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.

Quoting: GamingOnLinuxA 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?

Quoting: hardpenguin

Quoting: GamingOnLinuxA 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.

Quoting: hardpenguinI 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?

Quoting: BeamboomWhat 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.