Blizzard's Diablo III On Linux?

[Kivada]

Blizzard has always done mac ports. Even when mac's usershare was much smaller then linux's market share. (Yes, pre-iphone that was not such a strange thing)

Exactly, I was a Mac user when they where "less then 1%" of the market, yet there seemed to be plenty of big name titles being ported to it, mostly by MacPlay, but my WarCraft2 Battle.Net Edition V. 2.01A CD works on Mac OS 7.6 and has been patched to even run on OS X on Intel Macs, not to mention Windows 95 and NT4 support all on the retail disc available everywhere ported first party BY Blizzard...

[Kivada]

Blizzard is loosing almost nothing by not supporting linux, why would they bother.

Because porting from Mac OS X to Linux isn't really that much of a stretch seeing as they've supported Macs since their user base was smaller then Linux is now...

[TheComrade]

Another failure at journalism. Instead of capturing the interview's relevant content in the headline, like so: "Blizzard's Diablo III most likely not coming to Linux", the tool is used which always gets used if one wants to pull the reader's leg: the rhetorical question.

[AnonymousCoward]

Most. Pointless. Article. Ever.

I mean seriously, what it boils down to is: "sombody asked somebody else at Blizzard who isn't responsible whether Diablo III will come for linux and he didn't know". How is *that* supposed to be interesting for *anybody*?

[phoen1x]

You don't get, do you? Linux - free software, everybody wants everything free. Developers think that people using linux not going to spend any money for anything. Mac - people buying macs are... well lets say rich enough, they are willing to spend money on stuff for their precious mac. Let's say Blizzard will release expansion in near future for diablo 3 and they think "hmm linux users ain't gonna buy it, you know they never buy anything they want it free, but those rich people who have macs maybe buy our expansion". I don't know but i guess that's the main reason.
Oh and by the way, do you remembr Enemey Territory:Quake Wars game? If i remember correctly it was ported by only one man aka ttimo (thank you). So seriously how can this be manpower issue?

[disi]

Exactly and that's why I won't buy it. I would rather buy Torchlight 2, just to support Diablo competition.

Oho, there is a second version, thanks

[t.s.]

That linux port would have the only reason for me to buy it despite that stupid Battle.Net-enforced no-offline-gaming rule.

A game.. that cost $60, and can only played online.. Yeah, like hell I will buy it.

Exactly and that's why I won't buy it. I would rather buy Torchlight 2, just to support Diablo competition.

This! I read that they sel torchlight 2 for $20, bonus torchlight 1

Most. Pointless. Article. Ever.
I mean seriously, what it boils down to is: "sombody asked somebody else at Blizzard who isn't responsible whether Diablo III will come for linux and he didn't know". How is *that* supposed to be interesting for *anybody*?

Well, at least we know that they don't support linux (I just read the end of the paragraf, hehe)..

[supacat]

FTA:

Like if it was something that they saw a lot of demand out in the community, they would just come up and say “hey, we think we can support Linux” or something like that

i pre-ordered Diablo 3 months ago. every one of my 12 computers (desktops, laptops & tablets) run linux. i do not run windows or mac os whatsoever. yet i pre-ordered this game, knowing it would not be compatible.
if i can't get this game to run on linux when it comes in i will have to use a spare hard drive and a windows key from a system i have laying around.

how will they know i want linux if there's no where for me to tell them except a linux forum that they probably don't pay attention to

[Kivada]

You don't get, do you? Linux - free software, everybody wants everything free. Developers think that people using linux not going to spend any money for anything. Mac - people buying macs are... well lets say rich enough, they are willing to spend money on stuff for their precious mac.

Lemme stop you right there, AS a former Mac user I can say from first hand experience that Mac users at least where some of the most prolific pirates, Mac warez flowed quite freely and often the Mac versions of software always had more seeders then any Windows version of any software that was available on both Mac and Windows at the time. Almost every other Mac user I knew had Serial Box and ran Little Snitch(for which they got using SerialBox) to keep apps from being able to call home to verify the serial, Mac games at least at the time, being ported by MacPlay had NO DRM, serials where only needed on games from other devs, but all of those had cracks.

Sure, officially no Mac forum would let you openly talk about warez or piracy, yet in the private chats you would even find the mods that would ban you for bringing it up on the forum trading files or begging for invites to private FTP or torrent warez sites.

While the HIB has shown that Linux users are more then willing to pay, they even pay EXTRA.

[oliver]

Blizzard is loosing almost nothing by not supporting linux, why would they bother.

Because porting from Mac OS X to Linux isn't really that much of a stretch seeing as they've supported Macs since their user base was smaller then Linux is now...

Also, isn't it said they have internal linux clients or some such? The client still has some references in it:

strings Wow.exe | grep -i Linux
IsLinuxClient
Linux

Also, WoW players as an example, already bought the game and already play (through wine) the game. It works, but performance is something else. plenty of issues often. Now a native client would make many Linux users very happy. But they won't gain many sales. So hardly any incentive for them to release their client without support, or anything really. Sad, but true.

FTA:
i pre-ordered Diablo 3 months ago. every one of my 12 computers (desktops, laptops & tablets) run linux. i do not run windows or mac os whatsoever. yet i pre-ordered this game, knowing it would not be compatible.
if i can't get this game to run on linux when it comes in i will have to use a spare hard drive and a windows key from a system i have laying around.

how will they know i want linux if there's no where for me to tell them except a linux forum that they probably don't pay attention to

So where do we go to voice our demand for a native client?

They said just like any editor would ever say.
They don't work on it, nor they do plan to work on it.

They perhaps would do it, but first a demand must appear. Then, within reaching a certain level of demand, they could starting thinking of investing some bucks and time on working on the linux client.
The time a demand appear, that they think about it, then start the portage and sell it, months and months will pass the way. Perhaps for Diablo 4 or 5.
They probably look at the Linux Steam client figures to see whether or not it's worth it. Means month at least of waiting, knowing that their top-notch priority will be to correct the bugs of the Windows version of Diablo3 prior to anything else.
Meet late 2013, not before IMHO.

Very excellent point. How does blizzard knows their is demand? Ask your 'store' clerk? Right, that'll get right to blizzards stats. Well, let me click the linux download button in the blizzard store. Oh right. NO go. But if we out our cries on the blizzard forums, with petitions and such! Oh .. blizzard ignored that too. So then really, how do we 'demand' such a feature? We can't can we?
That said, even if the linux group is 1% of all 6 mil wow players. Would that be enough to care? Even if they take into account the amount of mac players maybe? Or take into account that by fact, there's only a small subgroup of technical people who would be interested in one? And finally, if they would look at the amount of wine users, as potential Linux gamers, what about windows gamers who just don't know about wine or know how well it works (or lack thereof).

However, with Mac OS running on Intel, does a linux client need that amount of time to be shaped and compiled?

It uses OpenGL, so that shouldn't require any porting (or hardly any). OS X has it's own sound system. So it would have to be ported to OpenAL/SDL. Granted those technoligies work on all 3 platforms so should have been the default choice anyway Then there's input, but that can't really be that much porting.

Now with in/output sorted, what's left? Their game engine probably needs to read/write files, but I'm guessing that they are using the standard POSIX stuff for that? So that's sorted. Threading? shouldn't be an issue with POSIX either. Wow doesn't use cocoa or other strange libraries I don't think. So easy. itunes and movie capturing can be disabled build time (the windows client doesn't have it).

So how much time would it take them (ignoring the fact that wow once worked on linux during beta and could still be used deeply internally)? Well ttimo ported ET:QW by himself. So ... not that much I don't think.

Why in the world not release a client for the <1%? Cause management doesn't care.