Mad Max and Shadow of Mordor delisted for Linux and macOS on Steam

As long as there are Linux depots, it's fine by me. They already got my money for both games.
I guess they knew the licences would expire at the end of 2020, weird that they didn't do a farewell sale at the Feral Store for example.

A shame but actually somewhat common. We see this with racing games, football games, sometimes music causes issues and more where licenses are often for a specific time period. In this case it's a bit more unique that it only affected the external ports.

I mean they haven't said they meant music licenses. Could be literally anything. For example, perhaps the porting studio issues a license to the game publisher for some part of their work. Or it could be some other part of the game, like middleware.

Don't the 'original rights holders' get a cut whenever something with the 'lotr' or 'mad max' trademark gets sold? Why would they want the licenses to expire? So they could resell it to someone else at a higher price?

A shame but actually somewhat common. We see this with racing games, football games, sometimes music causes issues and more where licenses are often for a specific time period. In this case it's a bit more unique that it only affected the external ports.

I mean they haven't said they meant music licenses. Could be literally anything. For example, perhaps the porting studio issues a license to the game publisher for some part of their work. Or it could be some other part of the game, like middleware.

It was meant as an example, not the cause.

I mean they haven't said they meant music licenses. Could be literally anything. For example, perhaps the porting studio issues a license to the game publisher for some part of their work. Or it could be some other part of the game, like middleware.

The way I understand it, Feral license the right do port/sell games from the publisher. This is different to companies like Q-Loc, for example, that are hired by the publisher to a ports.

I guess what I did not realize was that Feral licenses had a time limit on them.


Last edited by rustybroomhandle on 4 January 2021 at 12:43 pm UTC

Seems about on par for Feral's communication (or lack thereof) to not really explain, announce or communicate anything at all. Unless pressured into it - and even then you only get boilerplate text.

I'm glad the company exists and they do a good job development-wise.
But whoever's responsible for their communication needs to get some education on what their job actually is or look for a new one.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 4 January 2021 at 12:40 pm UTC

that is quite bad, not only we are having less native AAA games anounced for us (aside from stadia) but we are losing the games we had...
sure, you can still play then, but if they get any updates you wont see then, if you purchase then, even if you can play it on linux, there is no guarantee they will be fixed if anything break due to an OS update, and many people who might considering try linux may give up because those games suposedly dont work, without knowing they do...

I don't see it a very big problem as the games haves been out for abit. If a windows user came over to Linux, they would mostly have it. Be nice to see the games back for any new users.


Last edited by Lomkey on 4 January 2021 at 1:05 pm UTC

What are Feral up to these days, anyways? Anything new in the hopper? Surely their business model must be heavily suffering from the dramatic drop of Mac gamers?

What are Feral up to these days, anyways? Anything new in the hopper? Surely their business model must be heavily suffering from the dramatic drop of Mac gamers?

They're doing a lot of Mobile and Switch stuff now.

Doesn't matters if the game is old or not, this is sad. We are seeing less ports, more games with EAC and more games with DX12, and now losing the support from a big developer

weird that they didn't do a farewell sale at the Feral Store for example.

A sale for something they're about to drop support for? Would you buy a car on sale that is about to be discontinued and does not come with a warranty?

I wonder if isn't time to Feral to rethink their business line as just a porting company.

I know nothing about how profitable they're right now, but I would suggest they should try to be a gaming developer company too. God knows we could use an Vulkan-focused gaming dev company (Even for Windows people)

Sad, but ye. When there are licenses expiring...

This means the end for feral getting cuts on linux sales, so it's probably right the original publisher is not advertising it.

Wished they have had some permanent agreement, but when it comes to licensing that's hardly ever done.

I don't think it's going to affect too much except for the fact that the missing Linux (Actually SteamOS) and Mac icons cause confusion and would lead people to believe they are not available there.

No. If there is no Linux/MacOS icon and Feral don't get a cut, to me this games do not exist at all.

I'm buying games only to support the platform and the porter. If that cannot happen officially I might as well go the unofficial route and don't buy them at all.

weird that they didn't do a farewell sale at the Feral Store for example.

A sale for something they're about to drop support for? Would you buy a car on sale that is about to be discontinued and does not come with a warranty?

A car? No. A Game? Of course.
I have 10k+ games on Steam and only ever requested developer support for a dozen maybe, including zero games from Feral.
I once requested support for a game from Aspyr but in the end never got it, so there you have it.

It's very common for a game to have a final sale before leaving Steam, so why not.
For example I bought Sword Coast Legends for something like 5 euro because it was being delisted due to licence expiration...


Last edited by pb on 4 January 2021 at 4:14 pm UTC

Speaking from harsh experience, Shadow Of Mordor is no great loss. The Linux version was so bad I never got beyond the menu screen, while it was completely flawless - including all online elements - under Glorious Eggroll. While I'm still more likely to buy a game if it offers a Linux version, I generally expect to play under Proton.

Speaking from harsh experience, Shadow Of Mordor is no great loss. The Linux version was so bad I never got beyond the menu screen, while it was completely flawless - including all online elements - under Glorious Eggroll. While I'm still more likely to buy a game if it offers a Linux version, I generally expect to play under Proton.

I bought it right after Linux release and completed it with zero problems on gtx 970.
I don't know how the port holds up now, but it was a good work back then.

I bought it right after Linux release and completed it with zero problems on gtx 970.
I don't know how the port holds up now, but it was a good work back then.

Worked fine for me as recently as a year ago. Never had an issue with any Feral port that I can recall.

I don't think anyone posted this yet, but both games are based on movie properties rather than being standalone IPs made specifically for gaming. On top of that, this being WB Interactive, their licensing model is probably a bit more restrictive due to the tie to the Movie Business.

Hollywood companies are extremely protective of their "property" and I'd expect anything tied to a movie license to be quite a bit more complicated than a normal porting license. In fact, if the original gamedev is not the IP holder, such as EA with Star Wars, they probably cannot hand out licenses to port anything to platforms EA doesn't support without the permission of Lucasfilm/Disney. While this is less complicated as WB owns WB Interactive, there are still weird organizational separations that make it even more complicated.....