http://youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0

I’ve bought SUSE when I didn’t have to and actually I’ve bought SUSE in versions 10 and 11. I will most likely continue to buy SUSE. Why? because their quality is there and I want to see SUSE succeed. The same goes for gaming, I will only buy games that are on Linux. I could get them for free, but what is the point? The idea is to promote our choices while letting the noise (crappy software) die out.

The argument for years has been “The devs go where the $$$$$ are.” Windows has market share so where is the $$$? Like it or not those are the facts. That is why WE (you and I) need to PAY for what we support and NOT buy Windows titles too.

The second thing we need to do is out market M$. A grass roots effort will work but EVERYONE needs to promote Linux, even in their sleep, we need to make people get tired of hearing it, we need to help people with issues in awk or sed or whatever for the 5 billionth time.

Only when there is a demand will the money follow.

As far as LGP and copy protection, IF the game is good I will purchase it regardless if it has copy protection or not. BTW if it made by a human it can be broken/bypassed by a human. Copy protection is usually a minor annoyance at best. See my first paragraph. Make a good product and people will buy it. It is simple.

I have a right to my data which includes any software I buy, I should have the ability to backup my data. If you want to pull a M$ then fine I won’t buy your crap.

Why for the Ubuntu crowd? You mean the GNU/Linux crowd. Maybe you think Mark Shuttleworth can magic something with his millions.

When you say high-quality, do you mean triple-A titles? If that is so then if LGP with all it’s experience can’t get triple-A titles then who will. Big game companies aren’t interested in Linux because there’s relatively nothing in it for them. I think you’re going to have to wait until Linux has a much greater market share than it currently has before anything that qualifies as triple-A comes our way.

Exaggeration

Owners say that they suffer “harm” or “economic loss” when users copy programs themselves. But the copying has no direct effect on the owner, and it harms no one. The owner can lose only if the person who made the copy would otherwise have paid for one from the owner.

A little thought shows that most such people would not have bought copies. Yet the owners compute their “losses” as if each and every one would have bought a copy. That is exaggeration–to put it kindly.

What this copy protection scheme is really about is that LGP people see that there are people copying their games without paying and it incenses them. It makes them angry; emotional. They feel the need to strike back against those they see as stealing from them. LGP’s copy protection is about revenge; it’s about pettiness; it’s an emotional outburst. It is, basically, childish.

People who are willing to buy a game will buy it. Those who aren’t, won’t. This silly copy protection scheme will do nothing to change that.

I, for one, will no longer be buying games produced by LGP. I suspect I won’t be alone in this. Coupled with the somewhat dubious quality of their games, I see LGP’s future prospects dwindling. The time is ripe for a company capable of producing high-quality games for the Ubuntu crowd. Sadly for LGP, I don’t think that company is going to be them.

rah

:-D

But connecting to LGP servers every time I want to play a game isn’t acceptable for me. As a gatherer of games I like to play titles being 10 or more years old. Of what use is any game that refuses to start if the publisher has gone broke? I could trash the game and the money I’ve spent for it, because there are no servers left to affirm it’s legality.

I’ve been a fan of LGP and am willing to support any company that makes serious efforts to establish Linux as a gaming platform alternative. But this type of copy protection is unacceptable.

Oh yeah — there is a huge warez market for old, crappy, half-assed ported windows games on linux. LGP has yet to produce a single good game and now they are spending their efforts on copy protection? Give me a break. I bought all the good games that came out for linux — and there are a few, QuakeWars, and Savage2 are recent examples of good linux games. LGP has just ancient titles. Oh. And copy protection now.

What a pack of idiots. LGP does not, and has never mattered because their games are too old and they are too blind to see it. I mean, is that what they are blaming their poor sales on? “OOooh! Those pirates are stealing our profits!” Which was never true on windows and isn’t true on linux. Its your ass games that are the cause of the poor sales. Put it this way, even for free (ie, pirated), LGP’s games are not worth having.

This will have zero effect of linux gaming because LGP is the definition of irrelevancy.

Now, the rumors of -native- Steam on Linux on the other hand, would be a huge shake up.
–SD

Wanting to play something does not equate to wanting to pay for something.

Have you done a survey of the people that downloaded/pirated the game that really enjoyed it and felt the need to buy it. Or are most of those people downloading it just to see how crappy/old/and out dated the game is.

This isn’t going to stop piracy at all, it’s just going to annoy legitimate customers.

If you want to dissuade paying customers from sharing their purchased games then you could simply require the customer to unlock their purchase using a unique product key (offline) that is tied to them only i.e. their name and address constitutes part of the key. The customer could be required to reenter this key when applying updates or requesting support. You won’t be seeing any of those purchases being shared real soon, but it won’t stop crackers from removing the protection.

I think you’re [LGP] going to have to do a number of things such as that stated above and being the first to seed networks with special unprotected versions that are sabotaged in various ways, and then continuing to flood networks with differing sabotaged versions so that cracked versions get lost in the crowd. Additionally make gamers aware that pirating Linux Games is damaging the adoption of Linux and artificially bolstering and prolonging the life of “other” evil OSs.

Subterfuge is your friend. You need a cunning plan.