Late in the porting of Shadowgrounds Survivor, it became fairly clear that it would be little work to also bring the original Shadowgrounds game to Linux. We discussed it with Igios, who were doing all the hard work, and we decided that we would also release Shadowgrounds.

But, being the sneaky Linux Game Publishing company that we are, we decided to keep it secret. I guess, I just wanted to give everyone a nice surprise, and get a new game out that none of you were expecting. As it has the same game core as Survivor, it didn’t need the extensive beta test, making it one of the few times we would be able to release a game without a beta to let you all know it was on the way.

Later this week we will be releasing Shadowgrounds Survivor, and so we felt that the best thing to do for Shadowgrounds is to make it a budget title on release. We have decided to set the retail price at just £10, partly because it was easier to port and so the price being lower is fair. Also, and I’ll be honest here, I want lots of people to buy it, get hooked on the gameplay, and just feel that urge to buy the higher priced Survivor. I’m not going to claim to be completely altruistic, we ARE a business afterall {:-)

Now, one thing that will disappoint some players is that neither Shadowgrounds, nor Survivor, come with the co-op multiplayer option that Windows has. This is because of a conflict in the game design, and the design of SDL. It is actually technically impossible to provide the multiplayer (which on Windows requires two keyboards and two mice) with the architecture as it stands, and by the time we realised this, it would have required a complete rewrite of the whole game core to get this working.

However, good news, is that the next version of SDL will contain all we need to get co-op into the game, and Igios has committed to releasing a patch to provide this functionality as soon as SDL can do it.

Shadowgrounds has taken a lot of dedication from the guys at Igios, so I’m counting on the community to do their bit, and buy the game, give them some thanks for the long hours of work they have put in to bring this game to you. You can buy it boxed, or it will be available to download, either for purchase or rental.

We have listened and created the reseller download system.

From today all resellers will be able to sell downloadable copies of LGP games, and these will be cheaper than boxed copies. LGP is not selling downloadable versions directly, as to do so would seriously damage the ability of the reseller chain to compete meaningfully.

When buying a downloadable game you are guaranteed the following:

1. All LGP games will be re-downloadable from LGP itself for as long as we are in business
2. All full downloadable games, while keylocked, will always work, even if LGP shuts down
3. In the unlikely event of LGP going out of business, all downloaded games will be placed onto the bittorrent network (in a keylocked state obviously) so that they will remain in circulation for as long as people demand them.

Rental Option

We have also listened to those who wanted ridiculously low prices on their games. We have created the LGP Rental system. Any downloadable game is now available for rental. This means you can pay just a fraction of the price, and have the game for a week, or for a month. The rental games DO require internet access to start up, but apart from that are exactly the same as the full game. I know some of you will dislike this, but really, it is rental, we have to have stronger security on it. The downloadable purchased game does NOT require internet access to start the game.

Right now, the only games we have that are available for download or rental are the three newest games that have the LGP Key System, X3, Jets’n'Guns, and Sacred. Other games will follow as we get time to add them into the system.

I hope that this will be what you all wanted, and will give everyone, even those that want their games for next to nothing, the ability to play LGP games. If you can think of other things we can do with downloads, please do comment here and let us know. I wont promise that LGP will do everything that people ask, but I can say, and I think we have now proved this, we DO listen {:-)

Before you ask, this poll does not decide company policy, but I am hoping to get an insight into the minds of you, our customers. Thanks for your time!