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42 of the Best Commercial Linux Games

Posted by timothy on from the answer-to-everything dept.

LinuxLinks writes "It is true to say that the number of commercial games released for Linux each year remains small compared to other platforms. Nevertheless, we faced lots of difficult choices compiling a list of 42 of the best commercial Linux games. The selection we have finally chosen covers a wide range of different game genres, so hopefully there will be something here that will interest all."

24 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Yep by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And all five people who bought them greatly enjoy them. So do the other hundred thousand or so who downloaded them via torrent because 'all software should be free', further throttling Linux game development.

    1. Re:Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I guess most Windows and Mac users must believe the same thing!

    2. Re:Yep by Teppy · · Score: 5, Informative

      I designed (and run) A Tale in the Desert, one of the games on the list. About 3.1% of paid players currently use Linux. Also, 7.3% use OSX, and the rest use Windows.

      Of all trial accounts, 7.3% of Linux users go on to pay for at least one month of the game. Of OSX users, it's 6.9%, and of Windows users it's 11.8%.

      For some reason the Linux number has dropped significantly over the years (used to be around 10% IIRC), though the other two numbers have remained about the same.

    3. Re:Yep by billcopc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If that's your killer app, you'll only end up killing the platform.

      I wouldn't play a single-boot game. I haven't done that since the DOS days, and even back then I found it highly annoying. I have this ridiculously overpowered PC for a reason, and I very much enjoy firing up any random game in a few seconds, play however long I want, and quit back to the desktop so I can resume productivity. I often alt-tab out of games to poke at something else, or look up a game guide on the web.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    4. Re:Yep by westlake · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I guess most Windows and Mac users must believe the same thing!

      But enough are willing to pay to make PC gaming a billion dollar industry.

      The developer for Linux begins with the handicap of a 0.68% market share -- in a world where Vista has 15%, OSX on the Mac and the iPhone 8%.

      Operating System Market Share

      When your potential market is already microscopic, you can't afford to lose a significant percentage of sales to the pirate.

  2. I knew it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The ultimate question:

    How many commercial games can you play on Linux?

    1. Re:I knew it! by MK_CSGuy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK there is no VM that allows native access to the graphics card.
      All the VMs I worked with (Virtual PC, VMWare and QEMU in the past, VirtualBox today) emulate a card on par with an S3 Trident or some other limited card.
      You can change the video memory size (and remember that this means regular memory speeds! no GDDR3!) but no pixel shaders and other "modern" technologies.

  3. EVE doesn't require Wine? by Lane.exe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I didn't know EVE Online had a native client. Hm.

    --
    IAALS.
    1. Re:EVE doesn't require Wine? by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wrong.
      http://www.eve-online.com/download/linux.asp
      They provide .rpm, .deb and .tgz downloads.
      Technically it's built with Transgaming's "cider" windows api for linux (based on wine).

    2. Re:EVE doesn't require Wine? by spir0 · · Score: 3, Informative

      double wrong. kinda.

      the native linux program is a downloader of the Windows Application, and an installer of cider/cedega/whatever it's called.

      given TFA's requirement of "Not require Wine to run" this would have to be a fail.

      Eve Online is a Windows program requiring Wine or derivative to run. Technically, they could list the Eve INSTALLER on their list, but that's not a game.

      --
      The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
  4. The only 42 Commercial Linux Games by phantomcircuit · · Score: 4, Funny

    42? why not 43? or how about 50? because there are only 42 commercial linux games

  5. Douglas Adams. by DrYak · · Score: 5, Funny

    42? why not 43? or how about 50? There is a theory which states that if you ever discovers exactly why it is 42, the Life, Universe And Everything will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  6. Alpha Centauri... by headkase · · Score: 3, Informative

    I would have nominated Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri but that one broke many a kernal ago on a glibc update. Too bad Loki is dead or they could have updated it.

    --
    Shh.
    1. Re:Alpha Centauri... by WWWWolf · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would have nominated Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri but that one broke many a kernal ago on a glibc update. Too bad Loki is dead or they could have updated it.

      Funny, I actually got SMAC to work on a reasonably new setup; the updater blew up (I had to patch the game manually by extracting the update and patching the files individually with xdelta), fullscreen mode doesn't work (weird video mode), and apparently I'd need to disable compositing to make it not crash when the actual game play begins, which I'm too lazy to do...

      We needs a new build or at least a competent clone! SMAC rules!

    2. Re:Alpha Centauri... by turgid · · Score: 3, Funny

      I actually returned to Alpha Centauri yesterday

      Can I see your engine? How does it work? Is it a Wankel warp engine?

      --
      Stick Men
  7. Games selection by DrYak · · Score: 4, Informative

    They include games with no real native client (EVE Online, which has a built-in Cedega-like engine) Nevertheless, EVE Online is sold and supported specifically for Linux. They just happen to have chosen a different strategy - instead of paying someone like icculus to write a port, they keep the same code base and pay people at transgaming to make sure that this code runs on linux.
    It is a commercial effort, by a commercial company to be sure that their product can be used on a Linux desktop. It fits the list.

    (same story for Mac too, btw)

    , but they don't list The Ur-Quan Masters, possibly the best native-Linux game in history? Ur Quan is really a great game. *BUT* it an open-source project hosted on sourceforge. The whole point of the article was to point out effort from corporation making efforts in order to have their commercial product run on Linux too.
    Ur Quan however great doesn't fit into *that* criterion.

    Given how small their "Adventure" category is, they would have done well to include it... Their "Adventure" category seems to have only survival-horror kind of game. They have actual classical adventure games (in the point'n'click sense of the word) - the "ankh" serie - but those are sorted together with the RPGs.
    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  8. Difficult choices by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 4, Funny

    we faced lots of difficult choices compiling a list of 42 of the best commercial Linux games.

    Foremost among these difficulties was finding 42 commercial Linux games.

    --
    Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. I'd just like to take a moment... by The+Ultimate+Fartkno · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...to testify on behalf of "Darwinia." Beautiful, moody, atmospheric, and emotionally engaging. Oh, it's also dirt cheap and a bargain at twice the price. Lovely, glowy, primitive "TRON"-esque graphics, swirly sounds, and easy to learn.

    This is one developer that's definitely worth your time and few dollars. Skip the Starbucks for a day and try it out. Even though it's a linear-ish game, there's still replay value. Went all the way through it four or five times now and it's never the same twice.

  11. Well, sorta by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Informative

    VMWare has some limited 3D support you can enable in version 6. It isn't that complete, but 3DMark 2001 does run and gets a respectable score, for older hardware. VMWare 6.5 has much more complete 3D support. It is still in beta and I've not tried it (I use VMWare in a production environment) but I've no reason to believe they are lying. It claims to be DX8, more or less, as in Pixel shaders up to v2.0 and actually makes use of the hardware in your system.

    You are still going to get slowdown, of course, but I imagine they may make it workable. When it goes final, I'll get the upgrade and see what happens.

  12. RTCW? by antdude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Where's Return to Castle Wolfenstein?

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  13. Vendetta Online by Incarnate-VO · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I designed and run Vendetta Online (vendetta-online.com), another game on the above list. I don't have the cool realtime stats that Teppy does, but we have quite a few Linux people and a significant OS X population (around 30-40% of our userbase, last I checked). Our game is completely native on each platform, and includes a 64bit Linux client. We don't use any kind of portability/wrapper libraries.

    1. Re:Vendetta Online by Vskye · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I play Vendetta and it rocks. I've been playing since Nov 2007 and it really is a cool game, and I'm running it under Ubuntu 8.04 with the 64-bit linux client. You get something like 8 hours of free time to play online to see if you like it enough to subscribe. (just a happy gamer, not associated with VO) Oh, one more thing.. take the training missions first before you start asking silly questions. ;)

      --
      Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
  14. Technically, yes by Moraelin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, technically, yes, there have been more games ported to Linux, back in the Loki Games days. Stuff like IIRC Call To Power or Railroad Tycoon (IIRC) 2. Well, those are the two I actually own. There probably are a few more.

    That said, do note that the list is already containing some... rather... "classic" ones. Gorky 17, for example is a 1999 games for example, so it's rapidly approaching a decade old. So is Creatures 3. Knights and Merchants is from 1998. (And even back then it was a crap game, with some of the worst pathfinding (among other sins) I've seen in a RTS. And not very popular either. So it's... unsettling to see that as one of the best games for Linux.)

    Quake 3 was a good game, back then, but it's from 1999 too. Ok, they have Quake 3 Arena there, which is from 2000.

    Don't get me wrong, there's newer stuff in that list too, and some good stuff too. But, nevertheless, it's basically 42 games spread across 10 bloody years. Yeah, so some would be closer to one end than others, but that doesn't invalidate the point much. You're probably better off trying to use Wine than waiting for those commercial Linux games to trickle in.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.