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Loki Files For Chapter 11 Protection
yamla writes: "Loki is dead!" and points to a Linux Review article which says the gaming company has filed for protection from creditors under bankruptcy laws. Yamla continues: "Read about it here. This is terrible news! I have paid for some of their games and they were always at least as good as the Windows versions. I hope Loki can pull out of bankruptcy and keep going but if not, it will be our loss." There is also a story at LinuxToday (pointed out by reader Beee) which draws from the Linux Review report. Meanwhile, the Loki site appears business-as-usual. Filing for bankruptcy protection is not the same as being "out of business," but it's uncomfortably close.
I will NOT make any statement on who's to blame for this.
just this fact:
I just went to their online store to order something (forget my previous rant, rune looks interesting, as does tribes2).
I also asked a friend on irc if he wanted some, to share shipping costs to germany.
He had NEVER heard of loki, and of the fact that they have a linux port of SoF, which he'd searched the 'net far and wide for months by now...
is that marketing? don't think so...
[L]
>stronger video editing offerings Who the fuck do you think started SDL and SMPEG?
Yeah mod me down for flame, but he's got a good ppoint mr dumbass moderator. Withoutloki SDL and SMPEG wouldnt be arround - which would just be bad. We also wouldnt have that loki book - linux games prorgamming, which will hopfully start some more opensource projects.
- You have quoted someone else without his permission (shame shame)
- I hardly think that an employee who left seven months ago is in a position to judge who is still employed.
I have it on solid authority (namely, personal experience) that the count is significantly higher (5 technical, 2 artistic, and at least 4 administrative).Shame on you for kicking a puppy only trying to serve the community while it's down.
That isn't true at all. There are many individuals, companies, manufacturers, schools, and foriegn governments to whom the low cost nature of free software is a huge incentive.
I use Linux mostly for idealogical and technical reasons, but it certainly doesn't hurt that it saves me a few bucks I can spend on hardware.
Given the cost for W2K server + client licenses, the cost makes a huge difference for companies running webserver farms. In many cases not as important as the technical issues, but important none the less.
TiVo could have probably used WinCE, VxWorks, or QNX on the TiVo. But I am sure the $0/unit software licensing costs of Linux makes a huge difference to their bottom line.
Schools, especially outside the US, are deploying Linux left and right, because especially on low cost hardware, the cost of windows is a big chunk of system price.
So, yes, when we speak of free software, we mean freedom, but many people use Linux because that includes the freedom to copy it without paying licensing fees.
The linux game market is simply not big enough to support a company like this and when you put in the fact that they don't get the same release dates as windows versions and the high warez rate of there games...I am surprised they lasted this long.
Frankly, most people would rather have stuff free than have to pay for it. This tendency is of course magnified on Slashdot, because of the Linux Community's ideals of free software. Now does it come as a surprise to any people that a company whose only busienss was selling games to a community that would rather pirate them, than have to go all the way out to the store to buy them, would quickly go out of business? It does not to me. As much was I would like to support a company like this, i would not spend the extra money to buy quake3 for linux when I already own the PC version.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
There was an article recently in PC Gamer or a similar rag, Where does the $50 go?, analyzing and illustrating the various things that drive the cost of a game. I was surprised at how much was required SIMPLY TO STOCK A GAME ON SHELVES at Best Buy or CompUSA; it's almost akin to paying rent for that space. Where could a company like Loki get that type of muscle?
I like to believe that we install Linux for its workhorse capabilities first, and gaming second (as compared to the Redmond OS)
Good luck to the minions of Loki
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Hmm...perhaps clearing out the inventory here might help for all you cheapskates out there.
1) Go to the upper left search box and enter 'linux'.
2) Buy each of the Loki games. Myth 2, Heretic 2, Decent 3, Terminus, Sim City 3000, Quake 3, Soldier of Fortune, RailRoad Tycoon 2, Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, and Heroes of Might and Magic III for for a lousy $9.99 per game!
3) Now click on this link and be nice to the friend of the guy who told you how to get all these cheap games.
The moment there starts to be enough demand for commercial quality games for Linux I believe the open source community will start writing those.
Think it's impossible? These people did write a commercial quality OS, not a small task compared to writing a commercial quality game. Why would it be any less possible to write a commercial quality game then?
Unfortunately, people had gotten so used to getting Linux ports of windows games for free, after all the Quakes, and UT, and very few people look to buy Linux versions first.
Idsoftware and Dave Taylor started, (if not gave a big boost to) commercial gaming in Linux, so this unfortunate, unintentional side-effect is just another kick in the crotch for everyone involved.
I read slashdot alot,,, Yet this is the first time that I have posted becasue this is the only time I have seem a subject that I have really cared about..
Loki are broke,, I have never heard of a company to pull themselves back from a CH11. You are deluded if you can think that you can save them by buying stock that has already taken its capital. In retail your remainders kill you
Gaming is dead, It was killed in a stampede of big business greed, endless benchmarks, generic gameplay and warez. Can anyone name a game better then doom | starcraft | civilization
However, the real reasion gaming is dead is because ten years ago two guys could write a simple game in a few months and hope to sell a few million copies. Now you need a whole team of people giving up years in development time too sell the same amount of units. With average budgets getting close to film it is clear that;Too much needs to be done for too few rewards
I will buy every loki game that I can get my hands on knowing full well that the company cannot be saved. After all loki provided hope that maybe, just maybe gaming could return to what it was.
After loki are gone, or brought out (same difference), I will simply stop buying games period, no fscking windows | xbox | ps2 | gamecube. Time to start collecting DVD's.
ps, Hope remaines in emulation and unoffical ports for games on linux, Ill give you that.
1. A larger Linux userbase.
2. Simultaneous releases across platforms.
3. An easier way for Windows users to switch to the Linux version, than trying to return their Windows version of the game and get their money back.
The moment Linux games have more FPS than Windows ones these things will be just a matter of time.
amen. I could really go for a Mathematica replacement. FYI, Octave, an OS clone of Matlab, is available, and apparently its pretty good. But its not mathematica. Also, R, a Free version is S-plus, is now probably more popular than its predecessor. It does a lot of math, but is really a statistics package. However, it has the lisp-like (functional/interpretive) environment that Mathematica has. The similarities are so great that it probably wouldn't be too difficult to write an Mathematica interpreter that translates into Splus/R.
But.... wasn't this topic about games?
To be honest, I'm not running any Linux workstations and collecting games that I'll probably never play doesn't sound too enticing. If they sold t-shirts and other gear (I realize that sounds a bit silly) I would definitely buy one of those. One more day I can go without doing laundry. :)
I don't think this had much to do with the economic crunch.
I think it had more to do with the fact that they were trying to sell products to a market that couldn't support them.
Lemme see. They used to say that the overall cost of a worker in a software company was $100,000 / year. Dunno how many people loki have working there, but let's say 20. Now, on a $40 game, the developer will normally get about $10 (if they're lucky) if it's sold through retail channels.
So: cost to run Loki/year - $2,000,000
Number of units you need to sell just to break even: 200,000
That's a tall order, even for a Windows game. There's only a few titles a year that sell that many.
Okay, maybe your're getting paid to do the ports, but the advances you're going to get for Linux ports aren't going to be very great.
It's incredibly difficult to keep your head above water writing Windows games. It must be almost impossible for Linux.
If IBM were smart, they would swoop in and save this company. Games may not be Linux's short- or medium-term purpose, but in the long-run, games are useful because they tend to push systems to their limits and advance the state of the art. This is particularly important for Linux development on the desktop market.
There really is very little money involved here: $500,000 . This makes me wonder why they took such a drastic step. I mean, this is pretty much less than the mortgage on most houses in Silicon Valley. I wonder if there is more that Loki is not telling us.
evanchik.net
What ended it for Loki Games? Well, I happen to know one company I can slap the blame on. nVidia.
Why nVidia? well, its simple. when the tnt2 debutes, nVidia releases a statement that they are the only 3d video chip maker that is fully supporting Linux with Open Source Drivers. They were to release register specifications, and release a working, open source driver developed by nVidia and helped upon by a bunch of other interesting people. What happened to this ideal? They took it back of course, just as soon as 3dfx died and opensourced all their IP. When nVidia saw the monopoly knocking at their front door, they immediately withdrew their plan (this one year later) and decided to go closed source. you couldnt even use a custom kernel with the nvidia driver because it was entirely closed source binary only.
Too bad for Loki, who just spent the last 6 months porting Quake3 to Linux, now they just found out that the only video card they can officially support with Xfree4 is the Voodoo3 and Matrox g400 (dog slow in linux).
Add this to the fact that Quake3 for Linux came out on the SHELVES about a month after the windows version, and then, more expensive (by then, the windows version had been reduced in price by retailers, and the linux version could be downloaded off the internet, there was so little market for the linux version, they had to sell them at full price)
Imagine that, Quake3 launch more costly to consumers, and later than everyone else, not to mention that the only video card that could run quake3 at the time was a tnt2 and Geforce1 at reasonable speeds, and didn't even have alpha quality Xfree4 or kernel drivers(required to use 3d direct rendering in Linux)
Of course, nVidia released their closed source with open source wrapper later on that year, by then, it was too late. EVERY gaming migrant from windows switched back to windows specifically because of their video card's support (NVidia).
If you want a finger to point, point it at nVidia. they should be brought up on charges of anti-trust IMO.
Fuck you nvidia, I have nothing else to say to you. bitch. You ruined the only gaming potential Linux has ever had. If it wasn't for your delayed closed shitty alpha quality driver, Loki would have made a killing on Linux quake3. insted, only the newbies who bought the voodoo3 could play quake3, and so, only 10% of the potential market actually bought it. You had the only card that could handle quake3, and you lied on your promise to be the "leading 3d video card maker on the Linux platform"
Have a nice day.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Somehow, I think the main reason that Loki didn't do as well as they should have was the way their products were marketed. For example: Tribes 2 for windows can be found at any decent computer store, and at CompUSA and Fry's, it has been on sale almost constantly for $19.99. Tribes 2 for linux, on the other hand, can be found in no retail store that I've been to. The only option I have is to buy it online, for around $50 (plus S&H). Now which version would most people go for? The only reason that I didn't spend $20 on the windows version is because I don't run windows on any of my machines, but most people aren't in that situation. I think if it was possible to get some more games into stores (at more competitive prices!), they could have done much better. The one or two copies of quake III that each store has don't count ($50 apiece).
If you want to personally port a game to Linux, write me a letter (remove the _nospamplease), and I'll try to hook you up with the game author and source code. The catches are: a. I need a resume and convincing that you're not a flake, and b. you'll probably have to release it in binary form only.
This is how Linux game ports work- one by one.
hmmm....
Quake3 windows: 30-40fps at 1024x768
Quake3 linux: 40-50fps @ 1280x1024
this is with a geforce2mx, 400Mhz, 384ram
of course, i dont have the kludge of a windowing system to hold it back
I don't honestly see Linux game porting companies as being successful anytime in the near future. This is for several reasons. The easiest way to explain this is to draw a parallel between Loki and another company, say, Wildcard Design (dead link, I know; it went out of business a couple of months ago, but you can find some info on it via a Google search).
Wildcard Design was a company that was founded to port games to BeOS. Despite the high licensing fees and restrictive NDAs the founder had to surmount to obtain the source code to the games he wanted to port, he decided to give it a go. Needless to say, he failed, the main reason for which is this:
There are not enough users of non-Microsoft operating systems to make profitable a company dedicated only to porting high-profile games to them. The cost is simply too high for the authors to recoup. A few games might turn a profit, but eventually, after even one poorly-received game, perhaps, the company will find itself deep in the red. It cannot sell games to nearly the scope of audience that Windows ports sell to because the gaming types generally are not comfortable enough to migrate away from the operating systems they are used to, which in most cases means Windows. Hence, sales of ported games will barely be a dent in the overall sales of said games.
Thats changing though... Tribes 2 was very close to the same release date and now there are many people talking about "simultaneous" release on Windows and Linux (i.e. NeverWinter Nights, etc.) Linux gaming is growing rapidly. I would hate to see Loki pass before all their work pays off.
Something is wrong is this world. Loki is a very good company, with very good people.
A couple years ago Microsoft was buying up PC game companies left and right, where is the IBM promise of "billions of $$ on Linux" pledge now?
Maybe someone should set up a pledgeboard, something like "I promise to buy $XXX of Loki Games or the SDL book" within two weeks".
IF the SDL book comes out, I pledge to buy both it and the Tribes 2 for Linux, even though Dynamix is dead.
It's not just Linux that's dying, it's not just the dot-coms, look at Japan, the lowest stock indexes in 17 years. The world economy is collapsing.
Goddamn government, while they've dragged out the Microsoft trial for 15 years, they should have been doing the same thing with software that the post office does with their vehicle fleets..splitting up the dollars spent between vendors. The monopoly desktop would not even be an issue now.
Linux is ready for the desktop. When people use it work, they will start using it at home, and more games will sell. RedHat, IBM and Apple (for example) would get a broader base of enhancement requests and the state of Linux/BSD/Apple would increase rapidly.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Ah, yes, what an amazing and convincing argument you have here. So, according to your logic:
* If my dog bites people and is mean, all dogs bite people and are mean.
* If a black man robs you, all black men are robbers.
Glad to see you find your world so easy to generalize.
Bullshit. The stances being taken on Slashdot are more like:
The concept of "dog" is immoral, so only own cats.
Except my dog Loki, he's OK.
Peddle your straw man somewhere else. Slashdotters have been claiming left and right that the very CONCEPT of proprietary software is theft, but now everybody's in a tizzy over poor Loki.
I didn't make the argument black and white; I'm one of the ones claiming that it *ISN'T* black and white. Proprietary software is OK. Loki is good. Microsoft is good too. Windows sucks, so I don't use it; but it doesn't mean Microsoft can't make something good I will use, such as my Intellimouse.
I use Linux because it's better, not because Microsoft is evil. If Microsoft makes a great program for Linux, I might very well use it.
It's simply these game authors who charge exorbitant rates to allow Loki to port their games. The reason they're charging so much is that they're assuming the games are worth that much because of how much they make on Windoze.
Linux users should rally behind Loki and petition game software authoring companies to charge a fee that's according to the Linux market. They have nothing to lose and much to gain if the Linux gaming industry grows.
They never charged that much 5 to 7 years ago when the Windows market wasn't as big as it is today