I'm sure that idealistically GOG would love Linux, but ultimately GOG is a business and devoting resources to support and compatibility won't be profitable when Linux has such a small market share. Steam, on the other hand, has the economy of scale in its favour. GOG has very little to gain from taking such a risk, but hopefully Steam will take the lead and other vendors will soon follow. The Steam Box could very well be the ticket to Linux land we're all hoping for :)

No, I don't buy the non profitability argument. GOG didn't demonstrate such an issue. Humble Bundle is way smaller than Steam and smaller than GOG as well, yet they are profitable enough to support Linux, and not only that - even work on porting some games to Linux themselves.

According to GOG's reps, the problem was not profitability, but their inability (until now) to find a way to provide long term support. The problem which they never really explained in detail. And even that is an imaginary issue, since GOG's Linux users didn't even ask for long term support. Short term like HB does would do for now. Yet GOG doesn't want to provide what the customers want.

No matter how they put it, support for any company is an expense (and a very large one in good number of cases), even if its for a small minority of customers . Thing is, if they start to provide support for linux, customers will ALWAYS expect support. Can a company provide support for X product sold and later down road withdraw that support and still sell the product?. That's a relevant question.

"Yet GOG doesn't want to provide what the customers want." - thing is, the majority of customers use windows based products even though a small minority would welcome linux support.

lol I was going to participate in this one. But as a developer myself I have seen these discussions all too often.

+1 for both sides.

Nahhh.... I lost the hope in GOG.

In the past, a few users wanted play "Old Games", now is the same, but GOG decided sell "New Games". GREAT!

Now is the same, but with S.O and GOG don't want repeat the same success. Excuses as "support" when the users only want the linux version as "bonus/extra" or another solution as "Serial Key" to download the linux version from developer site (example: Race the Sun).

So, many users give solutions without "gog support" but the result is the same, the excuses are the same.

The Humble Store is offering titles like Legend of Grimrock, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Psychonauts free of DRM and for Linux. These are titles I have not yet played but would like to. I have to admit, I am damn tempted. I am still hoping that GOG sees the light, but sooner or later I'll give in. With the way things are going now, I doubt CD Projekt RED will ever port its far smaller catalogue (when compared with Valve's) to Linux either, although it would be a very nice touch. Like I said, when even AMD with its previously obnoxious Linux support is starting to put out great updates for its open source graphics driver for Linux, you can tell that the situation is serious.

How many years did AMD let it's fglrx binary blob languish for, effectively broken since 12.10? I would not consider them any sort of poster child. XMBC & AMD OSS devs have certainly made some great strides since beginning of October.

Indeed. Like I said, AMD never gave a damn about Linux just like GOG, but even AMD is on board now and looks to be shifting its resources to the open source driver, not the proprietary driver. Perople are still very sceptical as it is AMD, but the future looks brighter than ever.

That's expected but doesn't really mean too much. Others joined in the past (like AMD) and it didn't really provide any special benefits. Let's see how these Steam Machines fare. I still hope it will be the thing which will trigger CD Projekt Red's / GOG's commitment to Linux.

Note these two open positions they have now:

http://cdpred.com/senior-network-programmer/
http://cdpred.com/senior-graphics-programmer/

Not really breaking news, but something about Linux and OpenGL.

"Good knowledge of programming for the Windows and Linux/Unix platforms."
Hmmmm that's interesting indeed.

GOG should just straight out say it instead of letting us speculate. I can wait if they give me hope and a date, but if this nonsense continues, I'll just go to the competition.

Valve is supportive enough of Linux to a point they make sure their game engine (Source engine, I think) capable of exporting Linux games. Then they port their games to Linux.

This lead to Unity 3D also able to generate Linux games.

What will happens? Well, in order to make sure the games run fine on Linux (since they invested in making the game engine works on linux) I'm sure they will contribute codes and fixes - at least related to gaming. Since the SteamOS is Linux and open sources, I'm sure a lot of that will be ported back to main linux branch.

This, to an extend, is a good thing.

Do you mean they contribute to the development of the graphic drivers?