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Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

kotaku.com.au

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Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#71

Post by unimpressive »

frujka wrote: post #47
brador wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame the THQ bundle. Seriously, all that awesome for just a $1 minimum. After that all these previously amazing indie games just look like flash toys.

The THQ bundle was but an attempt to boost the stock value of the company by showing people had interest in the games before filing for bankruptcy. It was real real sub par in comparison of other bundles, it was crippled by being windows only and steam only on linux, it had no bonus content and didn't feature anything fresh. Also developers of those games mostly didn't see a dime of this.

Bankruptcy? What does Humble Bundles financial situation look like?

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#72

Post by jeremyarussell »

unimpressive wrote: post #71
frujka wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The THQ bundle was but an attempt to boost the stock value of the company by showing people had interest in the games before filing for bankruptcy. It was real real sub par in comparison of other bundles, it was crippled by being windows only and steam only on linux, it had no bonus content and didn't feature anything fresh. Also developers of those games mostly didn't see a dime of this.

Bankruptcy? What does Humble Bundles financial situation look like?

Err, THQ is going bankrupt, not HI.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#73

Post by thom »

benwerd wrote: post #62
vially wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: how could they have avoided that?

One obvious, safe way: set up an API on their servers, abstracting away the need to send actual MySQL calls over the Internet.

While this case is particularly egregious, you are still accepting data from an untrusted remote client.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#74

Post by frujka »

kayoone wrote: post #70
dpitkin wrote: post #65

Hi, I just looked into it and the check to Tommy and Edmund from Canonical is in process for the 77 copies of Super Meat Boy. We have been working together since November to get it resolved, no piracy here just some miscommunication. David Pitkin Canonical

77 copies in a year? The same game sold 20.000 copies on Launchday on the Xbox360. Seems like Linux gaming still has a long way to go. Steam isnt doing it for direct profit reasons either, they just want to push the software platform of their new console! But dont get me wrong, i like the direction, its just that linux gaming is totally irrelevant from a market perspective.

First we're talking about a potentiel market restricted to ubuntu users, the small portion that would give money for a piece of software. Then we're talking about a game added to the ubuntu store when it was released in a pay what you want bundle. Then again the dev is known for having a poor opinion of linux and its communities. The port itself has a few bugs.

Not exactly the recipe for success here.

As an example, I'm a linux gamer, I own a copy of the humble bundle including super meat boy and after using it for a couple years, I for sure will stay away from ubuntu for technical, personal and ethical reasons. So don't expect my money showing up on the ubuntu store.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#75

Post by frujka »

huhtenberg wrote: post #59

7 hours into the discussion and no link to "Indie Game The Movie" movie that follows SMB devs for few months prior to the launch? http://www.indiegamethemovie.com http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884

Available as part of the current humble bundle for another 10 days.

https://www.humblebundle.com/

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#76

Post by uxp »

thom wrote: post #73
benwerd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One obvious, safe way: set up an API on their servers, abstracting away the need to send actual MySQL calls over the Internet.

While this case is particularly egregious, you are still accepting data from an untrusted remote client.

Yes, but you can fine grain permissions so a unique client can alter a high score that they previously held, but not alter everyone's scores, which is difficult if not completely impossible in MySQL directly, as well as sanitize data to reject wildly incoherent submissions.

The possibilities of pre-formatting data are endless with an API. Not so much with an INSERT statement.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#77

Post by uxp »

masklinn wrote: post #38
ma2000 wrote: post #18

While watching the video/trailer for the most recent Humble Bundle, I was put off by the games this time around. The one mentioned in this article for example, looked like a basic Flash game. So as an outsider to this indie gaming world, I can understand why they might have superficially rejected it - it's probably a great game if you give it a chance. Just thought that someone should point this out because the comme…

> The one mentioned in this article for example, looked like a basic Flash game. Binding of Isaac is a flash game, and is anything but basic (one of the best games of 2011, for all its technical issues).

I don't understand the hate for flash games. As a general purpose Ad Content creation platform, I absolutely hate flash, but when it comes down to games there are hundreds of open source engines, thousands of books on game development on the platform and hundreds of thousands of tutorials all over the internet.

It's a popular game platform that works really well for game developers with more of an artistic background than our traditional systems or web developer (and art is arguable more important than code in a successful video game). As a web developer I don't hate Linux kernel hackers for the tools and platforms they use, and there's no reason I should hate on the tools and platforms game developers use either. It's an entirely different field.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#78

Post by shardling »

kayoone wrote: post #70
dpitkin wrote: post #65

Hi, I just looked into it and the check to Tommy and Edmund from Canonical is in process for the 77 copies of Super Meat Boy. We have been working together since November to get it resolved, no piracy here just some miscommunication. David Pitkin Canonical

77 copies in a year? The same game sold 20.000 copies on Launchday on the Xbox360. Seems like Linux gaming still has a long way to go. Steam isnt doing it for direct profit reasons either, they just want to push the software platform of their new console! But dont get me wrong, i like the direction, its just that linux gaming is totally irrelevant from a market perspective.

It was put in the store way after its initial release on most platforms. And I'm pretty sure anyone who got it in the humble bundle got a direct download.

Trying to infer something about the state of Linux gaming from this single statistic is just kinda silly.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#79

Post by shardling »

hdra wrote: post #20
ma2000 wrote: post #18

While watching the video/trailer for the most recent Humble Bundle, I was put off by the games this time around. The one mentioned in this article for example, looked like a basic Flash game. So as an outsider to this indie gaming world, I can understand why they might have superficially rejected it - it's probably a great game if you give it a chance. Just thought that someone should point this out because the comme…

I don't think that's the problem here. The problem the developers of the game have seems to be the fact that Canonical is claiming "the authors of Binding of Issac [sic] declined to make their game available" when the truth is they are the one who rejected the game. Put it plainly, they lied. To me personally, it felt like Canonical is trying to appear "open", while in fact they are controlling their own store's cont…

No, that's not quite right.

They initially rejected the game. Once it got popular, Canonical wanted to put it in, but because of the earlier rejection and the SMB stuff, Ed declined.

So their statement was technically correct, but without knowing the full context was misleading.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#80

Post by shardling »

dkersten wrote: post #50
ma2000 wrote: post #18

While watching the video/trailer for the most recent Humble Bundle, I was put off by the games this time around. The one mentioned in this article for example, looked like a basic Flash game. So as an outsider to this indie gaming world, I can understand why they might have superficially rejected it - it's probably a great game if you give it a chance. Just thought that someone should point this out because the comme…

Binding of Isaac is a fantastic game. The theme may be a bit strange and the graphics aren't anything special (though I do feel the graphics suit the gameplay), but the gameplay is top notch. In fact, I bought this bundle specifically for the Binding of Isaac DLC. Machinarium was a flash game too and yet it is still a great game. Being a flash game doesn't necessarily mean the game is not any good. I do understand wh…

Well, there are problems with BoI that occur specifically because it is a Flash game. (Thus the rewrite mentioned elsewhere.)
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