id Software Considering Skipping Rage for Linux?

For gamers running Linux as their primary OS, the choices are unfortunately limited. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to believe that gaming wasn’t the main reason that most people either dual-boot their PC, or never give Linux a try in the first place. The former can be said for me. While I run Linux as my main OS, and Windows XP in VMware for “simpler” tasks (Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop), the reason I still keep my machine as a dual-boot is strictly because of gaming.

While the gaming landscape on Linux isn’t too stellar, there are a lot of choices, depending on your tastes. If you’re looking for a commercial game, though, things are different. Companies like S2 Games and id Software have been some of the very few to deliver commercial games to Linux, which made us appreciate them even more. Who doesn’t like to have masterpieces like Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and others available to them?

Sadly, as games become more and more robust, and tied to libraries specific to Windows, the chances of seeing blockbuster commercial games is beginning to wane. This was highlighted by a letter that an Ubuntu forum member sent to John Carmack, which asked about the possibility of seeing Rage available for Linux. His response couldn’t have been more clear:

“We are not currently scheduling native linux ports. It isn’t out of the question, but I don’t think we will be able to justify the work. If there are hundreds of thousands of linux users playing Quake Live when we are done with Rage, that would certainly influence our decision…“

Well, I for one am planning to game ‘er up in Quake Live often, but I highly doubt that hundreds of thousands of others are going to join me. Linux gamers are facing a harsh reality, though, because if one of the leading supporters of gaming on the OS is looking to step out, what does that tell us about the future? What in your opinion needs to be done to continue to attract both developers and gamers alike to Linux? Let us know your thoughts in the thread!

The codebase is much, much larger, and the graphics technology pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized. It probably wouldn’t be all that bad to get it running on the nvidia binary drivers, but the chance of it working correctly and acceptably anywhere else would be small. If you are restricted to it only working on the closed source drivers, you might as well boot into windows and get the fully tested and tuned experience…