GOG - Goes Linux

Myrthos

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There aren't many newsbits to find here covering a Linux game, unless it is about a PC game that happens to be running on Linux as well, so it isn't really a platform we look at when we try to bring you news on RPGs.
Good Old Games however has decided to bring you DRM free Linux games this fall and they intend to start with a library of at least 100 games.

We just wanted to announce that, after much deliberation, we've decided that one of the next steps for us is to support Linux. Now, we're not ready to launch Linux games on GOG.com just yet. We've only been working on bringing these Linux games to our service for a few months, and there's lots more to go, but we wanted to let you know what's going to be coming this fall to a digital distributor near you.

We're initially going to be launching our Linux support on GOG.com with the full GOG.com treatment for Ubuntu and Mint. That means that right now, we're hammering away at testing games on a variety of configurations, training up our teams on Linux-speak, and generally getting geared up for a big kick-off in the fall with at least 100 Linux games ready for you to play. This is, of course, going to include games that we sell which already have Linux clients, but we'll also be bringing Linux gamers a variety of classics that are, for the first time, officially supported and maintained by a storefront like ours.

This is, as we mentioned, something that we're in the early stages of, so we can't talk about what games will be a part of our GOG.com on Linux gaming launch--in part because we, ourselves, don't know what those games are--but we hope that you're excited about the fact that we're able to set "GOG.com Support for Linux" in our community wishlist as a task that is "In Progress." We know we are!
More information.
 
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Good for them I say this will help get more sales. :clap:

I'm sorry to say I won't be buying any of them, but I know a few gamers who will. Anyway there seems to be allot of things going on behind the scenes at GOG lately.
 
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Odd; I wrote them just a month ago to ask them if they could include linux copies of games (even if they cannot offer returns due to large number of distributions) and they said no way and they had no intention of doing so...
 
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@you You have the choice between plans change all the times or they couldn't tell you because they were no official announcement made. GOG is owned by a publicly traded company and the chance of being accused of insider trading over sharing business plan to individual is high.

Also, great news. I love more Linux games (the dosbox ones should be easy to convert too).
 
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:clap:
This is absolutely huge!
I need to start pumping more money into GOG. Will definitely get the vaguely interesting titles they port.

Shame they went for Ubuntu and derivatives but it's perfectly expected and shouldn't cause much of a problem for the rest.

I wonder about the technicalities of the ports. Are they going to concentrate emulated games or have some wine wrappers around the newer ones? Think recompiling is out of the question but we can only hope. Static libraries or linking to the LTS ones?
 
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Dear Green Place
I wonder about the technicalities of the ports. Are they going to concentrate emulated games or have some wine wrappers around the newer ones? Think recompiling is out of the question but we can only hope. Static libraries or linking to the LTS ones?

All the dosbox games just need repackaging and testing with the linux version of dosbox. They might have a few games with native Linux version too.

Newer games would need Wine wrappers (or automated installation procedure into an existing Wine). Depending on the game it might work well or not at all...

Although, in all cases, they will need the publisher's approval.
 
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Although, in all cases, they will need the publisher's approval.
That's true but assuming that GOG (already) does all the heavy lifting for the old titles (anything older than 5 years really) I can't imagine a reason for a publisher to decline.

Could that also be a a hint for native ports of the (existing) Witcher games?
 
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Dear Green Place
Its a good idea, I feel soon Linux will start taking of in a big way.
 
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Could that also be a a hint for native ports of the (existing) Witcher games?

Could be, wasn't there a rumor that CDP was porting the RedEngine to Linux a while back? Well it wasn't a really a rumor for Witcher 3, sort of.

Interesting enough, I forgot about SteamOS being Linux based, hmm. It's even Debian based, same distro as GOG will support (Ubuntu and Mint are Debian based).
 
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Great news, since while Linux is my favourite operating system, for gaming I do switch back to Windows by necessity. I am curious as to their selection when they go online.

Also, it might help the acceptance of Linux among more than scientists and IT professionals and with this, also get hardware developers to be more willing to develop native Linux drivers. All around good news!
 
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Could be, wasn't there a rumor that CDP was porting the RedEngine to Linux a while back? Well it wasn't a really a rumor for Witcher 3, sort of.

Interesting enough, I forgot about SteamOS being Linux based, hmm. It's even Debian based, same distro as GOG will support (Ubuntu and Mint are Debian based).
Much as I want to have my head up in the clouds I can't imagine TW3 as a Linux title (at least on launch-day). It's no GTAV but it's shaping up to be as much of a AAA title as 90% of them and it would simply be too big for Linux desktops. Not to mention that it may very well be the sort of technology that exposes the (granted ever-improving) driver issues in Linux.
 
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Dear Green Place
And remember that the Mac OS port of Witcher 2 is native, but the port of the first game is a Wineskin wrapper. I expect that a Linux version would take the same route.
 
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Meh. Good for them, but given that they really can't port a lot of stuff to MacOS, I doubt you're going to see any more of their library on Linux than Mac. Still nice for those that are hard core Linux fans I guess.
 
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What do you mean by 'too big for desktop'???? My biggest issue is graphics driver (performance). Btw I suspect all native Linux ports use open gl - no clue how of compares to direct x…
 
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Odd; I wrote them just a month ago to ask them if they could include linux copies of games (even if they cannot offer returns due to large number of distributions) and they said no way and they had no intention of doing so…

Maybe you started the whole thing, then ?
 
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What do you mean by 'too big for desktop'???? My biggest issue is graphics driver (performance). Btw I suspect all native Linux ports use open gl - no clue how of compares to direct x…


How many users are there that run a linux desktop, have a system powerful enough to run TW3 and are interested in that type of game? From all possible sources not nearly enough for an AAA title to be ported and supported.
 
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Dear Green Place
How many users are there that run a linux desktop, have a system powerful enough to run TW3 and are interested in that type of game? From all possible sources not nearly enough for an AAA title to be ported and supported.

You could be surprised when it comes to numbers, especially if the SteamBox and the SteamOS take off.
 
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