LINUXGAMES

Desura Linux client available to anyone

1. clean3d Says:
   November 9th, 2011 at 2:13 pm

   Wonderful! I installed it and activated what Humble Bundle games I could. Looks like an excellent service.

2. Lauri Says:
   November 10th, 2011 at 4:07 am

   Wonderful indeed. Also desura client might get released under GPL
   http://www.desura.com/groups/desura/forum/thread/open-sourcing-desura

3. buggerall Says:
   November 11th, 2011 at 8:36 pm

   I’m not too impressed with desura policy regarding what constitutes a linux game, there are one or two which are just the win32 version bundled with a wine wrapper, not exactly native…

4. kreativf Says:
   November 12th, 2011 at 9:34 am

   Desura is currently also making something similar to the humblebundle – the . Though in current bundle there is only 1 linux game, but i am sure there are more linux games to come. I am especially interested in their Alpha Fund Bundle which will be released in 26 days.

5. kreativf Says:
   November 12th, 2011 at 9:35 am

   damn. sorry for b0rked comment…

6. liamdawe Says:
   November 13th, 2011 at 6:57 am

   “buggerall” there is a grand whopping total of 1 game put up using wine wrapper. A highly requested feature was to allow people to install windows games and put in settings for Wine while in beta just FYI. They aren’t doing it off their own backs, it was actual Linux gamers feedback to them.

7. Nemoder Says:
   November 13th, 2011 at 5:25 pm

   Yea if it’s what users want and developers are willing to test and support it via wine I’m ok with that. If the game breaks every other wine release/game update then I’d tell everyone to just avoid buying that title. Obviously a supported native port would be better but honestly I’d rather have a well supported game in wine than a native port that isn’t supported at all.

8. buggerall Says:
   November 14th, 2011 at 4:06 am

   “liamdawe” that’s odd, i came across four individual entries, of course three of those were episodes of a single game, but still. I really don’t care why the wrapped versions are there, if people want to throw money at companies who don’t have a native version that’s up to them, but it’d be nice to have the option to filter out these wine dependant linux games or at least add a wine logo to their pages to make the level of linux support obvious to potential buyers. As for the importance of desura in linux gaming, it feels a tad superfluous at the moment, i’m not really sold on the idea that you must have a client installed to download games from a service that is primarily a website(if this isn’t, or isn’t always going to be, the case then do say), but i suppose that’s better than it entwining itself with the games it sells in an attempt to become as indispensable as steam(works).

   @kreativf, I’ve been very disappointed by these indie royale bundles from the start, the first contained some appealing titles, one of which, the AGS based gemini rue, could conceivably(depending on how well maintained the engine port is) be packaged for linux, but not one developer had put any effort into supporting linux, while the current bundle is a little underwhelming to begin with, it’s tempting to grab it just to get a cheap copy of scoregasm, but i think i’d rather wait and buy direct from charlie once i’ve had a chance to try the demo(at the moment i’ve got a massive backlog of humble games to work through), he’s the one who deserves the support here.

9. King_DuckZ Says:
   November 18th, 2011 at 6:57 am

   Me too I think it’s better to have official wine support than nothing at all. But still, companies making multiplatform games, including mac which is Posix, and not having a Linux native release are quite cheap.
   I’m especially upset at Activision, I wanted to buy Skylanders, I could find a port for Wii, DS, Mac, Win and all the rest, but they left Linux out. Guess what, I kept that money and paid a higher price for the Humble Bundle.
   Mind you, many companies do have a Linux version of their games, they just don’t release it (I’m an insider that’s why I know).

   @buggerall: having a distribution platform makes companies feel more comfortable about their releases. Frictional’s online store, for one, has way less visibility than Steam or Desura. In an ideal world yes, I agree with you, but those running a company and having to pay salaries for 20 to 300 employees (or even more) prefer to centralize everything on a website like Desura. So yes, I think (and hope) that Desura will bring some AAA titles to Linux – *native* titles that is.

10. buggerall Says:
    November 18th, 2011 at 11:47 am

    @King_DuckZ, i have nothing at all against the idea of a centralised system, having everything available in one place, be that desura, steam or GoG, is undeniably convenient, but requiring the user to run a client apart from their web browser in order to download a game seems silly, giving the user the option to just pull and unpack manually through the website would be nice as an option(granted you can’t do clever dependency solving stuff this way unless you embrace native linux package systems).
    I certainly share your frustration when it comes to companies supporting osx but ignoring linux, i’m sure the work involved to port to either platform is very similar.

11. motorsep Says:
    November 20th, 2011 at 6:26 pm

    Steel Storm runs natively on Linux!

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