Blizzard Entertainment Planning A Linux Game For 2013

This news is from early Jan. 2013. I only just recently came across it on Phoronix so here is the news.

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Blizzard Entertainment, the game studio behind wildly-popular games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft, is planning for a Linux game announcement in 2013.

This year is already looking fantastic for Linux-based gaming thanks to so many recent announcements and more being just around the cog in the future.rner. Since Valve's major Linux push with their native Steam Linux client and their continued porting of Source Engine games to Linux, many other game studios have stepped up with Linux interest, especially with the Linux-based Steam console coming in the future.

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According to the article, initially, Blizzard was interested in knowing about the commercial-viability of Linux. I think it will only be a matter of time.

Read the whole article here>

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[Phoronix] Blizzard Entertainment Planning A Linux Game For 2013

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Would it truly be that much profitable? Are linux users that much interested in gaming? isn't the linux market a tad more directed towards more techincal computer stuff?

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Originally Posted by bernardosgr

Would it truly be that much profitable? Are linux users that much interested in gaming? isn't the linux market a tad more directed towards more techincal computer stuff?

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I'm a Linux user. I play games.

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Originally Posted by bernardosgr

Would it truly be that much profitable? Are linux users that much interested in gaming? isn't the linux market a tad more directed towards more techincal computer stuff?

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Who knows.Every game developer hates Windows 8,Valve has pretty much embraced Linux and Ubuntu is more popular than ever.
Plus Linux game developers are pretty happy.Just take a look at the success of recent Indie Humble Bundles.

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I'm a Linux user. I play games.

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not saying linux don't play, but how many more like you are there

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Originally Posted by SBfreak

Who knows.Every game developer hates Windows 8,Valve has pretty much embraced Linux and Ubuntu is more popular than ever.
Plus Linux game developers are pretty happy.Just take a look at the success of recent Indie Humble Bundles.

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Well, I can see that, those indie bundles are awesome, I wasn't really a fan of indie games and after getting used to them they became awesome. But I don't see why you are saying that every game developer hates Windows 8? Windows has always been the platform for PC Games, Valve has embraced Linux and Ubuntu is growing in popularity but compatibility issues between platforms are still there. The thing is games are mostly made for PC, not for linux or mac, it's a matter of taking a look at the availability of the said games for each platform. I use Linux and Windows and every time I want to play I go with windows and every time I want to work I go with Linux...

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But I don't see why you are saying that every game developer hates Windows 8?

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Windows 8 is one step forward to a closed ecosystem.Developers don't hate the operating system they fear it's potential lock down.

Oh, that makes quite a lot more sense

If I could just add one other thing here for you bernardosgr, and it's the fact that many people who are getting tired of the high costs of Windows OS, threats of adware, high costs, massive hardware requirements, and invasive anti-piracy features makes people look elsewhere for their operating system needs. The 2 larger leading alternative operating systems are Linux and Mac. One of the problems with Macs are that Mac computers are generally more expensive than PCs having Windows OS.

Now with Linux, one of the many reasons that people migrate to Linux is because of the K Desktop Environment (i.e.KDE), which many distributions use. That environment is similar to the Windows desktop and that makes it fairly easy to transition to Linux. There are plenty of applications available for Linux, with more applications being released each year too. And as such, now that more home users are migrating to alternative operating systems, then game developers are going to need to know how to write games for both Mac and Linux OS.

Agreed, I know lots of people who are in that position right now, the issue with abandoning Windows OS is that you will probably face compatibility issues, as most software out there is produced for Windows and such software is not always available in windows or Mac versions. One example of said software is games, and games are mostly produced for WIndows as I said before... The thing is markets change quite quickly but I have some serious doubts that the market for computer games, which is mainly dominated by WIndows would change that fast towards producing games for Linux.

That might be true to an extent; however, there is always PlayOnLinux and Wine to emulate with in the meantime.