EVE Online gives up Linux, but Mac support continues

In a developer’s blog entry entitled An update on Linux support, CCP Games producer Arend “CCP Whisper” Stührmann confirmed that the company is ceasing development of the Linux version of its massively multiplayer online game, EVE Online.

Linux support debuted in late 2007, at the same time as the Mac client of EVE Online was released. Both clients were facilitated through a development partnership with TransGaming Technologies, which used its Cider technology to make the Mac client, and used a similar technology called Cedega to make the game run on Linux operating systems. Alas, the effort had two different results on the separate platforms, according to Stührmann.

“… we have seen the same slow, steady growth in the numbers of users of the Mac client that has characterized the growth of EVE Online throughout its history. However we have not seen any similar growth in the numbers using our Linux client,” Stührmann wrote in his blog.

“The low amount of users of the Linux client did not justify the degree of additional complexity that maintaining three operating systems imposed on our development and release schedules,” said Stührmann.

Stührmann said that effective March 10, 2009, CCP Games will no longer officially support the Linux client. He said that the company has reached out to as many individual Linux players as it could find to tell them what was happening and to offer them options to continue to play EVE.

In a separate query on the EVE Insider discussion forum, Stührmann sought to reassure Mac users unsettled by this development.

“There are currently no plans to drop the Mac client. There is a large and growing Mac user base and we hope to get more Mac users from the launch of Apocrypha and Premium graphics,” wrote Stührmann.