Posts Tagged ‘Jets’n'Guns’

Downloadable and rental games now available

Monday, June 1st, 2009

A lot of you asked for the ability to download games.

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 {:-)

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Posted in Official Announcements | 39 Comments »

Why do Linux games cost what they cost?

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

The cost of games on Linux has been an ongoing contentious issue, and one that I have responded individually on many occasions.

A lot of people have made the complaint ‘but I can get this game for half the price on Windows’.

Sure, you often can. But that isn’t the point. The point is, Linux isn’t Windows. We try and release our games at a price that is comparable to, if not a little lower then, a new release game on other platforms. For example, our newest three games have been priced with X3 at £30, Jets’n'Guns at £15, and Sacred Gold at £27. Compare this to 3 new releases for Windows, Sims 3 at £40, Spore’s expansion at £20, and Street Fighter IV and £30. The prices are comparable.

We agree that most games we produce have already been out on Windows for a while, but thats the big point. Why does a Linux user care about what is available on another platform? It is a new game to THIS platform. A couple of years ago, I saw a copy of Doom 1 for the PS2 for £50 when the engine was already open sourced and you could buy the windows version for about a pound. Thats what happens on other platforms.

So, thats one reason.

The other is, the price reflects what it costs us to make it.

We have to pay developers who often have to spend months rewriting large portions of a game. Porting isn’t a 5 minute job, stick it in a Makefile and gcc will take care of the differences. Not even close. Developers take months making the games run on Linux, and we have to ensure we can pay them properly for their work.

Another question we are often asked is ‘I bought this game for Windows, can I just download a copy for Linux because I’ve already paid for it’.

The answer is no. It will always be no. We get no share of revenue from the sale of the Windows version. I understand why people are reluctant to pay for it twice, but look at it from our point of view. We spend months making a game, and then people expect us to give it away for free because they gave money to another company. Thats like going into McDonalds, buying a coke, drinking it, then going into BK and asking for a refill! The product is the same, the company is different.

When it comes down to it, we know we cannot compete with Windows games on price for the game. We take a finished Windows product and make it run on Linux. This means by the nature of our business we will release after the game is available on Windows, and the shelf-life of a Windows game is so short that it is highly unlikely we will release the game while it is still on the full price new releases shelf. And so it comes down to this:

We release games for the Linux OS. If you are going to dual boot, or have a second Windows machine for gaming, then you will be able to get it cheaper. Just like if you own a PS3, a game for Windows will be £10 cheaper when it comes out. Or if you own a mac, the games will be at the same price level as Linux games, sometimes earlier, sometimes later.

If you want more games for your OS, then you need to buy the ones that are available. If you just want cheaper, then buy for Windows, but don’t complain when there arent enough games for Linux.

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Posted in General | 28 Comments »

Enabling online gaming

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

We recently released PenguinPlay, a multi player matchmaking service for Linux. Part of our motivation to do this was the fact that it could, at times, be very hard to actually find someone to play online Linux games with, our community not being as large as the gaming communities on other platforms, as well as the fact that none of the other matchmaking services had proper Linux support. One of the main reasons for this, of course, is the fact that most games aren’t compatible across platforms, usually because they use a proprietary network layer that only works on one platform. PenguinPlay on the other hand is built around the LGP networking library, Grapple, which both makes support for PenguinPlay quite easy to implement, as well as giving support for platform-independent multiplayer. The service itself had been in the making for quite some time before its recent release.

Although it still is relatively new, there’s already quite a few nifty features available, such as in-game lobby, live information about ongoing games on the web site, as well as highscores for all games. Sadly though it can still at times be somewhat hard to find someone to play with, which is why we added a new feature to PenguinPlay this week, namely e-mail notifications. This lets you subscribe to notifications for games, then PenguinPlay sends you an e-mail when a multiplayer game that you can join is started. In order to enable this feature you need only log in to your PenguinPlay account, edit your account settings and then select that you wish to edit notification settings. From there you can subscribe and unsubscribe to new game notifications for the various games available on PenguinPlay.

To compliment the notification service and the on-site forums we have also started an IRC channel where PenguinPlay games can chat and schedule games in. Join #PenguinPlay on the irc.freenode.net IRC network.

One of the primary things that separates PenguinPlay from the many others similar services out there (apart from the obvious support for Linux) is that it is available, very cheaply, for developers of Free/Open source games. The Grapple library is already open, so they need only pay a (nominal) fee for hosting services, and then we take care of the rest (no proprietary code needed). The library itself is multi-platform and runs on Linux, BSD, MacOS X and Windows. Our goal is that a multi-platform online gaming community is built up around it, in particular, one where Linux gamers are real full-time members of the community and treated at least as well as gamers from other platforms.

As of this writing, the games that are available are only Linux versions, and only commercial games. There is no technical reason why the developers of the games for other platforms shouldn’t be able to patch their games to work with PenguinPlay. The games that are available are currently available for online play are Ballistics and Knights & Merchants both of which needs to be patched to the latest version, as well as high score support for Jets’n'Guns, which was the first LGP game to ship with PenguinPlay support out-of-the-box, and Candy Cruncher (which also requires a patch). The upcoming LGP game Sacred: Gold will also ship with PenguinPlay support out-of-the-box, enabling Linux gamers to adventure together, and our beta team has already done so. I for one can’t wait to quest along with fellow Linux gamers.

We are hoping that the service improves the multiplayer experience for Linux gamers, making it easier for the gamers to find people to play with, and games developers to have full multi-platform multiplayer support in their games. Keep checking this blog and the PenguinPlay website for news about more upcoming PenguinPlay features and games.

If you have any input, suggestions or questions for me, feel free to ask them here in the comments, on IRC, or via e-mail (to eskild at the domain linuxgamepublishing dot com).

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Posted in Community | 2 Comments »