Transgaming to Support Half Life 2 Under Linux

rpdillon writes "According to Half-Life Fallout, Transgaming Technologies has announced that they will be releasing version 4.2 of Cedega, their Wine based software allowing some DirectX games to be played under Linux. The new version will be released Dec 7th with official support included for Valve Software's Half-Life 2 and Steam, Valve's online software store and distribution system, and a required component of Half-Life 2."

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Re:Or better yet...

[Swamii]

Because Linux users comprise less than 2% of the overall desktop market. Don't get religious about it; it's simply the fact that most of the time, it's not financially worth the development effort to port a game, especially a DirectX-based game, over to Linux.

You know what?

[stratjakt]

We bitch and bitch about how much we hate corporations sticking it to us. We hate DRM, we hate devices that phone home, we hate buying a game, and then being unable to take that game over to a friends and just play it.

And yet, everyones head is so far up Valve's ass, that noone seems to be bothered with how odious this steam thing really is.

I mean, you can't play single player without a 'net connection. You cant drag your disk over to your friends house and just play.

It stinks worse than ANYTHING I've ever seen. This is the absolute worst ass-reaming any pointy haired manager ever decided to give the consumers.

You all are just grabbing your ankles and grinning.

I won't buy, leech, crack, play, or even talk about Half Life 2 anymore until they reissue it in a format which I can just install and start playing the single player game without phone-home activation, or being bundled with your ad delivery service.

Fuck you Valve. I will never purchase games via Steam. Luckily I have Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2, Doom 3, and a pile of other titles to keep me entertained.

Re:wow

[Sc00ter]

Steam isn't being ported to Linux, it's just being supported by Transgaming's product that uses WINE to run windows programs.

If anything this will make people not port the products to run in linux because they'll tell you to just use a WINE product to run them.

Bi-directional support

[phorm]

The speed at which Wine is supporting new games seems to indicate a certain amount of support from the game manufacturers. At the very least they're probably getting their hands on pre-releases in order to prepare for compatibility once the true game comes out.

This isn't as good as having an actual native port for Linux, but at least it indicates that there is an awareness that Linux and cross-compatability are a consideration.

Re:Bi-directional support

[dave420]

I don't mean to sound rude, but that's not what's going on. WINE is getting better. Games companies aren't going to bend over backwards to help linux, if their games are in DX. It's just not going to happen. Linux has a tiny share of the market, approx. 2%. A games manufacturer can improve sales of their game by 2% just by improving marketing or with various other non-expensive-labour-intensive activities. Using your core assets to port a game over for a MAXIMUM 2% of the market (if every single linux user bought a copy of it) isn't very cost-effective.

Linux's market share will have to be muuuch larger before games manufacturers base too many decisions on it.

I didn't meant to sound like a dick, but lots of people seem to forget the sheer economics of this.

Why I won't Support this.

[Skraut]

I bought Doom 3 and downloaded the Doom 3 linux binary. I bought Unreal Tournament 2004 from linuxgamers. I bought Neverwinter Nights and all the expansions and again grabbed the linux binaries.

I simply refuse to buy games that do not have Linux Binaries. Yes I know I'm missing out on some decent games, but it's the principle. Id, Epic, and Bioware can all look at their logs and see how many linux binaries were downloaded, and I am represented in there. They can say, we sold X copies, but Y% of them were Linux Users.

If I buy Warcraft III, or Half Life 2, to Blizzard or Valve, I am a Windows user. They look and say "Look at all the Windows versions we sold. Why spend any time on making a binary for our next game when we know how many Windows copy will sell?"

Re:Or just badger Valve

[BAILOPAN]

How do you refuse to support a company whose product you can't use, anyway? Not buy their product more vigorously?