[oclug] Bad News re Loki

[Brad Barnett]

Quoting Dave Edwards <dle1 at sympatico.ca>:

> Hey Gang,
> 
> I just read that Lokigames has filed for bankruptcy.  It's unlikey that 

Not true, they've filed for restructing and _protection_ from bankrupcy, a
Chapter 7 in the US.  Not the same thing.

> they'll pull their fat from the fire, but in any event, it's another 
> weight on the other side of the scales for the arguments, *OSS and 
> business can't co-exist*, or *OSS advocates/Linux users are cheapskates 
> and freeloaders*, i.e., *it really _is_ about ``free beer'' -- they
> won't 
> pay.''*  It also adds to a large problem:  the absence of popular apps, 
> games in this case.  
> 
> It may well be that Lokigames is a poorly run business, and as always, 

They certainly started out that way.  Of the first 6 or 7 games they did, 5 of
them were virtually unusable until patches came out, and even then some of them
weren't fully usable until about a *year* after the release date.  A very, very
poor way to run a company.  I remember being unable to finish heavy gearII,
heroesIII, mythII, and civII-CTP because of crashing issues, that even today
aren't fully fixed (re: heroesIII, civ).

They seem to have gotten their act together near the end, and used the user
based to help with debugging.  It makes a big difference, that's for sure.  SOF
and Rune were much more impressive, in terms of stability.

Keep in mind that usable =! "it runs".  Usable is defined by the fact that I can
actually finish the game without it getting to an unpassable point due to
crashing.  

Anyhow, they may recover.  I have a feeling that this is more due to lame
investors pulling out.  After all, Loki has only been around 3 years or so, I
wouldn't expect them to make any money for the first 5 years in this market.


> it's unjust to extrapolate from the failure of only one organization
> (the 
> collapses of traditional software companies tend not to percolate to the
> 
> top of the news), but Lokigames is a fairly visible company, and this 
> will be taken as another bellwether of the demise of Linux/OSS, as when 
> Eazel folded -- remember the ``Linux on the desktop is dead'' meme? 
> Here 
> it comes again.  Sigh.
> 
> Dave.
> -- 
> ``Science fiction and nostalgia have become the same thing.'' 
> --T-Bone Burnett
> PGP Public Key http://www3.sympatico.ca/amoamasam/dle-public-key.asc
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