With Valve On Linux, Has LGP Lost All Relevance?

[Vadi]

I wish LGP got to port newer X3 titles.

Regardless, I think they gained *more* relevance - they could be hired out to do more porting work, now that people might be seeing Linux as a more relevant gaming platform - both from HIBs and Steam.

[DMJC]

Actually yes I would say that a good looking homepage is important. As it is part of your CORPORATE IMAGE, and how you present yourself to the business community. I would be willing to bet pretty serious money that the reason Blizzard backed out of their LGP deal to bring World of Warcraft to Linux was because LGPs website and presentation was too unprofessional. Blizzard had the game in a playable state when they backed out, and it's no wonder, that hard disk crash just drove home how badly the LGP team were handling things. I mean seriously? you couldn't have daily backups? or virtualized servers? It's not rocket science, and it's not expensive to achieve. Having a 2-3 month downtime over a hard disk failure is unacceptable. As is relying on a single RAIDED machine as your corporate web presence. Too much risk to the brand, not enough guaranteed profit, and Blizzard pulled out. I would bet money that was why. Hell The Lokigames website has been up for longer with less problems than the LGP website and Loki's been dead since 2001!!!!

[gbudny]

LGP would be relevant and a lot more successful if they try joining with a game developer before a game is released. They probably wouldn't have to pay as hefty of a license fee and games could be charged at full price without linux users' whining about it. As another idea, game companies should demand a certain % of the profit instead of asking for money in advance. Seriously, what is their goal in charging LGP? It accomplishes nothing, it's basically just assuming they'll get $X in profit if the game is re-sold under linux. If the game is old, they're not going to make get any more sales so if letting a small independent company might bring in a little more cash, what's the problem with that? You can't expect them to do a good job when you're asking them for money they don't have.

http://linuxgamingnews.org/2010/05/1...letter-to-lgp/

[gbudny]

remove please

[Larian]

Actually yes I would say that a good looking homepage is important. As it is part of your CORPORATE IMAGE, and how you present yourself to the business community. I would be willing to bet pretty serious money that the reason Blizzard backed out of their LGP deal to bring World of Warcraft to Linux was because LGPs website and presentation was too unprofessional. Blizzard had the game in a playable state when they backed out, and it's no wonder, that hard disk crash just drove home how badly the LGP team were handling things. I mean seriously? you couldn't have daily backups? or virtualized servers? It's not rocket science, and it's not expensive to achieve. Having a 2-3 month downtime over a hard disk failure is unacceptable. As is relying on a single RAIDED machine as your corporate web presence. Too much risk to the brand, not enough guaranteed profit, and Blizzard pulled out. I would bet money that was why. Hell The Lokigames website has been up for longer with less problems than the LGP website and Loki's been dead since 2001!!!!

Again, I point you to icculus.org. That's a crappy looking site if ever there was one, but it's navigable.

Maybe LGP did things wrong, and maybe they're professionally unbalanced right now, but why is that a reason to want to see them fail?

[gbudny]

Actually yes I would say that a good looking homepage is important. As it is part of your CORPORATE IMAGE, and how you present yourself to the business community. I would be willing to bet pretty serious money that the reason Blizzard backed out of their LGP deal to bring World of Warcraft to Linux was because LGPs website and presentation was too unprofessional. Blizzard had the game in a playable state when they backed out, and it's no wonder, that hard disk crash just drove home how badly the LGP team were handling things.

"LG: As a game publisher, how do you see the issues with Blizzard Software and Battle.Net in the context of Linux? Was that a special case, or is that a good indicator of how the gaming industry does business - and if it is, why does it have to do business that way?

Michael Simms: I think Blizzard made a mistake. There has never been any kind of open source threat to any of their current titles, there have just been fans emulating their older games, or in the case of battle.net trying to play their purchased games in a better way.

All Blizzard has managed to do is alienate some of its most loyal fans and supporters, aka their best customers.

Blizzard is definitely no friend to Linux or the open source community. Sure they make good games, but thats about it. There is a Linux version of the hugely popular World of Warcraft, and Blizzard canned it, without warming or explaination, even though it was functionally complete and ready to go, and after a discussion of a
support agreement with LGP. It would have risked nothing for them to make the game available, and they chose not to."

http://web.archive.org/web/200507120...com/node/10249

"We deal with a small number of companies who are linux-friendly, and we work to get some of their games to Linux. You have no idea the number of games we have tried to license and failed. Some of them after 18 months of negotiations, flights to go to meetings overseas, painstaking presentations. On TWO occasions we had meetings right the way up to board level of big multinational games corporations only to have months or years of work blown away by a board member who couldn’t care less because Linux isn’t a big enough market."

http://linuxgamingnews.org/2010/05/1...letter-to-lgp/

[DMJC]

At what point did I ever state that I want LGP to fail? Also, Icculus.org is not trying to be a linux game porting company. It is a place where a person with a very substantial resume happens to put some projects online. Ryan works as an employee not as a business partner with a lot of these companies. His resume has references from many AAA game development houses he's worked for in the past, he delivers binaries for distribution on the internet, or to be boxed with games by the companies selling them, most gamers don't even know he exists (except for people who look deeper into the linux gaming scene).

Totally different situation to LGPs when it comes to dealing with these companies. Ryan can say, I've worked on Descent 3, I've worked on UT, Deus Ex 1, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, and other various titles when he's dealing with these companies. Most HR departments are only looking for a resume/experience, so it's more than good enough, as an employee he's fantastic. That said though, when you're a company looking to do business with other companies. Especially where you are going to be representing the corporate face of a company. You HAVE to be brand-concious, you have to dot your i's and cross your t's and yes you have to wear a suit, and look the part. It's just the nature of doing business. LGP need to redesign their site, put on their suits, and get down to business. You wouldn't trust your CIO/CFO position to someone who can't properly dress themselves properly every morning. Why the hell would you trust your brand to that either?

Have LGP ever approached Aspyr Media Inc? Have they ever spoken to the companies already porting to OSX? Having just read the article posted above, I only have one question for Michael Simms, If you're investing a shit-ton of your own money into Linux gaming, why don't you just write your own games? Porting hasn't been working for the past decade, it might never work. The Humble Bundles are working, they're successfully raising the profile of the platform. Maybe it's a better effort to focus on development of new titles rather than porting?

[dolo]

are gbudny and larian by any chance working at LGP as they're so furiously defending it?

a) xorg is crap because it wasn't designed for todays desktop usage. it's big, slow, has a ton of deprecated crap dragging with it, the development pace is slower than the growth of a bonsai tree and we're getting the support for modern graphical features 2 or 3 centuries after other platforms. wayland is finally a step forward and a very welcome one. linux still has some hope if we ditch all the cumbersome antiquated weight that has dragged along all these years.

b) if you don't present yourself professionally, you need to sell yourself with the overall high quality of your work. LGP certainly hasn't been strong on either of these. if you don't have a legendary reputation to justify a 10 year old website design, you're never going to attract new customers

c) LGP ports stuff that is mostly irrelevant. They don't port the big names because nobody big trusts a publisher like this. They don't port the small trendy popular indie games because the developers of those *do the porting themselves* (like pretty much all of the humble bundle participants are doing). So what can they publish? a few good games here and there, mostly it's irrelevant stuff nobody really cares about: the market for stuff like software tycoon or some mah-jong clone is ridiculously small.

d) the "hdd-incident" which is a proof of complete unprofessionalism or blatant lying

LGP, good riddance. i vote for desura and steam!

[zerothis]

Yes, and With Valve On Linux, and Electronic Arts has lost all relevance as well.

(just thought I'd try jumping the gun also)

[Larian]

are gbudny and larian by any chance working at LGP as they're so furiously defending it?

a) xorg is crap because it wasn't designed for todays desktop usage. it's big, slow, has a ton of deprecated crap dragging with it, the development pace is slower than the growth of a bonsai tree and we're getting the support for modern graphical features 2 or 3 centuries after other platforms. wayland is finally a step forward and a very welcome one. linux still has some hope if we ditch all the cumbersome antiquated weight that has dragged along all these years.

b) if you don't present yourself professionally, you need to sell yourself with the overall high quality of your work. LGP certainly hasn't been strong on either of these. if you don't have a legendary reputation to justify a 10 year old website design, you're never going to attract new customers

c) LGP ports stuff that is mostly irrelevant. They don't port the big names because nobody big trusts a publisher like this. They don't port the small trendy popular indie games because the developers of those *do the porting themselves* (like pretty much all of the humble bundle participants are doing). So what can they publish? a few good games here and there, mostly it's irrelevant stuff nobody really cares about: the market for stuff like software tycoon or some mah-jong clone is ridiculously small.

d) the "hdd-incident" which is a proof of complete unprofessionalism or blatant lying

LGP, good riddance. i vote for desura and steam!

I can't speak for gbudny, but no, I don't work for LGP in any way. Nor am I defending anybody. I'm just asking reasonable questions - why would you want to see a game porting studio fail? It's completely the wrong way to look at things. I want to see LGP get its act together, not fail. That way everybody wins. They're on our effing side, you know.