It was always an outside chance. I knew that, you knew that, heck even my cat Penelope knew that. But, if I’m honest, there’s something about seeing it confirmed that, well, still feels a trite unexpected.
What am I waffling about? Don’t pretend you didn’t read the headline.
Borderlands 2 on Linux
Last week the boss of Gearbox Software, Randy Pitchford, sent Linux gamers into a spin when he, seemingly out of the blue, announced that he was looking into the feasibility of bringing their acclaimed first-person shooter epic Borderlands 2 to Linux.
Jaws dropped, trigger fingers twitched and hearts fluttered that little bit faster.
Now, a few days on and having ‘looked into it’, Pitchford returned to Twitter to deliver a less than encouraging decision:
@Two__Tone It happened. I talked to some people. I talked to some people about it today, too. I wouldn't get your hopes up too much…
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) April 22, 2014
So what gives? Seems like the old chestnut of spend versus return was at play, as Pitchford hints at in a reply:
@Two__Tone We can maneuver with markets. Today, unfortunately, the mind share cost cannot be rationalized and the economics are poor.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) April 23, 2014
While, technically speaking, a port would be possible for a company like Gearbox to churn out it would, and this is the critical bit, require a huge amount of investment in man power, infrastructure, tools and testing.
The company has little experience in delivering their titles on Linux. And a game like Borderlands 2 must be an insanely complex beast. Any port would require more effort than navigating to “File > Export > Linux > Ok”.
So there we have it; we probably won’t be wrestling with a badass bullymong on Linux anytime soon.
But while we should never say never, we should be realistic — and so should Gearbox Software. Gaming on Linux is only going to grow bigger…