Linux Game Publishing CEO Resigns

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Linux Game Publishing CEO Resigns

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday February 1, 2012 @05:00AM from the ten-years-later dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The CEO of the once fledging Linux Game Publishing, Michael Simms, has announced his resignation. Simms attributes his resignation from the Linux game porting company he founded more than a decade ago to being burned out and having little success as of late in his work." In his place, Clive Crouse will be taking the helm.

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Re:Company site by Beelzebud · 2012-02-01 05:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

A good start would be to actually have a game from the past 10 years in their catalog...
A Linux game company that wasn't troubled? by elrous0 · 2012-02-01 05:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

Has there ever been a Linux-exclusive game company that *didn't* either go bankrupt, face massive layoffs/resignations, or never deliver on their promised games?
I don't mean that sarcastically, I'm seriously asking the question. Seems like every time I hear about a Linux game company, it's something negative. There must be at least one or two success stories out there.

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SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
1. Re:A Linux game company that wasn't troubled? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 05:11 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Well for a company to be successful they actually have to have a market for their products.
2. Re:A Linux game company that wasn't troubled? by Beelzebud · 2012-02-01 05:13 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  It also helps to have products. Look at their list of games... The Indie Bundles have proven there is a market.
3. Re:A Linux game company that wasn't troubled? by X0563511 · 2012-02-01 05:34 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Lets just back this up with numbers, so you actually have some, well, backing :P
  Note that Linux users are about a quarter of the purchasers, and pay more than the other fractions. Being generous and assuming they all payed equal (remember this is NOT true, and this assumption HURTS my point) that means they have taken in around $100k - and lets not forget that I got my email introducing this bundle a mere 19 hours ago. The total amount has gone up by about $80k during the last 9 hours or so.
  
  --
  For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
4. Re:A Linux game company that wasn't troubled? by torchdragon · 2012-02-01 06:14 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Except that those numbers are incredibly weak when compared with the "mainstream" game channels.
  When I checked, there were $488k in 82k sales. That's for 4 titles and a charity. Assuming a 100% revenue push from customer to developer (an impossibility), that means their average of $5.95 per sale gets split into 4 companies equating to almost $1.50 per sale, per company.
  So we've got $122,000 total possible revenue without any removal of revenue hitting the developer. If you're a one or a two man independent development team, Congrats, you get to (possibly) pay your bills. If you're a 3 or a 4 man team, you're still working a second job. If you're at all bigger, you'll be shutting down unless you have another source of revenue for your game.
  Out of those 82,000 sales, less than 25% are linux sales, but even going with 25%, that means 20,500 people specifically bought the Linux version.
  Now, not all of the users on Steam have paid $5.95, but I'm willing to be a vast majority have. As I type this there are 4.1 million users on Steam and the vast majority of them are going to be Windows.
  So honestly it really isn't hard to argue that there's no market. 20,500 people is great for an interest group, not for a global market.
  
  --
  "Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."
Re:Company site by Svartalf · 2012-02-01 05:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

Got a quarter of a mil burning a hole in your pocket?
Unless you can get a sweetheart deal, that's going to very likely be the price of admission unless you're dealing with Indies like I've been doing. Seriously.
You have to put up a royalty payment, as often as not, ranging from $20k-500k to get the rights to get a glimpse of the code.
You have to pay someone either a wage or offer them a decent chunk of the proceeds as a percentage.
You then have to do the porting work. Sometimes this is easy. Sometimes it's brutal for varying reasons. Some of it's poor code. Some of it is just simply...complex.
Then you've got to push it off to the duplicators. This is another somewhat complex aspect of things. You need to gauge the demand of the title and do at least a first production run of the gold master that will be enough to make your production and packaging costs reasonable. You owe that up-front. Depending on your royalty structure, you'll either owe the royalties per copy (and there's one there...) up front, or you'll owe it later on. This is how Loki ended up owing iD a quarter million on that disastrous rollout of Q3:A. (Loki did something iffy from what I'd been told at the time from people on the inside- they cranked out more than 10k units, which is where the $250k iD was owed came from...). If you produce more than about 2-6k units of the title, you can be out a LOT of money. Produce less than 5k units, though, and you have to raise your prices a bit to offset costs that're there on the low end for production, etc.
Once you've got your units, you've got to SELL them.

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I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Re:The same Michael Sims from /.? by grub · 2012-02-01 05:44 · Score: 5, Funny

somewhat strange for someone to simultaneously hold the positions of CEO of a gaming company and editor for Slashdot, I'm going to say no, they're probably not the same person.

I always thought the /. editors were doing the work during their break from greeting people at WalMart.

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Trolling is a art,