View Poll Results: Do you think creating Linux Compatible Games would be profitable for Game Developers?

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  • Yes

    109 77.30%
  • No

    32 22.70%
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Thread: Linux Games

  1. #1

    Lightbulb Linux Games

    I think game developers should add native compatibility to games. Some games already support Macs, and I think they should also support Linux. I think that we, the Linux community, should start a petition to get games to support Linux. There must be a huge demand in the Linux community for native commercial game support, as I know lots of users have to use Virtual machines or reboot into windows.

    Introducing Linux support would also help to solve Ubuntu bug #1, Microsoft having the majority of the market share. I know that lots of people are deterred from Linux, because of lack of native game support, and support could boost Linux users massively.

    What do you think?

  2. #2
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    Re: Linux Games

    I've probably read thousands of similar topics on different forums.

    A) You can't force a company to make software for your OS
    B) If it were profitable, there would be lots more games on Linux.

    Linux will not become a serious gaming OS in the near(and probably even the not so near) future.
    Live with it.

  3. #3
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    Re: Linux Games

    Programmers don't write games for Linux because not enough people use Linux, hence no profits.

  4. #4
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    Re: Linux Games

    Why would any gaming company target a user base that is small?
    Also there are so many different Linux distros and each has slight differences and that could pose a problem for the game developers. Hopefully with Dell seling Linux pcs this should change.
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  5. #5
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    Re: Linux Games

    Perhaps in the future, big games developers will start writing games for Linux, but at the moment there are a few barriers in the way:

    1) Linux still has a tiny market share - creating a game isn't that profitable on Linux at the moment.
    2) Developers see open-source as a challenge, not only because they don't want to open-source their technology (or can't, if the developer licenced their code from elsewhere), but because there are still very real problems with Linux development. The differences between distributions, dependencies etc etc. More work needs to be done on cross-distribution standards, before big commercial developers will even look at Linux.
    3) Developers still believe that Linux users will never pay for software. We need to demonstrate that this is not the case - but if there's nothing to buy, then we can't. Hopefully Dell will help this point.

  6. #6
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    Re: Linux Games

    Thing is, there are quite a few mainline titles that have Linux Native versions provided alongside the Windows versions.

    With all of these, you still HAVE to buy the Windows version, then you download the Linux binary and engine from the games site, and combine it with the data from the bought game.

    A couple of these are:

    Doom 3

    UT 2004

    Quake - the entire series

    Neverwinter Nights
    "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most " -- Ozzy Osbourne

  7. #7
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    Re: Linux Games

    Probably not.. games these days are very expensive to creat, and linux has a supersmall marketshare especially under gamers. And linux users tend to whine of they need to pay for anything (not everybody)

  8. #8
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    Re: Linux Games

    @bonzodog

    Yeah, that situation sucks. Hopefully with the online distribution model that Steam pioneered (and, of course, the repository system Linux uses!), we'll start to see a system whereby the data is isolated from the binary - just like how many games currently are in the repos.

  9. #9
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    Re: Linux Games

    To port games to other OS, isn't that difficult, So I don't see why.

  10. #10
    qamelian's Avatar
    qamelian is offline Iced Blended Vanilla Crème Ubuntu
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    Re: Linux Games

    Quote Originally Posted by Eric Layne View Post
    Programmers don't write games for Linux because not enough people use Linux, hence no profits.
    This logic doesn't wash. Back in the late 80's and early 90's game companies were quite capable of making a profit from games for OSs with a much smaller user base than Linux. By this logic, no one ever would have written a game for the Commodore 64 because it's user base at its peak was only about 20% of the current estimated number of Linux users.

    The problem is more specifically that the numbers are extremely waited towards Windows users and rather than make a smaller profit (but still a profit) on Linux ports, they prefer not to make the effort.

    In the 80's and 90's, it was very common to see game developers port games to multiple OSs. A game might originally be written for DOS, and would then be ported to the Amiga, Atari ST, Atari XE, Commodore 64, Apple II, etc. Because each of these OSs held a substantial piece of the market, it simply wasn't viable to ignore any of them too frequently.

    So I don't believe that the size of the Linux community would mean no profits; it would just mean much smaller profits compared to supporting the larger install base of Windows.

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