Electronic Arts to Produce Games for Linux!
Electronic Arts, one of the biggest games publishers in the world, having titles like Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect to their name, will be making a short presentation at next week’s Ubuntu Developer Summit. The EA plenary session is a mere 15 minutes long, but coming on the back of the recent news that Steam is coming to Linux, this could be very significant indeed. With mainstream gaming on board, perhaps this will finally be the breakthrough that Linux needs to reach critical mass and become mainstream on the desktop? It would certainly give much needed competition for Microsoft in this space. Let’s hope so.
The DRM question is interesting though: Linux doesn’t have any DRM in it like product activation and Linux users are a highly computer literate, tech savvy bunch, while EA infests all its titles with hardcore DRM and will be highly unlikely to want to let it go. The shakeout between these two diametrically opposed mindsets will be interesting to see and could shape the future of gaming on Linux and the future of Linux on the desktop.
The first time I publicly brought up the potential interest from EA developers to get involved with Linux was last year. I recall tweeting a skewed photo from an EA business card following the first time one of their guys wanted to meet up with me for beers and to discuss Linux, which was a long while ago and at the moment can’t locate that old tweet.
Comments are closed.