I guess 2018 was fairly disappointing in terms of native Linux games. We got only a handful of truly amazing AAA titles, Aspyr left the porting business entirely, no new major publishers moved to supporting Linux, and a few studios even dropped us. It normally would have made for a worrying year, as for the first time since Steam launched on Linux, there seemed to be no further momentum gain at all - and that's usually what makes a movement go stale and die.

But then came Steam Play, and changed it all. 2018 might have the potential to become THE turning point for Linux gaming. If Valve plays the cards right from there (and they seem to), the question of how many games we get per year might become obsolete, because what operating system you run will no longer matter for your gaming experience. In other words, the biggest barrier for Linux adoption ("you guys have no games!") is about to poof into thin air.

And that's why 2018 was great!

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Cities is pretty close to perfect. The only thing they need to look into at this point is performance, as you still cannot build very large cities without them starting to lag fairly significantly and taking ages to load. And a few things mods currently do could be integrated into the main game. But that's really it. I don't think any other studio ever needs to try making a better city builder, either. Certainly not EA. Haha! I wish they'd tackle The Sims next and show EA how a people simulator is done!

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Never heard of that game. I won't miss it either. I don't touch any MOBA game, as that genre consistently seems to attract some of the worst examples of the human species. I can do without getting exposed to that sort of people.

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Yeah, if they want to be "deeper" than Cities:Skylines, they have their work cut out for them. And more micromanagement usually results in more tedium, rather than more fun.

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Hm, this game must have somehow slipped through my fingers when it launched. Bought it now! :)

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It's really amazing how WINE has progressed from "that nerd tool that can make ancient games run on Linux, with a lot of tinkering and a healthy portion of luck" to "will run pretty much anything in Linux, no matter what" in about just one year.

I followed WINE for a long, long time, and I have never considered it an alternative to dual-booting, until about that one year ago when the project seemed to have gone to warp speed all out of a sudden.

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Not my thing and too late.

If a game is THAT old, I either don't want it or I have it already. One thing I don't understand about Feral's porting choices is that it (to me) makes very little sense to port games older than half a year. There is a very high chance that people interested in the game already bought it for Windows and run it in WINE. The rest isn't going to buy it anyway. Either way, Feral isn't getting paid.

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More competition is a good thing. What the world however does NOT need is the kind of competition-less fragmentation where competitors open "stores" that more or less are meant for their own products, which they then refuse to sell anywhere else. Like...Origin. A true competitor for Steam would be a good thing, but we really don't need yet another DRM platform disguised as a store.

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What can I say? It's consistent with non-digital businesses. Large corporations get tax breaks and subsidies. Small companies get lots of red tape and will be milked by the taxman. By making the rich richer, Steam is just doing what everyone else does.

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I got this game back then when it was available for the first time. No regrets. It's a really cute, well-made game. These guys are more professional than many big-name studios.

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