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Linux Port For id's Tech 5 Graphics Engine Unlikely

Posted by Soulskill on from the sounds-like-they-need-some-encouragement dept.

DesiVideoGamer writes "John Carmack, the lead developer for id's Tech 5 graphics engine, does not plan on making a Linux port for the new engine. From his e-mail: 'It isn't out of the question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work. If there are hundreds of thousands of Linux users playing Quake Live when we are done with Rage, that would certainly influence our decision.' One of the reasons for not making a Linux port was due to the fact that the new engine 'pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized' and that the Linux port would have to use the binary blob graphics driver in order to work."

2 of 461 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Binary blob ... eh? by Hadlock · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Carmack stated at Quakecon that Betheseda has to sign off on the GPL'ing of any future code. The chances of that happening are slim to none. IdTech5 is a pretty impressive piece of technology; from what I can tell it's Fallout 3 graphics maxed out with about 50% less overhead.

    --
    moox. for a new generation.
  2. Re:Big news... by Lotana · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Very little piracy for Linux games?

    That is absolutely false. The piracy even worse because the market is small enough as it is, a small percentage will push the product from barely profitable to absolute loss.

    The problem has got so bad that Linux Game Publishing (Major porter of games to Linux and a successor of Loki) were forced to implement DRM for their releases:

    http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=lgp_copy_protection&num=1

    And they didn't like doing it one bit. Here is a quote from the above linked article by LGP's CEO Michael Simms:

    When this game copy protection system became known with LGP's closed testing community, it had enraged some users. In response, the CEO of Linux Game Publishing, Michael Simms, had a few things to say. "Trust me, I don't like it, I'm not happy about it, but we HAVE to do this. I've fought for 6 years against the need for any kind of protection system and all that's happened is that for every legitimate copy of an LGP game out there, there are probably 3-4 pirated copies. That's the difference between success and failure."

    Now I know everyone here buys their Linux games, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of pirates out there that care not for it.