Tell Blizzard You Want Linux Support In Their Games

Thanks for the heads up all - I was glad to post my story on the petition thread. Using SC2 Galaxy Editor in WINE is a chore, I really need official support as a Content Creator.

My thead post:

Quote+5 for Linux.

I am a content creator for StarCraft 2. I create RISK Action Editon which is in the top 60 daily.

We have 3 content creators in the family and all use either Arch Linux or ElementaryOS which is Ubuntu. 0 Mac, 0 Windows.

It's really this simple: support Linux or die. There are too many other good games competing for me as a player on my SteamOS/Arch Linux - some friends have 600 Linux games in the library. I would love to play StarCraft 2 in my Living room on my SteamOS PC.

According to Steam there are 750,000 active Linux users who game every month, we are also the most technically developed users and technically skilled game developers on the planet, join Linux and gain us or ignore us and your competitors will take your place as you cease to exist.

Question: I know OSX is based on an Unix core... and I saw X11 installed on my Mac... How different is OSX from linux? More to the point, would it be difficult to port the OSX versions of the games to Linux?

As it has already been said, today Blizzard are a shadow of their former self. Their creative force simply slipped away long ago. Enough talk, back to Torchlight 2.

Quoting: BomyneQuestion: I know OSX is based on an Unix core... and I saw X11 installed on my Mac... How different is OSX from linux? More to the point, would it be difficult to port the OSX versions of the games to Linux?

Depends on the game and which libraries/game engine aso it uses. If it has proprietary dependancy which has no linux support then this can really a road blocker :/. But if everthing fine and is available for Linux then it isn't a big deal. Still a bit of effort, but a huge difference to porting the game from Windows to Linux.

Aspyr mentionend once that if they have ported a game to OSX, then it is only a small step to port the game to Linux: 90% is done with OSX port already, so they have only to port the remaining 10%.

Here's what I put (just in case anyone cares :-) ):

"I solely play on linux now. It's a shame because I got some way through Diablo 3 before it stopped working on wine - it's probably fixed now, but I no longer have the inclination to spend what little leisure time I get post-children tweeking settings and trying to get compromises working. I would very much appreciate it if you put some dev time into getting linux ports working. That way I would finish D3 and buy the DLC. I'd also be likely to buy Starcraft 2 if it had a linux port."

Quoting: BomyneQuestion: I know OSX is based on an Unix core... and I saw X11 installed on my Mac... How different is OSX from linux? More to the point, would it be difficult to port the OSX versions of the games to Linux?

Graphics whise, WoW on MacOSX uses OpenGL to my knowledge. The transition for the graphics engine shouldn't be too hard (except for porting the build to Linux, which often is one of the harder things to do).

A huge difference is the sound output in Linux, the keyboard/mouse input, the screen handling (resolutions, fullscreen/windowed, multiple monitors etc), networking code (a bit different in BSD/MacOSX). This can be solved today pretty easily since SDL2.0 was released, but would be certainly some porting effort.

As an outsider it's hard to tell how much effort this would require. Since it's known from sources who were at Blizzard that they did run their games on Linux already (at least WoW, they called it "internal testing only", though, we don't know how far this port went), I'd guess they could support it pretty easily but may not want to due to other reasons (another platform to officially support, investment costs and benefits out of it cash-whise - to put it simple, they doubt they'd benefit from this at the current stage).

We may not forget: They'd be in the need to port tools to (Battle.NET, Downloader, Anti-Cheat and what the heck else they do have we don't know yet).

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: throghWhy should I support a company to distribute their own proprietary DRM-platform with name "Battle.Net" on Linux?

Could you explain exactly why it is a problem? Because I really don't see the point of the DRM argument.
I'm a gamer, and the way I see it, if some dev makes a game and I like it, I will buy it and play it, like I have been doing with WoW for the past 9 or 10 years.
As long as I am happy with what I am paying for, why should it matter about the DRM?

DRM usually interferes with the gaming experience. In more extreme circumstances, DRM can disable a game once the publisher is no longer interested in selling it anymore. This can also happen due to simple technical glitches.

It serves no value to the user and tends to sabotage the system in some way.

I do remember at some point Blizzard had said while they didn't officially support it, they did have some people testing WoW on Wine to make sure their patches didn't horribly break compatibility there, and that they weren't going to inadvertently flag Wine users as cheating/hacking.

With it 'mostly' working there, I don't see them wanting to spend the effort in a port, sadly. They'll just tell us to go use Wine like we have done for years.

Their loss, though - there's so many other awesome native Linux games on Steam and elsewhere that I don't miss it!

Hi everyone, just an update on the Battle.net forum and petition, the forum is now over 20 pages (400+ posts) and the petition just surpassed 2,600 signatures.

it's a good way for them to analyse their current linux user demographic.