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

This is a very ugly thing that I didn't know about.
It's sad that support for some platforms reach the end of the road just because someone set an arbitrary date for it, and technically there would be no reason for it :(
This certainly seems to me like yet another roadbump that companies must hit in order to port games to other platforms, and I think it's also something that makes it more expensive. Just guessing though.


On the other hand, those are all old games and I wouldn't expect such deal to expire before the games that they cover reach the end of development which is enough time for they to become mature and stable enough. Soooo... 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.


And let's not forget about the plethora of Windows games that we play through Proton which are also not officially supported (except in the few cases when they are - to a degree - but even then it's just because the devs are just that cool and generous)


So while sad, it really doesn't seem like much to me at least.

[quote=rustybroomhandle]

Quoting: hardpenguin

Quoting: GamingOnLinuxI 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.

Certainly seems that way and I didn't realise it either. I always thought that there's no time limit of any sort. Oh well, the devil's in the details as usual :D Feral certainly knew about it and that's what matters. And also the people who paid enough attention to it (as long as that info was public)

My initial reaction was a bit of a light outrage until I realised that this was a decision made by both companies since before the porting began, so it's all fine. If they would have suddenly decided to remove it ASAP after all this time, then it would have been (probably legal, but) outrageous


Last edited by Hori on 4 January 2021 at 12:38 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?