The questions a company will not answer are always interesting. Recently I asked TransGaming if its seeming abandonment of its users who rely on Cedega to play World of Warcraft was merely an oversight, or if the company is too busy concentrating on its Mac projects to bother with Linux users. Almost two weeks ago, Blizzard Entertainment pushed through a required World of Warcraft patch that made the game unplayable for many Linux users, reducing frame rates to unacceptable levels, causing distorted sound, and making the OpenGL graphics engine more difficult to switch to. Considering TransGaming's history of rapidly addressing WoW patch issues, this is unusual behavior. Couple that with total silence from the company and you have a genuine mystery on your hands. What's going on at TransGaming?
Cedega subscribers pay U.S. $5.50 per month to get the latest updates to the game engine that allows many popular Windows games to run nicely in Linux (review here). If you stop paying, you can forever use the newest version you downloaded. However, with Cedega-breaking World of Warcraft patches coming out almost once per month, a Cedega subscription is practically a requirement for Linux WoW players. Traditionally, TransGaming has responded quickly to WoW patch issues and not only communicated its efforts via its Web site and user forum, but issued a game engine update that fixes the problem within a matter of days. This time around, though, TransGaming representatives have ignored the 2.2.0 patch problems and refused to respond to bug reports and forum posts related to these issues. When I sent TransGaming a press request email asking what was going on, I was not given the benefit of a reply.
It's possible that the WoW 2.2.0 patch has introduced huge problems that TransGaming programmers are having trouble fixing, and they are so busy working on the problem that they don't have time to let their rapidly diminishing subscriber base know that a solution is forthcoming. That would be a fairly unusual situation though, especially in the face of several forum posters (myself included) vowing to cancel Cedega subscriptions if there is no immediate communication from the company. How many subscribers can TransGaming lose before it takes the issue seriously?
Maybe TransGaming execs have come to the realization that fruitheads will pay any amount of money for anything Apple-related, and Linux users are reluctant to pay for anything, ever. Apple is, comically, the low-hanging fruit for TransGaming. You don't have to look very far to see how committed the company is to the OS X platform -- in his latest message, the TransGaming founder gushes over the gaming industry response to his company's attention toward Macs, and the Cider product page says: "Why should developers and publishers consider the Mac market? In the last quarter alone, Apple shipped over 1.5 million Macs, generating the most profitable quarter in Apple's history. Apple's financial results represent growth of 36%, more than three times the industry growth rate with analysts forecasting an installed base in excess of 12 million Intel Macs by the end of 2007. A poll of Mac purchasers conducted by Apple shows that nearly 50% of buyers are new to Mac which implies that more and more Windows users are switching to Mac. With only a small collection of games available historically, the Mac gaming market today has been a void that Cider is now filling." That may well be a nice way of saying "Screw you $5.50 per month Linux chumps -- Apple's where the money is."
On behalf of all jilted Cedega subscribers, I'd like to sarcastically thank Steve Jobs for providing an artistic-poseur metrosexual identity and personality cult for all of the world's richest morons. Without crApple, TransGaming would still be trying hard to maintain a good Linux product. So how long will it be until TransGaming dumps Cedega altogether?
The only good news is, the latest Wine release solves all of the problems that Cedega has with WoW patch 2.2.0, so you don't need to go running back to Windows just yet, but you do need to install and configure Wine. Hope you're not missing out on any raids in the meantime.
Update: Shortly after this article published, TransGaming woke up and started replying to week-old problem reports and forum posts. Unfortunately, the responses offer only superficial advice that doesn't fix subscriber problems. It's a start, but the real issue is not whether TransGaming will fix these problems eventually -- the issue is that the lightning speed of Cedega updates post-WoW patches is entirely gone. Cedega burns while TransGaming fiddles with Apple ports.
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