Maybe the Linux market is far smaller than we usually think and in the end it makes much less difference. After all the customers have not much data on that and we must leave the business decisions to GOG.

Basically GOG has to decide whether they want to put emphasis on growth in the future or profitability now and whether support of Linux makes sense or more games for the Windows plattform. After all their internal resources are limited.

What I don't understand is why they aren't offering the native Linux versions existing for many newer games they are selling. Just introduce Linux support on a piecewise basis. For me it seems like a waste of potential sales at almost no costs. I don't see the economic advantage of not doing it.

Well, with a competitor that offers Linux games the issue for the customers is less severe now. Everybody just go to Humble Store and buy DRM free Linux games there. No real need to complain anymore, except for those games which aren't there.

Recently we got good data: Steam client usage revealed 1-2% linux percent... consistent with the numbers available since years via webcounters. But can't be debated away (like what happens with the webcounter numbers often) as Valve is highly interested in a big number here.

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1lkn27/steam_hardware_survey_for_august_linux_drops/

I'm highly confused! :D How one can call this messy ecosystem a platform? It's...messy, hacky, dirty, multi-faced, organic and everchanging... something completely opposite to a stable and at best slowly evolving platform. ;P

Their best reason for not supporting Linux is because they don't have anyone at GOG who uses (or knows?) it.

If they were to provide support for it, they'd have to hire or train someone and that is a cost (monetary/time) or let the community handle it (which wouldn't be under their control).

That said, if I were running GOG, I would provide the files in the extras, find all the Linux users who would provide pro bono support and set up a "Community Support" team of them, assign one of the existing support staff as their "co-ordinator" and if an official support request came in about a Linux problem, hand off the ticket to them (with a "Sorry, GOG do not support this but we have passed your ticket on to the Linux community support team to help you" to the customer). Then a small reward (5.99 GOG?) for the good, active support members each month or whatever.

And then I'd brag like hell in the public arena that my company was embracing the community to provide the best experience for everyone.

And Steam's catalog is not focused on indies, whereas the percentage of Linux Indie gamers seems to be much higher (makes sense, indie gaming largely goes hand to hand with a large part of Linux philosophy)

OK; obviously I was wrong... this numbers CAN be still debated! ;P. Vice versa, I see a bias for linux under steam as it is the ONLY service providing a significant amount of AAA games for linux.

About indie gaming, If we look at the later humble indie bundels (after the hype faded off) the linux purchase numbers ended with 5-6%, half of Mac. Also not overwhelming. http://cheesetalks.twolofbees.com/humble/#Indie%209

For that HB stats site, there is a proposal for better representing Linux+DRM-free sales, since now these numbers are skewed by HB DRMed and non cross platform releases too. See https://github.com/Cheeseness/humble-visualisations/issues/27

This concern is not applying to HIBs which I meant specifically: fully cross-platform and DRM-free.
HIB7: 6.8%, HIB8: 6.3%, HIB9: 4.8%

For specific bundles yes, you have more useful stats. 6-7% is a significant amount. Depending on the bundle, Linux sales go even above 11%.

And yeap, while Linux desktop users has 1-2%, they generated about 10% of money incomes from sales on Humble Bundle store (check there cheesetalks. twolofbees. com/humble/ )
Don't be afraid to add Linux support, and Linux users will be gratefully.
By the way, Killing Floor' dev, found income from Steam on Linux sales enough to porting another their titles. So...

There is no good evidence that Linux desktop usage is 1-2%. Using web stats does not correcty show global Linux market share on the desktop. It should be higher. Though, it would be interesting for GOG to publish web stats as well.

Why should it be higher. Couldn't it be lower as well?

Anyway I guess that Linux selling potential is around 5%. That is kind of the average of all the values named here.

Trilarion: For opinions about that, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_adoption#Measuring_desktop_adoption

This specific article chapter (and several other linux specific wikipedia articles) is pretty biased (questionable source selection). One could say, the linux user share among the wikipedia authors is clearly higher than 1-2%. ;)

I mean, it makes not much sense to palliate the reality by bickering on the numbers... Fact is, the normal desktop users rejected the linux desktop experience since 2 decades, might it 1% or 5%. The real solution here is to fix the weaknesses & to accept that the other major desktop OSs' did some things right where linux failed.

The point is, there is no clear way to estimate it globally, so tossing around numbers like 1% or etc. is useless. You can estimate it locally, i.e. such as GOG measuring OS usage of their own site visitors, HB measuring purchases stats and so on.

Desktop users didn't reject anything. The vast majority of them don't ever make a choice about what OS to use. They use what's coming preinstalled with the computer. And MS abused its monopoly to force computer manufacturers to bundle Windows. This has been going for years. Despite Windows doing maaany things very wrong.