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A brief history of commercial gaming on Linux (and how it's all about to change)

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Gaming

I'm excited. I mean really excited. Excited to the point that I can hardly think. I'm talking six-year-old trying to go to sleep on Christmas Eve excited. But before I get to why, let's take a trip back to 1999.

It was in that year that Loki Software released their first port of a major commercial game (Civilization: Call to Power) to Linux. Shortly thereafter, Loki published another 18 ports of blockbuster titles for Linux. For a brief moment, one of the last major hurdles for real Linux adoption had been solved--gaming. Then, in 2001, Loki Software filed for bankruptcy and promptly closed its doors.

This proved to be enough fodder for Microsoft to use in order to really push DirectX, and particularly their flagship Direct3D, over the edge as the de facto API for which almost all games going forth would be based on. In doing this, Microsoft was able to secure a decade-long lock on computer gaming. I mean, after all, who would want to invest time and money into porting games over to a platform that ultimately failed to prove viable? It's pretty easy to state that when you cannot make a successful model with Bungie, iD, Sid Meier, and Epic backing you, then likely the platform you are supporting just isn't ready for gaming. This is largely where Linux stood in 2001.

Yet to much fanfare, iD Software released Linux ports




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