Friday, December 18, 2009

Has Transgaming Abandoned Cedega

Pretty much anyone who has used Linux for at least a short while is aware of Wine technology and what it does. For many Linux users, largely Linux gamers, having properly working Wine technology is essential to their everyday computer user. The topic of commercial Wine software has been known to cause many heated discussions over the years on various Linux message boards. It appears at long last that perhaps this seemingly eternal argument may finally be coming to an end. Transgaming, the company behind Cedega, appears to be finally putting down its (some would say much controversial) Linux software.

While nothing official has been posted by the company itself, I feel it is pretty obvious Transgaming is letting Cedega die a slow death. November 13th 2009 marked the one year date since we last saw an update in Cedega's news page - The Den. While we did see a small update to the software in August - this did not add any new functionality to Cedega, it simply resolved an issue a World of Warcraft update had introduced. It is also heavily obvious that Transgaming does not check their user forums (or they really just don't care about what happens there if they do). There is now a two page thread on the boards of users simply asking for news on what is going on with the company/future of Cedega - we've gotten no official response.

The best conclusion I can come to is that Transgaming no longer sees any profit in Linux gaming and they are instead moving all of their focus to their Cider Mac software (which has has several updates over the last year - adding support for new games and such). I'd encourage anyone wanting to support Linux gaming to not to send Transgaming your hard earned money if this is how they are going to operate. I'd be willing to bet that they have not put out an official statement so they can try to bleed out every last cent out of their dieing product before they put the final nail in it's coffin (if ever). I understand if they need to let the project die - but at least tell as such, don't leave us guessing.

Anyone else have input in the situation? I'm letting my Cedega subscription lapse at the end of this month and will not be renewing unless they get their act together and start communicating with their customers.

Update: It appears Cedega might be hanging in there...

Regards,
~Jeff Hoogland

15 comments:

  1. Forget Cedega...get with the WineHQ.

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  2. The only reasonable alternative to Cedega is CXGames for someone who wants stability and consistency in their Wine software...

    That being said there are a number of applications the Cedega runs much better than Wine (and some it runs that don't run at all under Wine). Its just a shame they are throwing it away.

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  3. In the long run the only reasonable alternative to Cedega is Playonlinux !

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  4. Sure Playonlinux is a nice front-end for Wine and its FREE.. whoohoo! But where does all of that Wine code come from?
    Codeweavers is by far the biggest contributor to the Wine Project.

    So in the long run to support Codeweavers is to support Wine development. It's that simple :)

    Tom

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  5. I dropped Cedega/Transgaming quite a while ago after supporting them for several years. They seemed to move steadily away from their original stated goals of working closely with Wine as time went on and started looking a bit too much like the "big boys" for my taste. As time went on I found less reason to care about new Windows only games and standard Wine supported the older games I cared about just as well as Cedega did. These days there are plenty of decent Linux games so the need to play Windows games for entertainment has been greatly reduced.

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  6. Agreed with the above comment. There are a lot of Linux games out now, and if there is a lot of pressure for a Windows-only title it often gets supported by Wine. I'm more interested in Wine for playing old Windows GUI games (won't run in DOSbox), and just want to see full support for these older games slowly ironed out so that it will be the preferred way to "emulate" these older games in the future. Any games that are made for Windows and Mac has a 99% chance of running on Linux too, even if the stupid company doesn't publically support it (see Blizzard and other examples. Yes, Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 will work under Linux due to Wine, if not have their own ports but I sadly doubt it).

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  7. It is unfortunate that the reality of "little profit" and less of it in the future for TransGaming Linux has the Linux gaming community sad and/or up in arms.

    These folk need to understand that unless and until a high quality Linux/Cross platform gaming engine becomes popular, the fate of Linux gaming is sealed.

    There is no room today - it appears - for a "niche" any technology market.

    That's reality.

    Posted by 15 plus years GNU/Linux strong advocate and consultant.

    W. Anderson

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  8. @Anonumous

    Transgaming is starting to send patches to wine. It's interesting to say the least.

    http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2009-December/080667.html

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  9. @Last Poster - Thats very interesting. Hopefully we will see some more of that. Cedega has very good DX rendering - For instance I can run Crysis under Cedega...

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  10. @Jeff91
    I have never used Cedega before, so I personally wouldn't know. I just keep an eye on the wine development list.

    I do hope they do continue this new support of wine.

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  11. CEDEGA WAS UPDATED ON AUGUST 20TH 2009

    Cedega has 1,500 Linux games in their database:

    http://www.cedega.com/gamesdb

    If you weren't a clueless whiner, you'd know that software is complicated and updates take time. It's also possible Cedega is stable and doesn't need constant updates. PHP forums are for clueless whiners anyways, so read them again and post some more blogs for idiots.

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  12. PC gaming in general is a declining industry, even under Windows. Most of the developers concentrate on consoles.

    Lawrence D’Oliveiro

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  13. @Anonymous two posts up: I know my facts - "While we did see a small update to the software in August - this did not add any new functionality to Cedega, it simply resolved an issue a World of Warcraft update had introduced." I am not clueless and I keep up to date on the topic I write about.

    Thank you for posting a comment with out fully reading the article though - that is smart!

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  14. My opinion is :

    if Transgaming doesn't even make the effort to take 5 minutes to post a tiny progress report every few months, to reply to the growing users worries, it means that the situation is worse than expected.

    OK, there was an update in august but it was another WoW fix (as most Cedega updates :-)

    OK, there was a kind of progress report, but it was so vague and uninformative it really gave me the feeling there was no real work undertaken.

    I don't want to blame them. Just want them to be honest. It's not a shame to put the focus on the Mac platform. Just tell us and we'll stop bothering once & for all !

    As far as I'm concerned, most games I want work properly through wine. Also, since recently, I mostly play native ones anyway (thanks to LGP & independant studios/devs).

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  15. CodeWeavers and Wine-Reviews have put together a special dealcode just for gamers and especially Transgamers. So if your a current or ex Transgaming Cedega customer and you would like to take the leap and switch over to CrossOver Games now is the perfect time to do so. With this special dealcode "ComeToTheLight" you will receive a instant 25% discount off the normal retail price of CrossOver Games or CrossOver Professional.

    Thats right, this dealcode will drop the price of CrossOver Games down to only $29.96 And Crossover Professional down to only $52.46, CrossOver Professional comes bundled with a full copy of CX Games by the way.

    Full Article

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