Loki Files For Chapter 11 Protection 708
yamla writes: "Loki is dead!" and points to a Linux Review article which says the gaming company has filed for protection from creditors under bankruptcy laws. Yamla continues: "Read about it here. This is terrible news! I have paid for some of their games and they were always at least as good as the Windows versions. I hope Loki can pull out of bankruptcy and keep going but if not, it will be our loss." There is also a story at LinuxToday (pointed out by reader Beee) which draws from the Linux Review report. Meanwhile, the Loki site appears business-as-usual. Filing for bankruptcy protection is not the same as being "out of business," but it's uncomfortably close.
Who's to blame? (Score:1, Interesting)
just this fact:
I just went to their online store to order something (forget my previous rant, rune looks interesting, as does tribes2).
I also asked a friend on irc if he wanted some, to share shipping costs to germany.
He had NEVER heard of loki, and of the fact that they have a linux port of SoF, which he'd searched the 'net far and wide for months by now...
is that marketing? don't think so...
[L]
Re:Paypal Account? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah mod me down for flame, but he's got a good ppoint mr dumbass moderator. Withoutloki SDL and SMPEG wouldnt be arround - which would just be bad. We also wouldnt have that loki book - linux games prorgamming, which will hopfully start some more opensource projects.
Re:Unsavable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Shame on you for kicking a puppy only trying to serve the community while it's down.
Re:Not a big surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
I use Linux mostly for idealogical and technical reasons, but it certainly doesn't hurt that it saves me a few bucks I can spend on hardware.
Given the cost for W2K server + client licenses, the cost makes a huge difference for companies running webserver farms. In many cases not as important as the technical issues, but important none the less.
TiVo could have probably used WinCE, VxWorks, or QNX on the TiVo. But I am sure the $0/unit software licensing costs of Linux makes a huge difference to their bottom line.
Schools, especially outside the US, are deploying Linux left and right, because especially on low cost hardware, the cost of windows is a big chunk of system price.
So, yes, when we speak of free software, we mean freedom, but many people use Linux because that includes the freedom to copy it without paying licensing fees.
Linux game market (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a big surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Did We See This Coming? (Score:2, Interesting)
I like to believe that we install Linux for its workhorse capabilities first, and gaming second (as compared to the Redmond OS)
Good luck to the minions of Loki
Buy Out EBWorlds Stock. (Score:1, Interesting)
1) Go to the upper left search box and enter 'linux'.
2) Buy each of the Loki games. Myth 2, Heretic 2, Decent 3, Terminus, Sim City 3000, Quake 3, Soldier of Fortune, RailRoad Tycoon 2, Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, and Heroes of Might and Magic III for for a lousy $9.99 per game!
3) Now click on this link and be nice to the friend of the guy who told you how to get all these cheap games. [broody.org]
Re:Small target group? (Score:2, Interesting)
The moment there starts to be enough demand for commercial quality games for Linux I believe the open source community will start writing those.
Think it's impossible? These people did write a commercial quality OS, not a small task compared to writing a commercial quality game. Why would it be any less possible to write a commercial quality game then?
ID Software's Fault (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, people had gotten so used to getting Linux ports of windows games for free, after all the Quakes, and UT, and very few people look to buy Linux versions first.
Idsoftware and Dave Taylor started, (if not gave a big boost to) commercial gaming in Linux, so this unfortunate, unintentional side-effect is just another kick in the crotch for everyone involved.
I will simply stop buying games (Score:1, Interesting)
Loki are broke,, I have never heard of a company to pull themselves back from a CH11. You are deluded if you can think that you can save them by buying stock that has already taken its capital. In retail your remainders kill you
Gaming is dead, It was killed in a stampede of big business greed, endless benchmarks, generic gameplay and warez. Can anyone name a game better then doom | starcraft | civilization
However, the real reasion gaming is dead is because ten years ago two guys could write a simple game in a few months and hope to sell a few million copies. Now you need a whole team of people giving up years in development time too sell the same amount of units. With average budgets getting close to film it is clear that;Too much needs to be done for too few rewards
I will buy every loki game that I can get my hands on knowing full well that the company cannot be saved. After all loki provided hope that maybe, just maybe gaming could return to what it was.
After loki are gone, or brought out (same difference), I will simply stop buying games period, no fscking windows | xbox | ps2 | gamecube. Time to start collecting DVD's.
ps, Hope remaines in emulation and unoffical ports for games on linux, Ill give you that.
Re:Not a big surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
From the people I know that use *nix of those that hate commercial software would rather eschew it than pirate it.
As for the "buying at the store", I bought my linux version of Q3 at Electronics Boutique. The release problem, along with the "I'm not going to use software that costs money" is the problem.
The **real** problem is more than that though -- gamers won't use linux until it has enough games, and companies won't publish games for linux until there is enough of a demand. Until that point, the only choice would be to rely on wine.
While it can have a coolness to it ( eg, running windows binaies on linux ) its not a good way to go. Everyone is still at Microsoft's whim; so if they decide to break everything with DX9, people have to spend a year rewriting wine's DX support, in which time, all the gamers that **were** using linux go back to win* because they can't play their games!
Re:Small target group? (Score:2, Interesting)
1. A larger Linux userbase.
2. Simultaneous releases across platforms.
3. An easier way for Windows users to switch to the Linux version, than trying to return their Windows version of the game and get their money back.
The moment Linux games have more FPS than Windows ones these things will be just a matter of time.
Re:A few thoughts.... (Score:3, Interesting)
amen. I could really go for a Mathematica replacement. FYI, Octave, an OS clone of Matlab, is available, and apparently its pretty good. But its not mathematica. Also, R, a Free version is S-plus, is now probably more popular than its predecessor. It does a lot of math, but is really a statistics package. However, it has the lisp-like (functional/interpretive) environment that Mathematica has. The similarities are so great that it probably wouldn't be too difficult to write an Mathematica interpreter that translates into Splus/R.
But.... wasn't this topic about games?
Re:Lets Save Loki!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Economic Crunch (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it had more to do with the fact that they were trying to sell products to a market that couldn't support them.
Lemme see. They used to say that the overall cost of a worker in a software company was $100,000 / year. Dunno how many people loki have working there, but let's say 20. Now, on a $40 game, the developer will normally get about $10 (if they're lucky) if it's sold through retail channels.
So: cost to run Loki/year - $2,000,000
Number of units you need to sell just to break even: 200,000
That's a tall order, even for a Windows game. There's only a few titles a year that sell that many.
Okay, maybe your're getting paid to do the ports, but the advances you're going to get for Linux ports aren't going to be very great.
It's incredibly difficult to keep your head above water writing Windows games. It must be almost impossible for Linux.
Re:I wish I could help. (Score:2, Interesting)
There really is very little money involved here: $500,000 . This makes me wonder why they took such a drastic step. I mean, this is pretty much less than the mortgage on most houses in Silicon Valley. I wonder if there is more that Loki is not telling us.
What ended it for Loki (Score:5, Interesting)
Why nVidia? well, its simple. when the tnt2 debutes, nVidia releases a statement that they are the only 3d video chip maker that is fully supporting Linux with Open Source Drivers. They were to release register specifications, and release a working, open source driver developed by nVidia and helped upon by a bunch of other interesting people. What happened to this ideal? They took it back of course, just as soon as 3dfx died and opensourced all their IP. When nVidia saw the monopoly knocking at their front door, they immediately withdrew their plan (this one year later) and decided to go closed source. you couldnt even use a custom kernel with the nvidia driver because it was entirely closed source binary only.
Too bad for Loki, who just spent the last 6 months porting Quake3 to Linux, now they just found out that the only video card they can officially support with Xfree4 is the Voodoo3 and Matrox g400 (dog slow in linux).
Add this to the fact that Quake3 for Linux came out on the SHELVES about a month after the windows version, and then, more expensive (by then, the windows version had been reduced in price by retailers, and the linux version could be downloaded off the internet, there was so little market for the linux version, they had to sell them at full price)
Imagine that, Quake3 launch more costly to consumers, and later than everyone else, not to mention that the only video card that could run quake3 at the time was a tnt2 and Geforce1 at reasonable speeds, and didn't even have alpha quality Xfree4 or kernel drivers(required to use 3d direct rendering in Linux)
Of course, nVidia released their closed source with open source wrapper later on that year, by then, it was too late. EVERY gaming migrant from windows switched back to windows specifically because of their video card's support (NVidia).
If you want a finger to point, point it at nVidia. they should be brought up on charges of anti-trust IMO.
Fuck you nvidia, I have nothing else to say to you. bitch. You ruined the only gaming potential Linux has ever had. If it wasn't for your delayed closed shitty alpha quality driver, Loki would have made a killing on Linux quake3. insted, only the newbies who bought the voodoo3 could play quake3, and so, only 10% of the potential market actually bought it. You had the only card that could handle quake3, and you lied on your promise to be the "leading 3d video card maker on the Linux platform"
Have a nice day.
A very likely reason for this... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to port a game, write me. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is how Linux game ports work- one by one.
Re:Figures. (Score:2, Interesting)
Quake3 windows: 30-40fps at 1024x768
Quake3 linux: 40-50fps @ 1280x1024
this is with a geforce2mx, 400Mhz, 384ram
of course, i dont have the kludge of a windowing system to hold it back
I see some parallels . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
Wildcard Design was a company that was founded to port games to BeOS. Despite the high licensing fees and restrictive NDAs the founder had to surmount to obtain the source code to the games he wanted to port, he decided to give it a go. Needless to say, he failed, the main reason for which is this:
There are not enough users of non-Microsoft operating systems to make profitable a company dedicated only to porting high-profile games to them. The cost is simply too high for the authors to recoup. A few games might turn a profit, but eventually, after even one poorly-received game, perhaps, the company will find itself deep in the red. It cannot sell games to nearly the scope of audience that Windows ports sell to because the gaming types generally are not comfortable enough to migrate away from the operating systems they are used to, which in most cases means Windows. Hence, sales of ported games will barely be a dent in the overall sales of said games.
Re:Holy fuck (Score:0, Interesting)
I wish I could help. (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple years ago Microsoft was buying up PC game companies left and right, where is the IBM promise of "billions of $$ on Linux" pledge now?
Maybe someone should set up a pledgeboard, something like "I promise to buy $XXX of Loki Games or the SDL book" within two weeks".
IF the SDL book comes out, I pledge to buy both it and the Tribes 2 for Linux, even though Dynamix is dead.
It's not just Linux that's dying, it's not just the dot-coms, look at Japan, the lowest stock indexes in 17 years. The world economy is collapsing.
Goddamn government, while they've dragged out the Microsoft trial for 15 years, they should have been doing the same thing with software that the post office does with their vehicle fleets..splitting up the dollars spent between vendors. The monopoly desktop would not even be an issue now.
Linux is ready for the desktop. When people use it work, they will start using it at home, and more games will sell. RedHat, IBM and Apple (for example) would get a broader base of enhancement requests and the state of Linux/BSD/Apple would increase rapidly.
Re:Terrible news? (Score:3, Interesting)
* If my dog bites people and is mean, all dogs bite people and are mean.
* If a black man robs you, all black men are robbers.
Glad to see you find your world so easy to generalize.
Bullshit. The stances being taken on Slashdot are more like:
The concept of "dog" is immoral, so only own cats.
Except my dog Loki, he's OK.
Peddle your straw man somewhere else. Slashdotters have been claiming left and right that the very CONCEPT of proprietary software is theft, but now everybody's in a tizzy over poor Loki.
I didn't make the argument black and white; I'm one of the ones claiming that it *ISN'T* black and white. Proprietary software is OK. Loki is good. Microsoft is good too. Windows sucks, so I don't use it; but it doesn't mean Microsoft can't make something good I will use, such as my Intellimouse.
I use Linux because it's better, not because Microsoft is evil. If Microsoft makes a great program for Linux, I might very well use it.
It's not Loki's fault nor is the market bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux users should rally behind Loki and petition game software authoring companies to charge a fee that's according to the Linux market. They have nothing to lose and much to gain if the Linux gaming industry grows.
They never charged that much 5 to 7 years ago when the Windows market wasn't as big as it is today
Re:Not a big surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, I don't encounter this attitude in the OSS community near me. We buy linux distributions; we spend our spare time promoting products we like (and also fit our software philosophy); we buy endless numbers of books.
Most of the linux-oriented people I hang with bought one or two titles from Loki. I personally have two. I am not aware of a huge warez scene for Loki titles. It's just that there are so very few of us compared to Windows gamers. This will change eventually.
But I'm sick and tired of hearing that Open Source enthusiasts will just not pay for things. Sure, I won't pay for something [microsoft.com] when there's a better alternative [debian.org] available. But that's simply not the case with Loki's stuff. I think they earned every penny with their attention to detail in porting and packaging (not to mention the SDL library).