Ryan,<br><br>I am writing this in the hopes that you will read this and maybe even consider responding.<br><br>On November 19, 2007 we saw the release of Unreal Tournament 3 for PC. Since then, there had been ports of this game from x86 based code to two completely different CPU architectures. I am, of course, talking about PowerPC that is powering XBOX 360 and the heavily modified PowerPC that is power PS3. The said ports, both happened within 6 months of the PC version being released, with the PS3 version using OpenGL for rendering. This is now almost 2 years after the initial PC release and so far we have only seen screen captures of Unreal Tournament 3 running in Ubuntu GNU/Linux and Macintosh OS X. At this point in time, where a full blown game could've been designed, built and produced, one question remains. Where is the Linux version of Unreal Tournament 3?<br>
<br>Around the beginning April of 2008, Mark Rein was interviewed about Unreal Engine and Gears of War 2 (I do not remember the context or who did the interview). During the interview he stated that Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux has become a pet project. As someone who was trained to be a developer in college (BS in Computer Information Science, CUNY @ Brooklyn College, Summer 2007) I know what happens to pet projects when you are in a workplace; they get mothballed. In the art book that came with the collector's edition of Unreal Tournament 3, Mike Capps (President of Epic Games), writes the following (emphasis mine):<br>
<br><blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">Our message to you, is that we really, really care about this franchise, about making fun games, about constantly pushing games technology forward, and <b>about fans like you</b>. You might not always like what we do, and you're not shy about telling us on the forums when you don't! But what keeps us up late nights on this franchise isn't money, or fame - not even the physiologically unsound amount of caffeine drunk at Epic could keep us up that late.<br>
</blockquote><div><br>I work for a managed services provider and can guarantee you that in the past year you have dealt directly (even more so indirectly) with the systems which we support for our clients. I also know how such paragraphs get written. First, notice how Mr. Capps mentions fans (us, the subscribers to this list) at the very end of the sentence, we are clearly the last in the line of thoughts of at the very least, the upper management (fans always are). Second, Mr. Capps mentions that it's not the money or the fame or the caffeine that keeps everyone up late at night. What does keep everyone up late at night are the deadlines that are always arbitrarily set (you can never set a realistic deadline on a software project). The deadlines come from contracts, which also mention very large amount of money. But no matter how bad the things get, you always tell the client that everything is peachy. That is how business works. Thirdly we have the blurb from Mr. Rein that Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux is a pet project.<br>
<br>At this point (after almost 2 years since the initial release), we have had updates from you (via <a href="http://phoronix.com">phoronix.com</a>) that the Linux client is still being worked on and that bugs are being fixed and client optimized. But is it really? Are there so many bugs at this point that you would not even release a beta version to allow the gaming community to test it? This is something we are willing to do for free! (and have done so for many MMOs) Heck, we've even payed to beta test games by the means of pre-ordering them. Let us help you!<br>
<br>Sincerely,<br>Slava<br>Someone who can't play UT3<br></div>