ZFR: I'm sad because of all the stuff you wrote, it's your maths skills that hurt my eyes most.
If women make up around 50% of population in North America and 50% in South America does it mean they make up a total 100% of population in both Americas?
Dude, seriously...
Randalator: Yeah that was bad (not as bad as his shitty attitude and hateful anti-Linux rant though), but it doesn't invalidate this particular point.
It's even more valid now because his estimate is much too high. Going by recent Steam statistics (
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/) Linux accounts for only 0.74 % of the entire user base. With Steam being the Juggernaut of online distribution I think we can safely say that even accounting for some variance 1% Linux users among all PC Gamers is a pretty generous estimate.
In March 2016 TW3 had sold 10 million copies (
http://twinfinite.net/2016/03/the-witcher-3-sells-over-10-million/) and even assuming that those were all PC copies and every single Linux gamer would have bought one, that comes down to only 100,000 copies. In this scenario "only" about 15% of the ~67 million currently active Steam users actually bought TW3 so the potential Linux sales would also be closer to 15,000 copies. And with the 10 million milestone most likely including console sales, realistically we're looking at something more along the lines of 7,000-10,000 copies. Probably even less.
As sorry as I am for Linux gamers, from a business standpoint maintaining a Linux build of TW3 is just a money sink with no return of investment.
This is only true in the short-term. In the long-term there would be an enormous benefit to the whole of society from breaking the Microsoft monopoly.
The perspective you outline, which thoroughly dominates international economics, is a perfect example of being penny-wise, but pound-foolish, because it fails to take into consideration the value of the innovation that is lost due to monopolization.