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Something that has been talked about on our shoutbox/chatbox is that Revenge of the Titans will be removed from Desura.
That's the sad news out of way, it's a shame it seems like Desura needs to do a lot of work to accommodate developers and help them with publishing updates, something it seems Gameolith does a better job of so far (no complaints from anyone about them - plenty about Desura...).
Now for the good news - They have released a new version which will be up on the Humble Bundle #2 which features;
New mouse handling - completely re-done the mouse in the game.
General fixes to do with drivers - if the game wouldn't run before it might now!
Not many new features but it should in theory work a lot better.
Update - Cas from puppygames was kind enough to visit to give us an idea on what is happening (read the comments), it may even return to Desura with an auto-updating version solving the issues! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
QuoteThis part of the post is likely to attract all manner of hate and flames, but it has to be said: Desura wasn’t working for us. We spend just as much time and stress figuring out how to release software on the Desura platform as Steam, but unfortunately make literally 1/1000th of the money. So little in fact I don’t think Desura have even managed to pay us any money yet. It doesn’t make sense for us to support Desura any more, and so we’re not. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great client, their hearts are in the right place, but… we’re on Steam.
So my humble apologies to anyone with their eggs in the Desura basket. Contact us if you’ve got any issues.
That's the sad news out of way, it's a shame it seems like Desura needs to do a lot of work to accommodate developers and help them with publishing updates, something it seems Gameolith does a better job of so far (no complaints from anyone about them - plenty about Desura...).
Now for the good news - They have released a new version which will be up on the Humble Bundle #2 which features;
New mouse handling - completely re-done the mouse in the game.
General fixes to do with drivers - if the game wouldn't run before it might now!
Not many new features but it should in theory work a lot better.
Update - Cas from puppygames was kind enough to visit to give us an idea on what is happening (read the comments), it may even return to Desura with an auto-updating version solving the issues! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Cas, thanks for the reply. I still don't think you are making the right decision, though.
It's impossible to claim that you only have 20 customers on Desura. You have to take into consideration the people who redeemed Desura keys from the Humble Indie Bundles. Since Desura focuses on Indie games, the Humble Bundles have had immense exposure though it. Every single HIB has been front and center every time, and I seriously think it's impossible NOT to know about them if you're using Desura. Because of that, I would argue that the vast majority of Desura users already owned your game through one of the bundles. I bought HIB 2 and 3, which both included ROTT. Linux users pay a lot of money for the bundles, and lots of Linux gamers are on Desura these days. By pulling your game from there, a lot of us feel like you're abandoning us. Essentially taking the money we paid (through the bundles or directly), and not providing the same level of support given to other customers.
I really hope you'll reconsider. I love ROTT, and would really like to buy your future games. I just don't have the time these days to keep up to date with various websites for updates.
It's impossible to claim that you only have 20 customers on Desura. You have to take into consideration the people who redeemed Desura keys from the Humble Indie Bundles. Since Desura focuses on Indie games, the Humble Bundles have had immense exposure though it. Every single HIB has been front and center every time, and I seriously think it's impossible NOT to know about them if you're using Desura. Because of that, I would argue that the vast majority of Desura users already owned your game through one of the bundles. I bought HIB 2 and 3, which both included ROTT. Linux users pay a lot of money for the bundles, and lots of Linux gamers are on Desura these days. By pulling your game from there, a lot of us feel like you're abandoning us. Essentially taking the money we paid (through the bundles or directly), and not providing the same level of support given to other customers.
I really hope you'll reconsider. I love ROTT, and would really like to buy your future games. I just don't have the time these days to keep up to date with various websites for updates.
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@Ben - if and when Desura start making anyone any money we'll be right back I'm sure. Just to be clear - we are not removing the game from Desura; we are simply stopping selling it from there and will no longer issue free updates. (Would you believe it but half of my problem is that I have to upload about 500mb each time... at 40kb/sec). Anyone who has actually bought the game direct from Desura can contact me for free Puppygames registration; we'll be working on an auto-updater in the new year anyway.
@motorsep - I am afraid you are not in possession of any of the facts. We are successful because we've worked our useless little asses off for 10 years. I have spent a lot of time in that 10 years networking heavily with others in the industry and making friends (what you are doing here is not making you friends in the industry). We were in the Humble Bundle because over the many years I became friends with Jeffrey Rosen, and also, because we'd written IMHO a pretty neat game which we were debuting, which was quite a coup for the Bundle (all the other games were rather old).
As you have appear to have no idea about our code or how it works or even whether it works or how it's designed I'd advise you keep silent on the matter. The source is available for all to see anyway.
Finally, we were already on Steam before the Humble Bundle. We simply delayed the release until HIB was launched. And now, to date, we have made considerably more money from Steam than we made in the Humble Bundle, and this has been instrumental in finally, after 10 years trying, letting us go full time to develop games. We're not by any means rich, or even secure, and we're incredibly time-poor, being a two/three man team who live in different countries. We're just doing our best.
Cas :)
@motorsep - I am afraid you are not in possession of any of the facts. We are successful because we've worked our useless little asses off for 10 years. I have spent a lot of time in that 10 years networking heavily with others in the industry and making friends (what you are doing here is not making you friends in the industry). We were in the Humble Bundle because over the many years I became friends with Jeffrey Rosen, and also, because we'd written IMHO a pretty neat game which we were debuting, which was quite a coup for the Bundle (all the other games were rather old).
As you have appear to have no idea about our code or how it works or even whether it works or how it's designed I'd advise you keep silent on the matter. The source is available for all to see anyway.
Finally, we were already on Steam before the Humble Bundle. We simply delayed the release until HIB was launched. And now, to date, we have made considerably more money from Steam than we made in the Humble Bundle, and this has been instrumental in finally, after 10 years trying, letting us go full time to develop games. We're not by any means rich, or even secure, and we're incredibly time-poor, being a two/three man team who live in different countries. We're just doing our best.
Cas :)
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@motorsep - I am afraid you are not in possession of any of the facts. We are successful because we've worked our useless little asses off for 10 years. I have spent a lot of time in that 10 years networking heavily with others in the industry and making friends (what you are doing here is not making you friends in the industry). We were in the Humble Bundle because over the many years I became friends with Jeffrey Rosen, and also, because we'd written IMHO a pretty neat game which we were debuting, which was quite a coup for the Bundle (all the other games were rather old).
Thank you, that's a rather illuminating look into how games are selected for the Humble Indie Bundle. I suspected it was like that, but nothing beats confirmation from someone involved.
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@Cas: I am sick of this "good ol' friend" model working in the indie sector (or probably anywhere else). Why do I have to be friends with everyone!? What if I don't want to be friends with people who run HIB?! Does it mean that their friends will not let me and my game to the indie media outlets or other bundles? It's sure seems to be that way..
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Many people enjoy Steel Storm, and even Jeff admitted the game is good. However, because I am not a friend, it didn't make into HIB3 as equal partner.
Here is a little bit of history. When Steel Storm : Episode 1 was released, I asked HIB to include it into HIB2 for free, no royalties or shares. HIB said "NO". Then I asked for Steel Storm: Burning Retribution to be included into HIB3 and I got "NO" at first. Then HIB changed their mind and got back with me. I was asked to give Steam keys for evaluation, which I gave. They haven't even looked at the game up until few weeks before bundle was about to be released. After that I was asked to make special content for the bundle. I declined. Good thing I did. They wanted to get a free ride without paying for it or supplying e-mails of my customers to me.
This is how it works in the big indie league. Be friends with these guys or you will get nowhere. That's how it was in Soviet Russia. No matter how skilled you are or good at something, if you have no special friends, you would not get ahead. I am disgusted with the way things are in the indie business.
Here is a little bit of history. When Steel Storm : Episode 1 was released, I asked HIB to include it into HIB2 for free, no royalties or shares. HIB said "NO". Then I asked for Steel Storm: Burning Retribution to be included into HIB3 and I got "NO" at first. Then HIB changed their mind and got back with me. I was asked to give Steam keys for evaluation, which I gave. They haven't even looked at the game up until few weeks before bundle was about to be released. After that I was asked to make special content for the bundle. I declined. Good thing I did. They wanted to get a free ride without paying for it or supplying e-mails of my customers to me.
This is how it works in the big indie league. Be friends with these guys or you will get nowhere. That's how it was in Soviet Russia. No matter how skilled you are or good at something, if you have no special friends, you would not get ahead. I am disgusted with the way things are in the indie business.
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Thanks for explaining your reasoning Cas. It really sounds like Desura needs to go an extra step for developers in showing total page hits and current sales. It's still a very new system for us Linux users. I imagine the low sales account for the fact that by the time your current games were available on Desura most of us had already purchased them directly or through HIB. I'd be willing to bet a newly released game would do significantly better on Desura now than directly from your site.
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Thanks for explaining your reasoning Cas. It really sounds like Desura needs to go an extra step for developers in showing total page hits and current sales. It's still a very new system for us Linux users. I imagine the low sales account for the fact that by the time your current games were available on Desura most of us had already purchased them directly or through HIB. I'd be willing to bet a newly released game would do significantly better on Desura now than directly from your site.
I would have thought that except... we then went on to sell another 50,000 units on Steam after the HIB. QED!
A newly released game direct from Puppygames would probably do remarkably well, as we've got quite a massive mailing list (no, we've not got any data from Humble Bundle, Inc. - business is business, and HIB customers are not our customers). Motorsep - you have to understand that your attitude will not help you build the kind of business relationships that we've spent so long working on which have helped our success.
Cas :)
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One last thing - I must stop posting! Supposed to be on holiday with family! - we will continue to support Linux to the very best of our abilities, and we always have done, since we released our first game Alien Flux in 2003.
Cas :)
ps. dunno if any of you know but I was the creator of the Lightweight Java Game Library (http://lwjgl.org - you have me to thank for your miserable addiction to Minecraft ;)
Cas :)
ps. dunno if any of you know but I was the creator of the Lightweight Java Game Library (http://lwjgl.org - you have me to thank for your miserable addiction to Minecraft ;)
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Cas as the admin here it would be stupid of me not to know about the LWJGL (Which I can never remember the acronym of when googling to download when I setup a new pc!). I understand you also helped out Project Zomboid so I'm thankful for that too (even if they had a wee bit of a misshap).
Guys the main point is that they (Cas and others) still support Linux gaming, just not one particular service - Desura (Note that affects Windows users too since Desura isn't just for Linux! We aren't being singled out).
This won't affect me buying your games nor will it affect me covering your games, if I like it, I will buy it, simples.
One last word though guys, please do keep it cool and keep swearing to a min.
Guys the main point is that they (Cas and others) still support Linux gaming, just not one particular service - Desura (Note that affects Windows users too since Desura isn't just for Linux! We aren't being singled out).
This won't affect me buying your games nor will it affect me covering your games, if I like it, I will buy it, simples.
One last word though guys, please do keep it cool and keep swearing to a min.
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Here I am again :)
Someone just emailed me and suggested that we upload the auto-updating version to Desura when it's done next year - what a good idea! Thus solving the problem for everyone forever.
Cas :)
Someone just emailed me and suggested that we upload the auto-updating version to Desura when it's done next year - what a good idea! Thus solving the problem for everyone forever.
Cas :)
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read all this and learned a few things
1- how the hib club works, i dont like that sort of thing
2- steelstorm was for me the best game in hib3 and if kotia only got 0,5% then tommorow i will order a new copy on desura, cos that sucks
3- puppygames released desura keys and thus my personal view is that they should stand by this action, dropping it now for some reasons like to few sales or complaining about having to upload 500mb feels like trying to weasle out of it. that leaves a bad taste and thus makes me think twice on the next puppygames game
4- got a bad taste about hib in the end, i still wonder about the whole investor thing earlier this year.
1- how the hib club works, i dont like that sort of thing
2- steelstorm was for me the best game in hib3 and if kotia only got 0,5% then tommorow i will order a new copy on desura, cos that sucks
3- puppygames released desura keys and thus my personal view is that they should stand by this action, dropping it now for some reasons like to few sales or complaining about having to upload 500mb feels like trying to weasle out of it. that leaves a bad taste and thus makes me think twice on the next puppygames game
4- got a bad taste about hib in the end, i still wonder about the whole investor thing earlier this year.
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We never released Desura keys.
Cas :)
Cas :)
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HIB is a big huge spit into developers' faces. Now, no one wants to pay the price of the game, because people say that they will wait until it comes out in HIB to pay as little as they can. It became a shovelware machine. You don't see such nonsense anywhere, but with indie games. It would be just fine with offering deep discounts, but having lower limit set. In a long run, it will hurt indies.
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This is not the first time, after having played a few hours of Deus Ex, I go out into the real world and everyone is still talking the same way.
CONSIPRACY!
You may go back to your arguing. Or not. Whatever. I will just sit and watch for now.
CONSIPRACY!
You may go back to your arguing. Or not. Whatever. I will just sit and watch for now.
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Here I am again :)
Someone just emailed me and suggested that we upload the auto-updating version to Desura when it's done next year - what a good idea! Thus solving the problem for everyone forever.
Cas :)
I think this is a great way to do it.
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This is Tim Jung. I'm the Game Lead on Desura. I think I should correct a few things here. First if developers want the email addresses of their Desura customers that is possible. Developers can setup an opt-in from customers to send their information to the developer's web site. Because of our privacy policy we can't just give out user information any time we want and the users have made it clear they don't want that either. Second all you have to do to update you game is to point the client at a clean install directory of the game and upload it. It will only upload the files that have changed since the last release. It does a CRC of the files to look for changed files. If I upload the 32-bit version and the following 64-bit version upload is only a few megs. Once the first version is on Desura it shouldn't take more than 3-4 minutes to get the upload started, then after the upload tell the system what you uploaded. The biggest problem currently is changed .PAK/compressed files that FSP games use and we are looking in to ways to change that, so update uploads & downloads are smaller for those type of files. I will say I have had quite a few developers comment that using Desura and doing updates on Desura is way easier than Steam and that we provide more information about their customers than Steam does. I have no idea how true that is or isn't since I have zero developer experience with Steam.
I do have to wonder why developers are upset that they can't get user information by default from Desura, Steam or anyone else. I don't see how it is any different than when I go in to Wal-Mart/Gamestop/etc. and buy a game. I would be pissed if Wal-Mart/Gamestop/etc. was sending off my personal information to EA/Activision or anyone else. I would be pissed if Steam did that. I should decide who gets my personal information not another company choosing for me, but maybe that is just me.
As for the problems of all the different versions of Linux out there....that is what Desura is designed to address. We have a bunch of different libraries the system can check for and install automatically on the users system if they are missing. We can easily add more libraries if a game needs them and the developer doesn't want to included them in their releases. A developer just needs to tell us they want us to have a specific library included by Desura. If a game loads and clears the load of all the needed libraries then there isn't much Desura can do about that if a game isn't working.
If a developer doesn't want to be on Desura that is their right and there isn't anything we can do about it. I am sorry a developer isn't having a good experience with Desura and if they would contact me I would be more than happy to try and work things out. The one thing I will say is that HiB can be for some games be the kiss of death for future sales. Once they are in HiB, that can be pretty much the end of their sales since 500,000+ people now have a copy of their game. The market for some indie games at that point is saturated. So it isn't surprising to me that a game doesn't sell well after a HiB release. The Desura users and HiB users seem to overlap by a large percentage, as a result that can effect sales. There are a lot of Desura users who are using their HiB keys to get their games on/from Desura.
I have no idea how HiB updates work for developers but I can't see how they can be any easier. My question would be if a developer finds it a hassle does that mean they don't have to update the HiB site anymore? Steam is definitely a hassle for developers I would think since they have to support Steamworks in their games, or at least that is my understanding. So they have to provide a Steam version of their games.
The other issue is if you look at Cheese's graphs for HiB you will see that since they have gone to a more frequent release schedule users numbers have been all over the board. HiB users are becoming more particular about which HiB bundles they buy since they are overloaded with so many releases. I know developers want more HiB releases so they can get in on it but it appears to be at the cost of possibly decreasing sales and definitely decreased purchase prices. Linux user totals seem to be about the same but they are paying less with more bundle releases, and yet they are still the highest paying users on average.
If someone is having problems with Desura, please contact me so I am aware of it and can try to resolve the issue for you.
Tim Jung
Desura Game Lead/Tux
I do have to wonder why developers are upset that they can't get user information by default from Desura, Steam or anyone else. I don't see how it is any different than when I go in to Wal-Mart/Gamestop/etc. and buy a game. I would be pissed if Wal-Mart/Gamestop/etc. was sending off my personal information to EA/Activision or anyone else. I would be pissed if Steam did that. I should decide who gets my personal information not another company choosing for me, but maybe that is just me.
As for the problems of all the different versions of Linux out there....that is what Desura is designed to address. We have a bunch of different libraries the system can check for and install automatically on the users system if they are missing. We can easily add more libraries if a game needs them and the developer doesn't want to included them in their releases. A developer just needs to tell us they want us to have a specific library included by Desura. If a game loads and clears the load of all the needed libraries then there isn't much Desura can do about that if a game isn't working.
If a developer doesn't want to be on Desura that is their right and there isn't anything we can do about it. I am sorry a developer isn't having a good experience with Desura and if they would contact me I would be more than happy to try and work things out. The one thing I will say is that HiB can be for some games be the kiss of death for future sales. Once they are in HiB, that can be pretty much the end of their sales since 500,000+ people now have a copy of their game. The market for some indie games at that point is saturated. So it isn't surprising to me that a game doesn't sell well after a HiB release. The Desura users and HiB users seem to overlap by a large percentage, as a result that can effect sales. There are a lot of Desura users who are using their HiB keys to get their games on/from Desura.
I have no idea how HiB updates work for developers but I can't see how they can be any easier. My question would be if a developer finds it a hassle does that mean they don't have to update the HiB site anymore? Steam is definitely a hassle for developers I would think since they have to support Steamworks in their games, or at least that is my understanding. So they have to provide a Steam version of their games.
The other issue is if you look at Cheese's graphs for HiB you will see that since they have gone to a more frequent release schedule users numbers have been all over the board. HiB users are becoming more particular about which HiB bundles they buy since they are overloaded with so many releases. I know developers want more HiB releases so they can get in on it but it appears to be at the cost of possibly decreasing sales and definitely decreased purchase prices. Linux user totals seem to be about the same but they are paying less with more bundle releases, and yet they are still the highest paying users on average.
If someone is having problems with Desura, please contact me so I am aware of it and can try to resolve the issue for you.
Tim Jung
Desura Game Lead/Tux
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