I love Steam Play! Thanks to it, i can play Dying Light at 60 fps and the windows version of Tower of Time is more stable than the native one (but cut scenes don't work in Steam Play). I also get that it enables some people to switch to Linux which is great. I also love what you do Liam but i don't get why you regularly promote Windows only games on GamingOnLinux? You're obviously right to play what you want but as an old Linux gamer i remember the time when you were explaining people why it is important to be sure Linux sales are counted really as Linux ones. Our market share is still small, there are lots of unknown Linux native games that deserve attention and Steam Play does not provide any guarantee a game will stay playable.

If some devs would specifically target and support Steam Play, then i would be ok with it as they would be supporting Linux. There are games I would like to buy and play now. I've been waiting Shadow of the Tomb Raider for some time now. But honestly, how many people would buy a game a second time when it comes to Linux? What would happen if, when a port comes, a large part of Linux gamers already bought the Windows version? Will we reached the 0.1% market share? I'm not sure this is going to convince more devs to consider supporting Linux.

Once again, if the devs make the effort to guarantee Steam Play support, and count Steam Play as Linux sales, then i'm fine with it. It does not seem to be the case here.

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Steam Play is a wonderful thing but we still need two things:

• Linux sales that count as Linux ones and not Windows


• Official Linux support either natively or via Steam Play

I won't buy this game until it release on Linux because i know that if i do buy it now, I won't buy it again when it comes to Linux, so my copy would count as a Windows sales.

There are pleinty of good Linux games by developers who did the effort to support us that deserve more attention that windows-only games.

A good use of Steam Play is to me games like Dying Light that are supported on Linux but run better on Steam Play. My copy counts as a Linux sale, developers deserve my money as they made the effort to target us and I can play at 60fps on average hardware.

Of course everyone is free to buy and play what he wants. But for those who care about having more games targeting Linux, it's wiser to buy Linux games than windows-only ones.

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Quoting: YoRHa-2Bwined3d is - for the most part - just good eough right now.

Wined3d is too slow to be called good enough. With the same hardware I can play Dying Light at 60fps with DXVK (thanks a lot!!) but most DX9 games at arround 20fps with wined3d which is too slow for action games. But with nine I get back the 60fps?. If only nine could be in vanilla.

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Quoting: damarrinGOG's point of view is be grateful we're even doing this much for you.[...] We hate on them because they haven't given us what they've given others, they still don't care about us because we haven't brought in the money.

I don't hate GOG. They are a business, they want to grow and Linux is certainly not the best place to invest for that. It respect it. Actually i buy a lot of games on GOG, more than on Steam! So i'm definitely not a hater but there are problems and the excuse that they're not big enough to have Galaxy on Linux is just plain wrong as Itch which is much smaller does very well for a long time. One of the reason i desperately want Galaxy is updating can be a nightmare. Games that have several DLC are a such a pain to update. I have to download the full installer for the base game and one installer per DLC available, then replace the game folder because overwriting does not always work and install each DLC manually! When you consider GOG have games in early access which updates often, then you spend a lot of time updating. In the Steam client, this is just a checkbox per DLC with all activated by default and automatic updates. This so much more convenient!

Not to mention i don't have a fast connection so downloading the full installer per update is annoying. In Steam games updates are generally much smaller. And finally there is the multiplayer issue, cloud saves, overlay, social features, etc. I don't blame GOG for treating us like this: they are a business, they make the decisions necessary to grow. But we, as Linux gamers, have to acknowledge that GOG support for Linux is the bare minimal and that it is their deliberate choice to not prioritize it. We can not blame someone for not loving you. The best behavior in that case is moving on.

My guess is GOG always thought their best way to grow is convincing big publishers to come on the store. Bethesda and 2K have recently joined so this is clearly what was to be done. But i fear GOG did not invest as much as it should have to offer developers an easy uploading experience. There's gonna be many big stores now. It becomes harder and harder for developers to upload their games on each "big" store. Providing an effort-less uploading experience is probably going to be a strong point to get love from devs.

Recently i asked the developers of "The Long Dark" to upload on GOG the last version. They answered promptly that they already sent the new version to GOG but it took several weeks (yes i said weeks!) for users to finally see the new version available. When you consider many games left GOG recently (like "The Long Dark" for example), this is not clear if those game are going to be updated. Fortunately this is the case for this game, but it will not be for all.

Like probably many people here i care about DRM, i would love to see GOG support us like first-class citizen and i understand this is not their best move as a private company. Like one person said above, they're just being rational, so must we. This is not hate, this is acknowledging problems and selecting which company we want to support exactly like GOG select which gamers they want to support.

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Quoting: Sir_DiealotGOG have been supporting Linux as was discussed back then for years, yet people keep whining.

I wish people were more honest. Like most Windows users won't ever use anything else most Steam users won't use anything else either. It's change, it's inconvenient and people don't like that. I understand, just cut the excuses, please.

There's no excuses, just plain facts. I think all the people that commented here liked GOG but it hard to support a store when objectively they don't care that much about you.

The excuses are that GOG is too small to have the ressources of port Galaxy on Linux. Sure GOG is much smaller than Steam but it is bigger than Itch whose client works nicely on Linux. GOG have money or ar least they had. Like any company they prioritize where to invest it. Feature parity for Linux customer is just very low on their priority list. Even if they had ten times the money they have now they would most probably use it to gain market shares on Windows or Mac. I think they put their efforts into bringing big developers to GOG. Through the years many big publisher have joined. This is surely a better move for the business than suppprting such a small niche as we are.

So GOG support for Linux is minimal. Many people here said they do not buy on GOG anymore. So this cannot be fear of change but just going towards he ones supporting Linux

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Oh, i would have think Linux number to be higher in North America. I'm actually pretty surprised (and proud :)) that European countries along with Brazil and Russia made a 10% sales on Linux!

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Your content is great! GamingOnLinux is one of the few site i read every day. I just would like the articles to not over-advertise games and stores until there is a high chance that they actually support Linux for real. The obvious example is the recent closed-plarforms-only store specialized into exclusives that i won't name but even grey stores such as the one dedicated to DRM-Freeness which objectively half support us which is not the worst we've seen, but not the greatest too! Articles already rewards initiatives towards Linux gaming, which is awesome, but i do hope to see more criticism against what hurt Linux gaming.

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It was obvious from the beginning Linux was not a priority. How many times did we have false hope like this? How many projects on kickstarter did not deliver the promised Linux version? We had GOG telling us "soon" for years.

There are developers and store that care about Linux. We should focus on these ones because they make efforts towards making Linux a solid gaming platform. But more importantly there are many others that don't give a shit. Those ones we should just ignore them.

If there is something we have to learn from the 20 years of gaming on Linux is help the ones committed to Linux, don't trust promices but results.

Epic, like GOG, obviosuly say "maybe in the future". It the easy and safe thing to say. But in the meantime they hurt the Linux gaming community. And yes it does include GOG, just have a look at how many games with Linux version on Steam do not have one on GOG? The usual explaination from devs is their games use galaxy for multiplayer, which on GOG is a perfectly normal thing. So sorry to disappoint the ones saying "We still have GOG", that's wrong. By the way, I'm not anti-GOG, I buy a large number of games there. GOG have lots of good points, but Linux support is not one of them.

Likewise, I'm very sad about how much the Linux gaming community welcomed the Epic store while it not supporting Linux. We certainly made welcomed but undeserved advertisement to a anti-Linux store. We should add to the "no tux, no bux" the "no tux, no post".

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I'm a bit worried about this move actually. I've already seen 4 stores collapse (IndieVania, Desura and Indie Game Stand and ShinyLoot). I don't think Steam may fall any time soon, but i won't be so confident about Itch or GOG. Will these two survive another big store? I hope so but how to be sure? What happens of bought games when the platform closes? Ok games are DRM-Free on GOG, but backups are not the solution here. What about updates?

Developers are i guess more than happy to widen their sales but not that much when it comes to keep all the version in every store in sync: Armello was on GOG, but not its DLC, and now it's even gone. Same story for Human Fall Flat. We have never seen the Linux version of many games on GOG too. Will developers manage to keep the same level of quality for every store? What happen to their users when they they abandon a store?

How about multiplayer? Does every store will have its closed multiplayer pool or will we be able to play with friends from different stores?

I can't help but think that all of this looks like preparations for the next big thing in gaming: streaming.

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Microsoft is not as much anti Linux as they used to be. So this is unlikely MS forbit Obsidian and inXile to do Linux versions. But often when a comapny is bought by a big one, business decisions are slowly made more and more by the buying one until the two are completely fused. Unfortunalety it is unprovable that MS will consider Linux a big enough market worth investing in. I'm actually quite worried about that.

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