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Unreal Tournament 3 For Linux Is Officially Dead
ndogg writes "There is no longer any uncertainty surrounding the release of Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux. It's official: the port is now dead. No reasons were given, but no one should be waiting for it anymore, if anyone still was."
I hear all 3 of their potential customers are outraged...
It was actually some stuff-up about IP, I think (some prebuilt technology they licensed for the game that they couldn't release as they wished). Ryan Gordon did most of the port, and was basically ready to release, then it was shuttered.
Reason. Linux users refuse to pay for their software so it's not worth targeting it as a platform.
Reason: Ports are years late and often cost more than the original launch price while the Windows version is already in the bargain bin. A rational being will realize that the 30£ = ~$47 vs 5$ will very soon pay for a Windows license, hell even a dedicated Windows PC if you game a little. I'd love to buy more Linux versions, but not at such a craptastic value.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The value of the Humble Bunde is less to Windows users, hence they pay less. Of course, this is a hypothesis.
Well, that's a coincidence: It's officially dead for Windows too. And has been since almost three months after launch.
I really liked the Unreal Tournament games (even though I'm an id Software fanboy), and definitely the first part was a lot better than its counterpart at the time; Quake 3. Whereas Quake 3 had obvious masterlike AI-bots, the AI in Unreal Tournament always seemed to resemble a bit more humanlike play-style.
UT2004 was great too, and had some awesome new gametypes, which really worked well. They were planning on releasing a new update for it every year (hence the 2004 addition to the title), but failed at doing that (probably because they discovered their new cash cow; Gears of War).
Unreal Tournament 3's figures were very bad: Already after a month of release, the servers got less and less. As of today there's only a handfull of servers left (for the UK at least), with even less players.
I must admit myself that I also didn't play UT3 as much as I played the previous titles.
So to be honest, I can't really see too much of a loss in this (except that it would have been easier for other Unreal engined games to be ported over to Linux).
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
It's not really worth developing games for Linux. The hardcore gamers - the bulk of the market all use Windows. As a result, anyone with any significant interest in PC games will install Windows. This will naturally perpetute the extreme bias towards windows from developers.
The only people who will not install Windows at any cost are those with a moral objection to non-free software. These people aren't willing to buy non-free games either.
I don't think there's any way out of this.
That is kind of a bummer, although after such a long time of silence, it was certainly quite expected (also, I guess that the Mac version of that game, which was also announced a long time ago, got axed quietly as well).
:(
What I would find more interesting however, would be whether the Unreal Engine 3 itself was ported into a workable state, so it could be used for other porting projects in the future. Because although I do not care too much about the Unreal Tournament 3 game itself, having the Unreal Engine 3 on Linux could at least open some interesting possibilities either for other games being ported or for a developer studio using the Engine in a future game and then doing simultaneous cross-platform development.
Because if you look at the list of games using the Unreal Engine 3, that list of projects is rather impressive (for example, the entire Mass Effect series uses the Engine) and having such a widely used Engine available on Linux would be a boon, I think, maybe even for smaller Indie developers willing to do Linux development (depending on how expensive those licensing terms are).
Technically, porting should be possible, as the Unreal Engine 3 already runs on Windows, PS3, Xbox 360 and even MacOS X and iOS now, so it has shown that it is portable. And before you ask, I am not concluding that because Epic did an iOS port that it automatically runs on Mac OS X as well, although those two share a decent amount of similarities making the jump between those two platforms a good deal easier. No, actually, with Borderlands now having a Mac port, there are already two titles on Mac OS X using the Unreal Engine 3 that I know of (the other one being Star Trek DAC), so there is proof it runs on the Mac. I know that those are only two titles and only one you could possibly call an AAA title, but sadly, as far as I know, that is still more titles available than on Linux
So I hope Ryan Gordon at least got the Engine ported, so future projects can use it on Linux. Because although losing the game sucks a little, having the Engine could at least give some hope for some better future developments in Linux gaming. It sure could use some.
Commercial games are, for the most part, dead on the Linux desktop. There are some occasional exceptions but for the most part, if you want a big-name game to appear on Linux you're gonna have to go use WINE as native builds probably won't exist. That said, there are still quite a lot of decent older games which have Linux ports and Ryan does continue development on ports for commercial when he can.
I think if you really want to avoid disappointment with regards to Linux gaming and want to continue enjoying gaming on Linux... get used to indy games, and forget the big-budget commercial stuff. Indy developers need all the audience they can get and as the Humble Bundles have shown, Linux users are often the most generous per purchase due to a desperate need for games. :)
Big-name commercial studios like EPIC and iD have abandoned Linux (unlike his previous games John Carmack has expressed a certain doubt about supporting Linux with Rage). It would certainly be NICE if we could get more commercial support, but until that happens, it's less depressing to just aim for indy games.
I tried, man, I tried. But there's so many dependencies...
It may have sucked hard at first, but after the various patches, UT3 has evolved to become a fairly decent game!
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
"One buyer can throw off the chart completely."
No they can't:
Fact one: as of *right now* the total number of purchases is about 116,000.
Fact two: as of *right now*, the *largest* contribution was only $2000 dollars. (The top ten contributions are listed, and they go down quickly from that $2000 figure - #10 is currently $500, so by definition, all the remaining contributions are less than $500, unless the statistics they are reporting are outright lies. It is very likely that the vast majority of users would be donating less than $100.)
Fact three: as of *right now*, the total sales volume in dollars is $869,711
Put all the facts together, and you get a picture that the $869,000 was raised through a LOT of fairly small contributions. Or, at least, no ONE SINGLE donator made a large enough contribution to significantly throw off the averages. In order for one person to throw it off, they would need to make a donation many orders of magnitude larger (say $100,000-200,000), but that is *simply* not the case since we know the largest donation was only $2000.
It would really behoove you, when the GGP says to go look at the statistics on humblebundle.com, to actually GO LOOK AT THE STATISTICS, instead of making posts which show you obviously didn't bother to look over them at all, instead preferring to make specious arguments that are directly contradicted by the data HAD YOU BOTHERED TO LOOK FIRST.