I was thinking about this issue a lot. Games have a hard time on Linux with multiple sound architectures, different package management systems and not many ways to deploy their app easily. So the answers to these are use pulse audio, make a few different packages for different distros (which is expensive) or just deploy it on Ubuntu (which would piss off other distros) and deploying it at the moment is hosting it on your own website as a download.
In maverick we are getting a marketplace in the software center to sort out the deploying part and i presume thats going to have a centralized payment system so thats good for the game developers. My idea is that we can take this further. My idea is make something like like battle.net or steam (kinda).
Ok for those who don’t know steam is the payment management and distribution system for games and battle.net is just a payment management system for blizzard’s games.
So we have an SSO and now a marketplace, distribution and centralized payment system for maverick. Why not expose some info to games developers? The info that is needed depends on the game but if its something like WoW you would need the account info and if they paid for the game to log you in.
The idea is kind of a win win situation, the user wins because there is no login and its a simple system to handle everything for them and the developer wins because he doesn’t have to code a complex login system and he gets the payments handled too.
Thoughts?