Ownership of Desura has changed hands again, and this time it's by Bad Juju Games. They do include some pretty welcome news in their press release.The most important section is this:
Quotea fully native cross-platform game management client application that Desura has been lacking
That one part sparked my interest, so we have shot off an email to the new owners to clarify if that includes bringing back the long lost Linux client for the Desura store.
See the full press release here.
How does this make you feel about Desura? We thought Linden Labs taking ownership would bring great things, but it destroyed the open source client forcing a Contributor Agreement onto people which cause pretty much everyone to leave, so will Bad Juju Games bring back the Linux love? Hopefully we will have answers soon if they email us back.
UPDATE, things are looking good after my chat with them:
QuoteHi Liam (pleasure to e-meet you),
It's HUGE on our list, along with actually adding more Linux titles as well. I know you have probably heard a myriad of promises and stories regarding Linux support and I'm very sorry. I've spent the past several months coming to the conclusion that the client is severely out of date -- Like the last update for Linux support was literally performed in 2011.
Our plan is indeed to go Multi-platform on the client side. We have a team that has already started to tackle design, because I feel the client isn't much more than a glorified web browser in all reality. That said, we want a lot more for our users and while we aren't Valve or Steam; there's no reason we can't raise the bar considerably.
So, yes, we are looking at supporting Windows, Mac and Linux equally and without the "you should install WINE" type of answers... This may end up being quite challenging, but we like challenges. We have deployed game titles for Linux for some of our clients, so in short.... the answer is YES.
We are looking at this from two angles: Short term and Long term. very honestly, we don't know what is broken presently, but we do have a developer looking into the issue to see if this could just be a quick temporary fix to get the client back up. At the same time, the redesigned multi-platform solution is a little more lengthy of a process, but that one can absolutely be tackled (we just don't want Linux Gamers to wait any longer than they have to).
Hopefully that covers it, but feel free to hit me up anytime you have a question. Please keep in mind, we have a really good relationship with Linden and will continue to work with them to get a better understanding of all the pieces in this rather large beast of a site and tools. So, I fully understand that they had to pick their battles. Nevertheless, we are a bunch of old school computer guys over here with pretty much every platform at our disposal and so we don't want to leave anyone behind!
Regards,
Tony
Tony also mentioned they are going to put up a sort of public roadmap, and you might even be able to vote on what you want first. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: pb"How does this make you feel about Desura?"Holy Moses! How the heck did you get 233 Linux games in Desura? Thats crazy! I didn't even know they had that many!
I have 233 Linux games on Desura and I only played a tiny fraction of them because of no working client. I downloaded some games and ran them from a directory, but then I just forget about them and they lie around. It will be awesome if they roll out a working client at least. With that, and the upcoming GOG Galaxy client, I will finally be able to extend my gaming habits beyond Steam.
Its nice they are DRM free so you can still play them even if the client is defunct.
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Most, if not all of them come from various bundles. Many are also on Steam, but there are also numerous little gems that are not available anywhere else (yet). My problem is that even if I played some games and enjoyed them, I quickly forget about them without a working client (I have a Linux client downloaded from Desura page, but it crashes right after start). A it is now, I just start my gaming session with booting up Steam and choosing from the Steam games library, rather than browsing my ~/games directory populated with FLOSS games, desura / humble bundle / gog drm-free games and some dosbox-wrapped oldies. It's not that I'm blindly in love with Steam, it just happens to have a pretty comfortable client. That's why I'm looking forward to GOG's and Desura's Linux clients so I can have a similar experience regardless of what I feel like playing today.
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Quoting: HamishStill, I really hope one of the things they change is to stop selling Steam keys; all they do is sully their brand when they become nothing but a glorified Steam store front. If Desura is to succeed it needs to maintain its own unique identity, something it can only do as long as it is detached from Steam.
I guess I should clarify my point a little - I am fine with games like Postal 2 that offer Steam keys alongside the main DRM free downloads, but I do object to the game profiles that exist on Desura merely to offer up Steam keys and nothing else. It just seems pointless to me.
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I do actually have Desurium built and running on my Arch system after retrieving it from the AUR:
[
As you can see it works, but I still had to do some fiddling with my system's boost libraries in order to keep it up and running, alongside the few other oddities that it still sometimes expresses. A proper client upgrade would be very much appreciated.
[
As you can see it works, but I still had to do some fiddling with my system's boost libraries in order to keep it up and running, alongside the few other oddities that it still sometimes expresses. A proper client upgrade would be very much appreciated.
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YESS!!!
Their client has been pretty buggy and honestly annoying - so much so it put me off all-clients-not-Steam. (Apart from just natively installing a game from a deb/sh).
Their client has been pretty buggy and honestly annoying - so much so it put me off all-clients-not-Steam. (Apart from just natively installing a game from a deb/sh).
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I hope that they can produce a stable client, I have a pile of games on Desura (they at least had a native Linux client long before a Steam port was announced) but the fact that it is sooooo crashy tends to put me off using it much these days. I hope that we can still get the direct installs and are not forced to use the client.
ps Great to see you back posting articles Liam & I loved your blog post, fight the good fight :)
ps Great to see you back posting articles Liam & I loved your blog post, fight the good fight :)
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Quoting: dudeThank you Liam and Tony, plans sound great.
@aL: Neither GOG nor Humble Bundle have similar (working) Linux clients to steam. So yea, I think it's a brilliant idea to make an intuitive, good looking and working multiplatform "game-library-manager".
GOG are going to open the API for their client. Are Desura going to make their new client open source?
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Wow, last update was in 2011...will be glad to see the client catch up and be more stable.
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Quoting: ShmerlGOG are going to open the API for their client. Are Desura going to make their new client open source?
Well, the previous ones were, so it is very likely that the new one will be as well. Unless we hear otherwise I think it is fairly safe to be optimistic for once.
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Quoting: pbMost, if not all of them come from various bundles. Many are also on Steam, but there are also numerous little gems that are not available anywhere else (yet). My problem is that even if I played some games and enjoyed them, I quickly forget about them without a working client (I have a Linux client downloaded from Desura page, but it crashes right after start). A it is now, I just start my gaming session with booting up Steam and choosing from the Steam games library, rather than browsing my ~/games directory populated with FLOSS games, desura / humble bundle / gog drm-free games and some dosbox-wrapped oldies. It's not that I'm blindly in love with Steam, it just happens to have a pretty comfortable client. That's why I'm looking forward to GOG's and Desura's Linux clients so I can have a similar experience regardless of what I feel like playing today.Good point. Desura would handle the installation and updates for each game. Just like Steam. It is as easy as select game, download, launch.
No terminal or chown chmod commands.
I want Desura back!
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