Linden Labs Buys Desura

On July 10, Linden Lab announced it had acquired Desura, a digital distribution platform based in Australia. Sometimes compared to Steam, Desura is best known for focusing on small independent games, or "indie games," instead of those from the bigger companies Steam has. This continues the trend of Linden Lab buying or establishing platforms centered around user-generated content, such as Patterns, Blocksworld, and Versu.

In the Linden Lab press statement, Mark Humble stated, "Desura puts the best games, mods, and downloadable content from developers at gamers’ fingertips, ready to buy and play. The free Desura application can serve and patch games, mods, and add-ons directly for customers around the world. Developers and publishers can share news, images, videos, and other content through their profiles, while every member of the Desura community can post comments, submit reviews, and upload screenshots from their own playing experiences. Desura also demystifies user-made mods and add-ons for games by making them as easy to find and install or update as professional titles."

Desura called it's acquisition, "an important milestone in the company's history, with much more to come."

For our community of gamers, publishers, and developers, rest assured Desura shall continue running uninterrupted. Long term, expect plenty of polish as we continually strive to innovate and differentiate ourselves as we have done in the past with our Linux client, alphafunding, mod support and self-publishing for developers. We have big plans and many ideas to explore, and the resources we now have as part of Linden Lab will allow us to do just that.

Our aim remains to put great games, mods, and downloadable content at the fingertips of players - and we look forward to doing this in a greatly expanded manner and challenging ourselves to grow with the games we support.

In an open letter to its game developers, the Desura team stated, "... To date Desura has been built and run by a dedicated small team- and it's grown to the point where we list over 1,000 games and have served over 1,000,000 customers. We are very passionate about the developers and community we represent, and I want to assure you now this policy isn't changing. With Linden Lab's support, we plan on expanding our team and providing you with more co-ordinated coverage, sales, marketing efforts, reporting, and assistance from us. We want to solve challenges like discoverability and giving your customers' choice, and we look forward to doing so. We are going to continue to polish and innovate so Desura stands out and does its most important job better: getting your game into customers' hands. ..."

There have been a few opinions about the matter, and considering it's earlier moves some wondered if this was another move to "throw enough things at the wall and hope something sticks." In the SL Universe forums, a couple people expressed worry that Linden Lab would just "gut" Desura of it's technology and then close it down like when it acquired "Avatars United."

Iris Ophelia expressed the opinion that Desura was different from Linden Lab's earlier moves, "At points, it seined like they were snapping up promising creative gaming projects and hoping that one might magically blossom into the next Minecraft. But they've yet to demonstrate the follow-through that would be necessary to make that happen." They neither had a community of fans nor did the Lab did anything to nurture one. "But Desura is very different. If we're talking about Linden Lab buying up projects to see what will stick, Desura's already well into the process of sticking, if not already 'stuck.''

Iris called Desura, "Steam for Indie games … if you're big on indie games, you're probably big on Desura." And indie games were what Iris called "a big f**king deal. In the past few years, some of the most memorable games have been indies that seemingly came out of nowhere. … this segment of game development is big and only getting bigger. Desura appeared at the perfect time to take advantage of this, making an array of publishing and vending tools available to just about anyone with a game they wanted to sell."

Linden Lab made what could be a brilliant move, Iris felt. Provided the Lab can help keep it's momentum and help fix what problems it has, this could easily be it's best purchase, "I'm not worried about Desura 'sticking,' so long as Linden Lab sticks with Desura."

Most responding to Iris's article expressed optimism, though there was one person asking, "What does this have to do with Second Life?"

So it seems Linden Lab, for once, made the right move at the right place at the right time. But will they continue to avoid blunders with their new acquisition?

Bixyl Shuftan

Sources: Linden Lab, Desura, Wikipedia, New World Notes, Business Wire,  Techcrunch

Phoenix Viewer Support to End Dec 31st. (Full Article)

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Monday Dec 17th, Jessica Lyon announced on the Phoenix-Firestorm blog that support for the Phoenix Viewer would soon come to a close. There had been a meeting Saturday the 15th in which the details were discussed. The news about the viewer support ending was first announced there. The reason: Linden Lab's plans for improving Grid performance in what they call "Project Shinning," which involves what the Second Life Wiki calls "Server side 'texture baking.'" For newer viewers the result will be less lag, at least according to Linden Lab. But for Viewer-1 based viewers, the result is what Oz Linden was quoted as saying "a world of gray, cloudy avatars."


"The clock is now ticking,"  Tonya Souther, the leader of Phoenix-Firestorm's Mac viewer development team, wrote in her blog, "We asked for at least two months' ntice, and yesterday we got that." She stated Linden Lab would like to bring the code active in February, but would work with Team Phoenix-Firestorm and other third-party viewer teams to make sure all have it and work it in before it finally arrives, "you will have to upgrade your viewer sometime in February or early March. No exceptions."

Oz Linden had made his intentions known months earlier in July, which Tonya commented put Viewer-1 viewers on "borrowed time … The loan is about to come due."

Jessica Lyon on the Phoenix-Firestorm website stated emphatically they were not trying to tell Phoenix users what to use, nor were they or Linden Lab blocking or actively stopping the Phoenix Viewer. But there were changes coming, and they had to change along with them. "I realize this decision will not be popular among our Phoenix users, and I apologize for that," but she asked users to read the facts, or watch the Office Hour video she made. before complaining.

In the speech she made, Jessica reminded Team Phoenix-Firestorm were volunteers, working without pay, whom liked helping people, being appreciated for it, and coding new features. They had created Phoenix more than two years ago in order for Second Life residents to keep using the features of the defunct Emerald viewer. But over time, it was becoming clear updating it with the Viewer 2 features was becoming increasingly difficult. So they created the Firestorm Viewer based on Viewer 2 technology. Continuing to work with the Phoenix Viewer was just simply becoming too difficult. "Can we keep it alive? Yes we can, but it would be a heck of a lot more work than it's worth." If someone wanted to "fork" the Viewer and develop it further themselves, they were free to do so. Though they knew of only "one or two copybot viewer developers" who were doing so.

Support for the Phoenix Viewer would officially cease on December 31, but they were creating a new "peer to peer support group" for those who still insist on using the viewer: "Phoenix Viewer Self Help." "It will largely be a group of Phoenix users helping Phoenix Viewers."

Tonya's comments to those whose computers couldn't use Firestorm or other Viewer 2 or Viewer 3 viewers: It was time to either upgrade their computers, or buy new machines, "Sorry, folks, but you will have to spend some money. There's no way around it."

Responses to both Jessica's announcement and Tonya's blog entry were mostly civil, even positive. Some responders called the move to halt Phoenix development "long overdue," happy to hear the team was free to concentrate solely on Firestorm.  Some, mostly polite, stated they would be sticking with Phoenix for now saying Firestorm didn't work on their computers as well. A couple readers stated that they would be preparing to leave the Grid, one saying, "Thanks everyone on the Phoenix team, the best viewer I've ever used in my time in SL. I'm really grateful and appreciate all the hard (no-pay) work you have done over the years. … But everything has an end, and this will be mine."

To watch the Office Hour video, Click Here.

Inara Pey's article on Project Shinning and "bake fail" Here.

For Daniel Voyager's article: Click Here. 

Sources: Phoenix-Firestorm Blog,  The Tigress Second Den

Bixyl Shuftan