Ok everybody. Here it is. I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty tired of seeing all these pretty games on the shelves at the store and hesitating to buy them because who knows if wine hq or cedega will run them. And if so... how well. Well, Linux, a viable platform with a hugely growing userbase daily needs some attention in the heavily dominated MS/Mac world. I've set up this vote and depending on the amount of you that vote we can begin petitioning the gaming companies and provide a solution to our community alongside with examples such as savage, etc.

Let's get this goin' guys... Vote away.


Should game companies begin making their games compatible with Linux?

re: desertc's response I decided to edit my original post...

...I see your point. I was somewhat unaware of many commercial games at all available for Linux off the shelves, and will say that these companies have gotten plenty of my money in the past from my purchasing them for windows. I would -absolutely- pay for a game compatible with Linux, whatever retail is. Esentially, I just want the ability to walk into a store and buy the same games made for windows and mac off the shelves instead of either having to wait and download them, or wine them.

Anyone with me?

P.S. How are they supposed to know what platform you're even buying for any more since most games come with multiple versions on one disc?

I'm not trying to stir up a debate, just trying to find some like-minded people. If this isn't the place, I'll try somewhere else.

I believe that some have already started to make an effort

Eve-Online has a linux(and mac) client

Also, the Unreal tournament games have linux support (havent tried it for myself) as there is the tux logo on the system requirements part of the case

Its all a matter of time before games companies see the light :P

Petition with your money. If you really want to see Linux games on the shelves, then purchase the games yourself. There are already commercial games for Linux, but how well do they sell? To answer that, ask yourself how many have you purchased? I would say there have been 20-30 commercial Linux games released this year -- so how many did you buy this year? Let's see your petition after you've taken a look at the commercial games already available for your purchase.

I think desertc has a good point about the power of money to speak on this issue. Because Linux is free and now has quite a few high quality, mature applications that can compete directly in functionality and ease-of-use with proprietary software on other platforms--most of which are also free--, we have come to expect that the programs we use on our Linux boxes will just be free. The gaming industry is about making money. If I recall correctly, the entire gaming industry generated more revenue than Hollywood over the last year or possible last couple of years. Our attitude about wanting it for free isn't going to cut it. If we want the games, we are going to have to pay. If the company produces platform specific packages, buy the Linux one over the Win or OS X version, even if you have one of the other systems. If the company has different platform binaries bundled together or if you download the game execs and install the game data off the Win or OS X disk, maybe you should write the company and thank them for being considerate of your platform of choice. Also, make sure you send in the product registration card making it clear that Linux is your platform of choice.

I think the answer should be "If there is a market for it". I personally would like to see more games released for Linux, but I am not important to the games companies since I really don't buy games any more.

The last thing we want is for big name games companies to spend a lot of time, effort and money porting titles to Linux, and then announcing that they are going back to a Windows-only model because there is no money is selling games for Linux.

It is good to draw the attention of games companies to genuine demand on Linux, but only if we mean it.

desertc is spot on. Let your money vote. Otherwise, companies (or departments of those companies) that make games for linux will go belly up, from lack of revenue.

It would be far smarter for the games companies to develop a games base architecture (emulator) that can be installed on all bases Windows, Linux and Mac. In that way they could then develop a game and market it to 100% of the market.

But that would mean the games companies would have to co-operate initially on the base, plus it would be to logical so it probably wont happen.

I think matthewg42 makes a good point. Think of it in relation to the market share of the OS.

As much as I love Linux and games I don't *need* them together. I still have hundreds of my old games from the '80s and '90s and 95% of them work through dosbox or wine. And most, if not all, of the id games I have do have Linux versions of the game engine freely available.

I mostly play games on Playstation and Gamecube anyway. To me, my computer is not a gaming console.

Of course the answer to this us Yes :P There are absolutely no negatives to a gaming company opening up their games to Linux - it will only increase their profits and user base and make Linux users happy.

Who in their right mind would answer No to this? Investing in some universally compatible gaming emulator would be ingenious indeed.

The idea of an emulator sounds good but there is a catch. For most of the cutting edge games, performance is a big issue, and emulators cannot match, in speed, code that was compiled for a specific platform. Java, and GLUT are two good examples.

On the other hand, if you are not pushing the envelope, an emulator would be excellent for cross platform gaming.

Now if only we can get game programmers to learn something more than Microsoft's DirectX...

I wish I could fight the good fight and say games publishers should target linux platforms and games developers should pitch for them.

I mean, I don't think they shouldn't, but the cost/benefit just isn't there in the majority of cases. Even a moderate-budget game can need 100,000+ units to start earning real money. Totally - vote with your wallets, the larger the market (for linux games) gets, the bigger it can grow.

Furrage, its not a matter of games programmers only learning DirectX! You constantly have to learn new APIs and SDKs - Agea, Havok, Renderware, DirectX, SDL, OpenGL, Cg... There is a huge list of games technology a team have to learn, often on a per-project bases, as well as retrain every few years on different hardware platforms as each new console is released often to deploy to a multiplatform, multilingual audience.

Can anybody who voted 'yes' back that up with some sales forecasts?

Rogerbennet, here's an interesting article. IMO, here in America Microsoft is obviously present and a majority leader, but Linux is slowly gaining ground, especially in other parts of the world. Here's an interesing article I found. 100,000 units, in my opinion is nominal.

http://www.linuxgamingworld.com/2007/06/40-million

Just a thought.

Surprising to me that people are voting no here. They must be the ones who like to reboot their pc every time they want to play a game that hasn't realised a better solution yet... a shame.

Erik, the poll starter.

I think the problem, as some have pointed out, is that companies still don't see a profitable market in Linux. That and the fact that there are so many different distributions and package managers don't make the cause any easier.

Also, they would almost need to target one specific graphics card, because the way Nvidia and ATI currently work in Linux would not be as easy to develop a game as in Windows, where they don't actually have to worry about how ATI or Nvidia will perform. Cedega themselves recommend Nvidia cards and half of the games I tried with ATI that are supported with Cedega won't run at all or will have loads of graphical glitches. Just tried Guild Wars now and my character is missing one arm . And indeed, runs like... well feces

And if I were a developer, I would definitely not bet my money on the Linux community when they need to open their wallets (no pun intended). I see people daily complaining that Cedega costs money (and it costs like 3 Big Macs). To do not mention what happened to Lokigames, where everybody was so "eager" to buy Linux games, but at the end they had to shut the doors because noone was buying a thing...

As Marx said, Capitalism is essential for society's development (capitalism in our computer world is Windows and Microsoft), but at some point, society will shift towards a more sophisticated form of self-regulation, which is socialism (Open Source in our case)...GOOOOOOOO OPENSOURCE!!!!!

Erik765, That article didn't really provide any info - Somebodys estimate of 40 million linux users doesn't equate to a reliable market of 40 million linux gamers.
I'll bet there are far fewer linux gamers than 40 million. Were talking about measuring the number of people that can match the purchase power of console/PC owners.

Publishers are all about the dollar. While I'd love it if they targeted linux for mainstream games, I've answered "no" to the poll because I can't see the evidence that they *should*
Should developers pitch for Linux, probably not either. It'll increase the development costs and its a (financial) risk the developer typically can't afford to take.

Shame on Valve, with their bags of loot, not to release linux ports though. Also, linux wasn't a big player at GDC. I don't think we saw Id Softwares tech demo running on Linux, even tho Mac and PC were represented.