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On the controversies of Humble, Canonical and Team Meat

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Well now, can interesting things stop appearing when I am asleep please!

On USC and Team Meat's Super Meat Boy
It seems Canonical have done a bit of a boo-boo here in the way of selling Super Meat Boy without Team Meat's permission and not paying them for it either.
I point you to this post on Edmund's (Team Meat) formspring where a user asks about the availability issues of Buinding of Isaac (Not directly a Team Meat game but by one of the guys) on the Ubuntu Software Centre:

QuoteYou said the game was rejected by the UbuntuSC guys, how comes that with the Humble Bundle 7 they claim "We're sorry that Binding of Issac [...] are not available. [...] the authors of Binding of Issac declined to make their game available and we respect"

And Ed's response:
QuoteThey are just trying to save face. they rejected isaac a while ago because its content "wasnt a good fit for the Ubuntu store" then changed their tune once they found out how popular it was and that it was a part of the HIB.

but since they are going out of their way to try and avoid the fact that they rejected isaac, ill also make public the 2nd reason why isaac isnt in their store.

Last year Ubuntu added Super Meat Boy to their store without our written permission and sold it for a full year without paying us. we didnt find this out till a few months ago and had to contact them directly about it in order to get our payment.... i dont trust or respect their actions and wont be working with them ever again.

i was trying to be cool about it but if they want to publicly state that i declined their offer to sell Isaac in their store without context to why.. then ill go public with my VERY valid reasons.

feel free to re-post this message or link this to any one who might be misinformed, im not a fan of being made to look like an asshole when my reasons are quite valid.


So the USC was selling and not paying all without permission.

The problem I have with this is that it isn't the first time a game on Humble Bundle has had issues, Steel Storm developer had a bad experience being in a Bundle (see my interview with the developer for confirmation) and his game was for sale on Humble store without his permission as well (see here about humble store where motorsep in the comments wasn't happy).
Although guys from Humble did come here and clear it up for the developer that time around.

So could it have been part of their contract with Humble Bundle that the games go on the USC and Team Meat didn't know? Apparently Ed was aware of this earlier and did not react to it so he is not void of blame but still Canonical should not have assumed anything and just put it up.

I personally think all parties share blame in that.

Tommy from Team Meat and Linux
This is nothing to do with the above but since original article is about Team Meat I want to just highlight this as well.

The second problem I have is that Tommy (1 part of Team Meat) has been very vocal about Linux in the past with comments from them such as:
QuoteWe're never doing Linux because that's dumb. I don't care what anybody says, nobody plays games on Linux.

That quote is from an old podcast from RoboAwesome.

and

This is from a podcast they did that I can't seem to get a hold of (source link) so he doesn't care about Linux or open source:
QuoteNo one gets the source. I don't care.

Movie references then later
QuoteNo, fuck that. The source belongs to me, alright. So open source, no way. Linux, Linux can fuck off for all I care.

Should we be supporting people like that?

Let us not forget Tommy doesn't care about security either when they linked their mysql connection information to Super Meat Boy (source here) and didn't care when someone pulled them up on it to help them secure it:
QuoteYou are not showing me anything I don't already know.


Not massive issue as you couldn't delete entries but to have that kind of attitude towards a helpful customer...

Just be aware the Linux versions aren't done by either of them but by Humble as well and here may be the reason why it's not in-house porting:
QuoteBut Linux... I can't wait for some Linux programmer guy to e-mail me and say "I'll port this for free", because I already have the e-mail already written that I'm going to send back to him, and basically tell him to fuck off, indefinitely.

Another quote from Tommy. Even though eventually they let icculus port Super Meat Boy for the Humble Bundle...

I have a real problem with people like that, I understand people can change their minds (I have reached out to him via twitter to see if he still thinks this way) but those comments are over the top. Just be aware all the "bad" comments are Tommy not Edmund.

What do you think? I just hope he regrets those comments and thinks a little more highly of Linux nowadays.

Article updated to separate the issues and for links about the Steel Storm issues.

I will try to be more neutral in future. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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51 comments
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toor Dec 23, 2012
… what can you do about it, there are intelligent, open-minded and respectful people in the word. And then there are others.
This guy doesn't take many risk acting as a jerk about linux gaming and philosophy, because it's marginal.
Humble Buyer Dec 23, 2012
I now feel bad for giving them their share of money in the humble bundles i bought.
Next time if they are going to be on a humble indie bundle i'll make sure that neither me or any of my friends will let some money go to these clowns.
You don't want my money? Fine, so you don't get it.
I wish them good luck with their carreer if this is how they treath their customers.
Anon Dec 23, 2012
Also, he's stated already that they noticed some time back but didn't act upon it. Which means that they are as much at fault here.

And here's some more: [URL='http://4ms.me/UT3Vu6']http://4ms.me/UT3Vu6 [/URL]http://4ms.me/VZUatf
Vadim Dec 23, 2012
Essentially, it's the same issue as it was with Steel-Storm - it was a misunderstanding and the dev instead of directly contacting the maintainers just decided to go screaming about it.
alexThunder Dec 23, 2012
Well, Tommy is same guy, who said, that every triple A game is shit.

You should just ignore him. Stupid people only keep on yelling crap as long someone listens.

But back to topic:

WTF? Did Canonical keep all the money from the SMB sales? And is the rejection of Isaac really because it "wasnt a good fit for the Ubuntu store", or is it just what Edmund thinks?

I really hope Canonical can clearify things.
Anon Dec 23, 2012
Quoting: "alexThunder, post: 7259, member: 146"WTF? Did Canonical keep all the money from the SMB sales? And is the rejection of Isaac really because it "wasnt a good fit for the Ubuntu store", or is it just what Edmund thinks?

I really hope Canonical can clearify things.


Here's what I can tell so far - Isaac was submitted around the same time it was in the Voxatron debut, because it wasn't good enough - which is true if you think about the quality of the port and the fact that it's barely playable on Linux. Edmund has kept a grudge ever since about this, but wanted to give it a try with SMB when they were included in HIBV. Humble provided Canonical all the games and further info, and Canonical was further contacted by most of the devs about the inclusion, which meant it all worked out. The ones that didn't contact them were Team Meat - they expressed interest, but for whatever reason thought that Canonical would come to them.

Now at this point Canonical must have misunderstood the deal that was made, in the sense that Humble actually has already pretty much gotten the devs to agree to this. What actually happened was different, but because of this Canonical put it on the USC. Now where the sales money went is still unclear, I'd wait regarding this until proper statements.

Now, before the following part happens, Edmund finds out that SMB is on the USC. He doesn't act upon it though.

Fast-forward a few months and we've got HIB7, again the same deal is made, however one can assume that in the mean time Canonical has learned more. Now again, all the devs agree, except for Team Meat, which this time did get in contact with Canonical, once again not telling them they don't actually have the agreement. Canonical puts a little statement below the page for redeeming about why DD and BoI isn't there. Edmund thinks they're trying to put the blame on him and reveals they're not allowed to distribute SMB. Canonical has since pulled SMB, since they finally are actually aware this has happened.

That's what more or less has went down. I assume that since then, Edmund has gotten in contact with Canonical (for once) and they're trying to clear the issues up.

And here's my thoughts - all three parties (Team Meat, Canonical, Humble) are in some way responsible for this. Team Meat however hasn't really helped this by handling it like this instead of actually trying to solve the issue. Obviously Canonical didn't handle it too well by assuming, but I'd jot that up to a misunderstanding and inexperience with this sort of thing. I hope this can be soon resolved, for the sake of all the sides.
Bumadar Dec 23, 2012
Liam, your sort of doing 2 things in this post which you should not mix imho.

1 USC sold a game it was not allowed
2 Tommy does not like Linux and what it stands for but hib converted the game

those are separate issues, the 1st is simply wrong by USC and it does not mater if it happen to a pro or non-pro linux person, the 2nd is 1 persons opinion about Linux and the fact that to get onto hib he forgot all those things :)
alexThunder Dec 23, 2012
Quoting: "Anon, post: 7260"A nice summary about what (probably) happened.


Thanks for that.

Still, Edmund's "wasnt a good fit for the Ubuntu store" worries me. Didn't it fit, because of it's quality or is Canonical going to be a dictator of taste (like Apple)?
dimko Dec 23, 2012
i think i shall be careful to avoid this prick in future.
i suggest you not support them in the future too.
Anon Dec 23, 2012
Quoting: "Bumadar, post: 7261, member: 93"Liam, your sort of doing 2 things in this post which you should not mix imho.

1 USC sold a game it was not allowed
2 Tommy does not like Linux and what it stands for but hib converted the game

those are separate issues, the 1st is simply wrong by USC and it does not mater if it happen to a pro or non-pro linux person, the 2nd is 1 persons opinion about Linux and the fact that to get onto hib he forgot all those things :)


What needs to be remembered about 2 is that they still didn't care in the least afterwards, did not distribute their port anywhere (until USC) and did not even bother to get it fixed, since it still doesn't have the community feature working.

And the situation with USC is still unclear, obviously.
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