Electronic Arts At Ubuntu Summit; Linux Games Coming?

[alexThunder]

I think you're really unfair to EA. They screwed up some titles, yes - but people started to just look at the other bad games and ignore the good ones. If they release tons of crap, why do you bother? If you don't like it, don't buy it - I don't see how that hurts anyone.

They also take risks to do something new, which might not reach the mainstream, just think of Spore, Bulletstorm, Mirror's Edge or Alice: Madness returns. And if you want to go back to the 90's, I couldn't get rid of Future Cop LAPD or Dungeon Keeper). If I may include console games, Shadows of the Damned is pretty cool as well.

And I love, what they made of Command & Conquer (except for Tiberian Twilight, but if the next one gets better, I'll forgive them). Furthermore I'd instantly kick my Windows setup out of my hard disk, if I could play Dead Space, NFS:HP (2010), Crysis, Mass Effect, C&C, ... on Linux.

Besides the crappy games they also have amazing games to offer. If you think, every other Publisher was better, which updated Verison of Diablo, Starcraft, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, Portal, Assasin's Creed, Far Cry ... would you like to have?

You can blame EA for Origin without any doubt, but if you celebrate Steam at the same time, that would be very hyprocritical (although it's less worse).

[GreatEmerald]

EA survives by their complete ownership of licensing rights to all major sports leagues, at least in the US, NFL, NBA, MLB, FIFA, NCAA are all only licensed to them to force out all other companies from making sports games with actual teams and players, which is what most people want, not completely made up teams and players. They then release these games yearly on every platform at $50-70 per platform per year, online play is killed every year as well. You liked playing Madden 2011 online? Too bad, Madden 2012 is out and 2011 can no longer connect to the server...

Hey, 3DO had their fair share of sports games as well. High Heat Baseball and all. That didn't help them that much. Although I guess EA doesn't have a console dragging them down.

I think you're really unfair to EA. They screwed up some titles, yes - but people started to just look at the other bad games and ignore the good ones. If they release tons of crap, why do you bother? If you don't like it, don't buy it - I don't see how that hurts anyone.

And I love, what they made of Command & Conquer (except for Tiberian Twilight, but if the next one gets better, I'll forgive them). Furthermore I'd instantly kick my Windows setup out of my hard disk, if I could play Dead Space, NFS:HP (2010), Crysis, Mass Effect, C&C, ... on Linux.

You can blame EA for Origin without any doubt, but if you celebrate Steam at the same time, that would be very hyprocritical (although it's less worse).

Sure, EA releases some good games. Mass Effects are fantastic. But then these good games are not created by EA, just published, while the developers were simply bought by them. Back in the day, yes, they even created something decent themselves, but not so much any more.

And I'm surely not celebrating Steam either. Only what it can bring with itself.

[fuzz]

But then these good games are not created by EA, just published, while the developers were simply bought by them.

That's still EA. If people want to exclude games made by developers EA bought, perhaps they should be more specific.

[alexThunder]

But then these good games are not created by EA, just published, while the developers were simply bought by them. Back in the day, yes, they even created something decent themselves, but not so much any more.

And I'm surely not celebrating Steam either. Only what it can bring with itself.

Well, some of them depend on the EA, where others do not - but I don't really know, which developers directly depend on EA right now. Still it's true that you have to buy/hire developers in order to develop something Regardless of which developer actually belongs to EA, EA pays them and the development of the cool and risky titles as well.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Yeah, for their awesome catalog of... five games? lol.

So what? You really think EA will port whole catalog of all their games? Look at what EA give to OS X users. Do you really want this games instead of SC2 and D3?

If they release tons of crap, why do you bother? If you don't like it, don't buy it - I don't see how that hurts anyone.

In fact it may hurt Linux gaming. They may release tons of crap (just like for OS X), nobody will buy it, and they say something like "there is no gaming market on Linux, we already check this". It's typical logic error for management, Ubisoft talk the same about PC gaming market and piracy.

[alexThunder]

In fact it may hurt Linux gaming. They may release tons of crap (just like for OS X), nobody will buy it, and they say something like "there is no gaming market on Linux, we already check this". It's typical logic error for management, Ubisoft talk the same about PC gaming market and piracy.

Good lord, you're right! How could I not see that? They release their worst selling games on Mac, so they can claim the Mac isn't a viable gaming platform. And now they might use the same strategy to finish Linux gaming once and for all!

That doesn't sound like bad management, but like a diabolic conspiracy!

[allquixotic]

I'm Commander Shepard, and Ubuntu is my favorite Linux distribution on the Citadel.

[FutureSuture]

Good lord, you're right! How could I not see that? They release their worst selling games on Mac, so they can claim the Mac isn't a viable gaming platform. And now they might use the same strategy to finish Linux gaming once and for all!

That doesn't sound like bad management, but like a diabolic conspiracy!

Let them. When Desura, Steam, and hopefully GOG succeed, people will look at EA again and laugh. EA has a rather bad reputation, so everybody should and probably does take them with a grain of salt.

[FutureSuture]

Good lord, you're right! How could I not see that? They release their worst selling games on Mac, so they can claim the Mac isn't a viable gaming platform. And now they might use the same strategy to finish Linux gaming once and for all!

That doesn't sound like bad management, but like a diabolic conspiracy!

Let them. When Desura, Steam, and hopefully GOG succeed, people will look at EA again and laugh. EA has a rather bad reputation, so everybody should and probably does take them with a grain of salt.

[grantek]

I think it's coming, but I think Linux needs some good "virtual distros" that take care of purchased/proprietary software, like desura/steam/origin/gog-updater

So your OS distribution can take care of packaging and distributing the FOSS components that make up your system, then your "games distro" keeps its own directory in eg. /opt as a way of getting around the lack of unification of packaging formats by OS distros.

Currently desura is the only one that works, but it doesn't have an agreement with EA. Valve and GOG (and EA) have agreements with EA, but don't do Linux yet. Ubuntu have their Software Center, but it only works for Ubuntu and maybe some other Debian-based distros.

With a proper distro-agnostic platform you could get cloud updates, potentially cloud storage of saves/configs, and easy storefronts for purchasing. The publishers get a decent level of DRM (in license authentication when software is run in online mode) that deters most people from casual piracy, and as long as there's a functional offline mode it shouldn't get in the way of people who just want to play singleplayer games while travelling. EA and Steam's recent EULA updates now allow access to offline mode when your account is "banned", which has been a long-standing complaint against Steam.