type limited company industry video games founded october 15 2001 headquarters nottingham uk key people clive crous ceo 2012 present michael simms founder and lgp business adviser ceo 2001 2012 frank c. earl senior developer website www.linuxgamepublishing.com linux game publishing sometimes also referred to as lgp is a software company based in nottingham in england . it ports publishes and sells video games running on linux operating systems . as well as porting games lgp also sponsors the development of grapple a free software network library for games . as well as acting as a linux game porter in of themselves they also function as a publisher for other linux game developers and porters . contents 1 history 1.1 2001 2012 1.2 2012 present 2 games published 2.1 supported 2.2 unsupported 2.3 upcoming 3 copy protection 3.1 games published 4 open source projects 5 canceled projects 6 unreleased projects 7 see also 8 references 9 external links history edit 2001 2012 edit creatures internet edition was the first game published by lgp the company was founded on october 15 2001 by michael simms when the similarly oriented loki software filed for bankruptcy . 1 simms had previously founded the tux games retailer a few years earlier and the collapse of loki would have gravely affected his available stock . linux game publishing had initially tried to pick up the support rights to many of loki s titles but in the end it was only able to acquire the rights to mindrover the europa project . it was able however to independently pick up the publishing rights to creatures internet edition as well as the rights to the port of majesty gold edition which was previously being developed by tribsoft . 2 3 empowered by the addition of former loki employee mike phillips lgp released its first title on december 21 2001 . 4 in 2002 ryan c. gordon a.k.a. icculus former loki software started porting the puzzle game candy cruncher to linux and he was looking for beta testers . the first linux version of candy cruncher was released in 2002 by pyrogon an indie game company founded by former employee of 3dfx and id software brian hook as a digital download . 5 lgp took interest in publishing pyrogon games on physical cds and on september 10 2002 lgp and pyrogon announced a publishing partnership for pyrogon s linux titles . 6 upon learning about the release of postal 2 in 2003 ryan decided to contact the developer behind it wondering if they would be interested in him making a port of the game to linux . loki had previously ported the original postal to linux and he was interested in keeping the franchise compatible . 7 running with scissors agreed and the finished port was shipped on february 14 2005 with lgp initially handling the publishing of the linux version . 8 in 2003 hyperion entertainment and metropolis software have extended their existing license agreement for gorky 17 . linux gaming developers steven fuller and joe tennies joined to the hyperion entertainment game development team and they ported gorky 17 to linux which three years later was published by lgp . 9 shadowgrounds survivor is the latest game published by lgp david hedbor founder and main programmer of eon games an independent game development company specializing in creating games for desktop computers and handheld devices 10 ported ningpo mahjong and hyperspace delivery boy to linux which later were published by lgp . 11 the first version of ningpo mah jong for linux however was released in 2003 by pyrogon only as a digital download . 12 eon games stopped development and porting of games for linux and other platforms in 2005 and later closed in 2010 . 13 in 2003 lgp began working with epic interactive a german company specializing in porting and publishing games to alternative platforms . 14 epic interactive ported knights and merchants the shattered kingdom and software tycoon to linux . 15 in 2005 epic interactive has changed its name to runesoft entertainment . 16 in 2005 czech development studio mindware studios released the linux demo of cold war . 17 cold war was first lgp game published on dvd disc . lgp gained the publishing rights to several other game titles including soul ride as well as disciples ii dark prophecy . the latter has been described by michael simms as lgp s dnf and the game that refused to be ported and has been said to have been the cause of several resignations from the company including that of aforementioned employee mike phillips . 18 it has still alongside another long delayed game bandits phoenix rising yet to be released . 19 20 in 2005 lgp has announced the opening of their beta test for linux version of x2 the threat . 21 on march 13 2008 finnish game company frozenbyte announced a partnership with linux specialist igios ltd to port and release shadowgrounds and shadowgrounds survivor on the linux platform . 22 both ports were later published by lgp and lgp was actively involved in developing the shadowgrounds survivor port alongside igios . in december 2008 lgp released x3 reunion and x3 reunion special edition which were first games using copy protection and the new installer written to use the gtk2 toolkit and support for using xdg menus . 23 in december 2008 lgp launched penguinplay a new website for linux gamers allowing matchmaking for multiplayer games and social networking . 24 in june 2009 they began offering downloadable games and game rentals . 25 in august 2009 they grudgingly dropped support for all powerpc games stating that demand for ppc versions of lgp games has been almost non existent . 26 on august 10 2009 michael simms confirmed that lgp is working on an original simple game based on sudoku . 27 in september 2009 shadowgrounds first lgp game available in finnish language and shadowgrounds survivor were finally released the latter becoming the first commercial game for linux using the nvidia physx middleware . 28 in late december 2010 igios linux team founded new finnish company alternative games which is focus upon porting games to linux as well as to mac os x. 29 later they will also be ported linux version of trine for frozenbyte without linux game publishing . 30 in late september 2010 the linux game publishing server suffered a massive hard drive failure which took down all of their online infrastructure including related websites such as tux games and the linux game tome . 31 various other unforeseen issues caused the recovery not to take place until late november with partial service being restored on november 23 2010 32 with full recovery not being made until december 8 2010 . 33 they have since stated that work is going well on their current project and that they have a working build of it in internal alpha testing . 34 2012 present edit on january 31 2012 after over a decade with the company michael simms announced in a blog post that he was stepping down as ceo saying you can t continue on a high energy rampage for 10 years without something breaking and handing over control to clive crous citing his unrestrained enthusiasm for linux gaming as his primary qualification . 35 since august 2012 lgp has started selling their games in stores like desura gameolith and ubuntu software center . 36 however first information about lgp games in usc were shown up on canonical blog two years before . 37 in 2012 they shut down the penguinplay website . 38 in 2015 lgp decided to host their website on the heroku cloud service and they closed their support system hosted on tender . 39 in 2013 lgp removed several lgp s resellers from their list e.g. fun4tux ixsoft linuxpusher etc. in 2014 2015 lgp s resellers stopped to offer the service of rental or downloading eight games which used the lgp copy protection . games published edit supported edit title genre date of release available languages developer porter publisher creatures internet edition simulation december 21 2001 dutch english french german italian spanish creature labs creature labs linux game publishing mindrover the europa project strategy december 13 2002 english cognitoy loki software linux game publishing linux game publishing candy cruncher puzzle february 6 2003 english pyrogon ryan c. gordon linux game publishing majesty gold edition real time strategy april 15 2003 english cyberlore studios tribsoft linux game publishing linux game publishing ningpo mahjong puzzle january 21 2004 english pyrogon eon games linux game publishing hyperspace delivery boy puzzle action may 10 2004 english monkeystone games eon games linux game publishing software tycoon simulation january 10 2005 english german destrax entertainment software gbr runesoft linux game publishing postal share the pain first person shooter february 4 2005 english running with scissors ryan c. gordon linux game publishing soul ride sports june 24 2005 english slingshot linux game publishing linux game publishing gorky 17 tactical rpg june 15 2006 english german spanish french text only metropolis software hyperion entertainment linux game publishing cold war stealth august 4 2006 english german french russian spanish text only italian text only polish text only czech text only mindware studios mindware studios linux game publishing knights and merchants the shattered kingdom real time strategy march 13 2007 english german spanish french joymania entertainment runesoft linux game publishing linux game publishing ballistics racing june 7 2007 english grin linux game publishing linux game publishing jets n guns shoot em up january 29 2009 english rakeingrass rakeingrass linux game publishing linux game publishing sacred gold edition action role playing april 9 2009 english ascaron entertainment linux game publishing linux game publishing shadowgrounds shooter september 16 2009 english finnish frozenbyte igios linux game publishing linux game publishing shadowgrounds survivor shooter september 18 2009 english finnish frozenbyte igios linux game publishing linux game publishing unsupported edit title genre date of release available languages developer porter publisher x2 the threat space simulation may 30 2006 english german french italian egosoft linux game publishing linux game publishing x3 reunion space simulation december 5 2008 english german french italian text only egosoft linux game publishing linux game publishing x3 reunion special edition space simulation december 5 2008 english german french italian text only egosoft linux game publishing linux game publishing upcoming edit title genre date of release available languages developer porter publisher unknown title original lgp game 40 puzzle in development since 2009 linux game publishing linux game publishing linux game publishing bandits phoenix rising racing in development since 2003 english grin linux game publishing linux game publishing disciples ii dark prophecy turn based strategy in development since 2002 english strategy first linux game publishing linux game publishing copy protection edit linux game publishing employs a simple form of digital rights management similar to that employed by games for windows live . upon the first run of the game the user is prompted for a license key alongside their lgp user name and password . 41 some features includes 42 lgp copy protection does not require internet connection to install or play the game . this system does not require user to keep the disc inside the cd drive while playing games . this system enables users to install the game on multiple systems as there is not a limited number of activations while also discouraging sharing by noting that any user who has access to the owner s lgp account credentials could potentially lock the owner out of their own game . games published edit currently lgp has published nine games that contain their drm technology title drm box version digital version ballistics no none ballistics r2 none yes jets n guns yes yes majesty gold no none majesty gold r2 yes yes sacred gold edition yes yes shadowgrounds yes yes shadowgrounds survivor yes yes x2 the threat no none x2 the threat r2 none yes x3