in these forums...)- which makes it not worth their while. The main reason he's been doing Linux titles is that it made sense to make the stuff cross platform and we were an underserved market. Unfortunately for us, we also seem to be an arrogant and ungrateful one as well, presuming that we're entitled to stuff.
You're NOT their customer. At best, you're a user of their software if you're using one of their official or unofficial platforms they've chosen to target.
Their customer is the publisher.
The publisher's customer is the retailer.
When you buy from a retailer, they don't care about what OS you're running- they're selling you a little box with a bit of paper and a bit of plastic in it, that purportedly does something when it is stuck into a Windows or MacOS based machine or a console.
So we've got over 30 million users worldwide. Great.
How many of that are willing to buy games? Hundreds? Thousands?
If it's not the same scope and scale as the Mac crowd has been (and we're not there, gang, because of that sense of entitlement we all seem to have here...) they're NOT going to be interested, being a seriously underserved community and all. They've got to see a return on things and for most players, they're not seeing anything except a LOSS from making stuff for us.
What we've shown is that we're not interested in buying games- and in a manner that leads people like iD to not consider us being on the radar and like Epic who's delayed the release now some 10 months if we even SEE the thing in the case of UT3.
Spare me conspiracy theories of Microsoft. Sure, they might have had SOME hand in Unreal not being in our hands- but it's unlikely all the same.
We're our own worst enemy, if you honestly want to know the truth. This is the fruits, folks, of the "it's too expensive", or "it's too old", or "that tanked" lines of thought and the resultant actions.
You run Linux. WHY would you ever want to run a Windows title?
In the infancy of things right now, WHY would you ever commit an infringement on a given title?
Because you can? Because you can't be bothered to hold off for a better situation or to get an actual native binary? Because the game's "too cool" and you can't stand not being able to run it?
Because you don't think the game's worth the price, either because the Windows version is cheaper than the Linux version or "you've already bought it"?
Each time you use WINE for a contemporary game you vote for Windows, even if we're as large a userbase as we think we are.
Each time you buy a Windows SKU and "convert" it to Linux when there was an official Linux version, you make a vote for Windows.
Each time you choose to make an infringement of a current selling Linux title, you're actually HURTING things- yes, I know it's a no-sale, but the problem is when the "no-sales" comprise what would have possibly made for a break-even or a profit sufficient to get the next and cooler title that might have sold, you defeat yourselves. The people doing the infringements seem to think it was worth spreading around- but not worth enough to buy. Each time someone does this, it gives the impression, right or wrong, that we aren't interested in buying games. Moreover, it lends the impression, right or wrong, that we're more interested in infringing upon their rights that paying the money for things...
Look well at this folks. This is the fruits of all of our labors here.
Just at the moment we're winning one fight for things, we're losing it for at least the next 3-5 years or more on the gaming front.
Because of the things I've just said.
I hope all of the people that are guilty of the aforementioned things are PROUD of themselves. They're succeeding in doing for Microsoft what they couldn't do otherwise- deep sixing gaming on Linux for some time to come.
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