Will Blizzard Be Bringing Their Games To Linux?

[DeepDayze]

I doubt Blizzard is interested in trying to make Linux into a better platform for end users like Valve is. I think they're going to try to find a legal way around the 30% share of profits that Microsoft wants. Though I think there's more to this then that, cause I would imagine it's very easy to get around the Windows app store 30%. Could be that Microsoft wants 30% of any sale on Windows 8, regardless of how it was sold.

Sounds like MS is trying to be like Apple by snagging 30% of every sale thru their app store and a lot of companies think that's quite a lot to pay MS. It could well be if a game or application developer did not want to pay MS that much of a cut, it then should not be in the appstore...MS could possibly only allow makers to sell their wares through the app store and not to any other channel even retail.

So this is where I believe could be the danger zone, as Nowell alluded to

In the same vein, it would be then a great opportunity for Blizzard to embrace Linux and they probably would see how Valve fares first before making a public commitment to Linux gaming.

[nightmarex]

The Cedega related scandal dates really back in the day. It appears that, at some point the Cedega software clashed with WoW's anti cheating system. And, they had it fixed in decent timing (considering that Wine wasn't and isn't an official platform.
Personally i was able to play wow through Wine for few years in a round...starting with The Burning Crusade (i think ). Now i had enough of it. I was also able to play Starcraft II nicely (even if it doesnt have OpenGL support on the Windows build) without getting banned or otherwise.

The quality of the gameplay on Warcraft III, DIablo II, World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 (these I've played on Linux) makes me think that Blizz is keeping an eye open on what happens on Wine side, and i'd dare to say that they even work unofficially to make their products compatible.

Never played Diablo III though.

Regards,
n.

Diablo 3 plays beautifully on wine. I had never considered they themselves used calls that are just plain old Wine friendly however I always assumed that since they are AAA+++ type of games Wine caters to them.

[fuzz]

I wouldn't object to having their games on Linux but I doubt it'd be through Steam and they probably wouldn't do much good for Linux anyway.

[DeepDayze]

Soo... This entire non-article can be summarized with one word: "No". Again Michael, this isn't an article, it's a tweet!

Relax...this little ditty at least is getting some decent debate going

[DeepDayze]

With regard to the platform diversity etc etc, don't think that's an issue.

Blizzard games always have been quite self-contained. Probably due to their multi-platform ability. No weird DLL requirements, no depending on the registry etc.

If they'd release the linux binary, only Wow.exe as Wow(.bin) chances are, it would work on a _lot_ of distro's without hassle. If you grep for strings in the Wow, SC2 and D3 exe's, there's obvious Linux references. All they have to do, is release it to the public and put a 'this is unsupported' disclaimer on it.

But one of the reasons they might not, is due to their anti-cheating tech, which may be lacking in the Linux builds ...

All they would have to do is work to make their anti-cheating tech detect Wine better to avoid issues such as unnecessary bans as well as adding support for Linux WoW clients (should they ever make a native one for Linux)

Even if there were weird DLL requirements overrides could be configured in Wine for them

[Larian]

Soo... This entire non-article can be summarized with one word: "No". Again Michael, this isn't an article, it's a tweet!

I was wondering when someone would chime in with this obnoxious crap. Do you have proof of some kind to back up your claim or are you just gifted with being able to see the future?

This article is pure speculation on Michael's part, and it's a good question to mull over. This is the first time I've heard of Blizzard saying anything remotely like this, and in light of the Valve push along with an unnumbered cadre of their partners into linux space, it remains an optimistic possibility. But it is just that ... a possibility. Nothing is concrete and I believe the article is rather clear in that regard.

Do you get jollies from shitting on everybody's fun or something?

P.S. DeepDayze is a fucking saint.

[DeepDayze]

I was wondering when someone would chime in with this obnoxious crap. Do you have proof of some kind to back up your claim or are you just gifted with being able to see the future?

This article is pure speculation on Michael's part, and it's a good question to mull over. This is the first time I've heard of Blizzard saying anything remotely like this, and in light of the Valve push along with an unnumbered cadre of their partners into linux space, it remains an optimistic possibility. But it is just that ... a possibility. Nothing is concrete and I believe the article is rather clear in that regard.

Do you get jollies from shitting on everybody's fun or something?

P.S. DeepDayze is a fucking saint.

Thanks for the props, this is truly speculation and there's really scant information out there about Blizzard taking the Linux plunge...and I surely hope they do, after Valve does

[ownagefool]

All they would have to do is work to make their anti-cheating tech detect Wine better to avoid issues such as unnecessary bans as well as adding support for Linux WoW clients (should they ever make a native one for Linux)

Even if there were weird DLL requirements overrides could be configured in Wine for them

I don't really follow the landscape all that much, but if blizzard are releasing their games on multi-platforms I'd assume their anti-cheat is already on multi-platforms. I imagine whatever they're doing for OS X would transfer to Linux based Operating Systems with less hassle than the games themselves. I guess how they actually detect cheats may require work, but I'd imagine there'd be a lack of cheats on a linux client, so it'd be an issue of getting it running then monitoring the scene to see what developes.

I haven't really got a Scooby, but I imagine if they did port it'd be a very good thing. In terms of must have PC games, Valve and Blizzard are fairly relevant to the discussion, especially for competitive gaming.

[DMJC]

It's not so much that blizzard follow wine, it's more that Sam Latinga from SDL was working for Blizzard, ensuring all the engines were written with OpenGL support in the Windows binaries, not just the Mac Binaries. If you look into StarCraft 2 you'll find they used .png textures and .ogg audio/video files. The game is basically built using the same libraries/tools as most open source games.

[DeepDayze]

I don't really follow the landscape all that much, but if blizzard are releasing their games on multi-platforms I'd assume their anti-cheat is already on multi-platforms. I imagine whatever they're doing for OS X would transfer to Linux based Operating Systems with less hassle than the games themselves. I guess how they actually detect cheats may require work, but I'd imagine there'd be a lack of cheats on a linux client, so it'd be an issue of getting it running then monitoring the scene to see what developes.

I haven't really got a Scooby, but I imagine if they did port it'd be a very good thing. In terms of must have PC games, Valve and Blizzard are fairly relevant to the discussion, especially for competitive gaming.

Right..they'd have to add support for detecting cheats within a native Linux client as a native client would have different internal structures compared to the Windows code. If running the Windows binaries under Wine, there'd needs to be detections for Wine itself and Wine needs to be able to be as transparent as possible