Decided to make a little follow up to the statistics I did back in 2021 (Linux numbers and Mac numbers), because I care and because I like playing with numbers.

So, back in my original posts, there were 3986 titles available in total on GOG when I checked the Linux numbers, and 3993 titles when I was getting the info for Mac titles. In both cases, I only filtered out DLCs and extras, but not bundles and demos because I can't find an easy way to filter those out. And due to GOG's constant influx of new titles and the 6 days between each data collection, the difference makes sense, and the resulting ~0.2% difference doesn't seem as likely to change numbers in any meaningful way for the statistics.

Well, before, there were 1125 Linux titles and 1308 Mac titles in their respective days. That means about 28% of the games on GOG had Linux builds, while Mac builds were present in 33% of the catalogue.

Now, there are 1279 Linux titles and 1539 Mac titles on GOG.

Numbers went up, so that must be good, right?

That... depends.

There is a total of 5124 games now, meaning 25% of the catalogue has Linux builds, and 30% of the catalogue has Mac builds.

So the presence of both systems got smaller by proportionally similar values in this past year and a half.

What can be taken from those numbers? Perhaps that would mean devs are getting less interested in those systems? Or maybe GOG is creating, either accidentally or on purpose, a culture of using only Windows? Which, for this last part, can be rather bad, as Microsoft is not known for preservation (and lest we forget the classical response about running GOG games on the Steam Deck). Also maybe what seems to be a lack of making sure games work on newer systems affect the numbers too? And Linux-specific, but maybe lack of a proper launcher affects the numbers in the family of systems? And for Mac, maybe the current type of installers can also be a hindrance?

And maybe there's something else to be considered from those numbers too which I didn't notice? Please, do point out if so!

edit: made the second paragraph a bit clearer

And I've seen that some of them are just windows games bundled with Wine preconfigured, which I wouldn't call it a "Linux build"

Don't forget about the sometimes worthless Mono builds too.

I think it's basically abject laziness with the issue of having chosen the wrong build target; by the time any packages hit the LTS that GOG was aiming for, they're already obsolete for building with. Take the sunsetting of Python 2, or the sunsetting of GTK2 currently in progress.

As far as I can even tell, GOG hasn't even ever once bothered to update the installers away from their original target build sometime in 2010.

I found a statement by the developer of Dome Keeper that lends insight into one possible perspective.

I noticed that, while the Steam copy of Dome Keeper provides builds for Windows, Mac and Linux, the GOG copy only provides a Windows installer. So I went digging for a developer statement and found an interesting reasoning.

Dome Keeper is built for Steam first and then ported to GOG, which is done using the Steam SDK Wrapper. Since this wrapper is only available for Windows, Dome Keeper on GOG is only built for Windows. Quote from the developer:

"[W]e are using the SDK wrapper and it only supports windows. The alternative is putting in a lot of work to integrate with the gog SDK manually. ... We don't have the people to do it, so it would mean something like one less gadget in the game in the end. So 100% of people would be worse off, for the 0.2% people that use GOG with Linux and Mac. It would also be a strain on any future update, as there are simply more platforms to support."

This poses one possible question: Why not just cut the Steam API calls off so we can at least have offline installers? However I imagine building this practice might be bad in case the Wrapper also becomes available for MacOS in the future.

From what I can see, the ball is in GOG's court, and they need to work on making porting and deployment to additional platforms easier for developers.

And I am hoping GOG will eventually change their mind about not bringing Galaxy to Linux.

Since Linux can play Windows games just fine why does it matter in practice?

Only 0.2%? Pretty sure it's more than that. Lies. Or false advertising. (and I'm a Linux user, just not a brainwashed fanatical worshiper)

To me it sounds like the percentage refers to "GOG players with Linux and Mac vs. all Steam and GOG users combined".

Ah, yes, that makes sense.

I'm not following you. What is a lie?

You make it sound like any game will run perfectly on Linux, out of the box. "Just use Wine". That is simply not true. Most of the time it will require a lot of tweaking and hard work, and even solutuions like Lutris are not perfect and don't support all games.

I've yet to find a game that doesn't work. In the past year I've played Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Elden Ring, Persona 5 Royale, Trails of Cold Steel 3, Uncharted, God of War, (I can go on) all fine. And if you run them thru Steam (weather its a Steam game or not) it doesn't require any type of "work" whatsoever.

So does it effect me if a game releases Windows only or Nintendo Switch only for that matter? No, not really. I can still play it on Linux.

That's not a very fair comment, especially given the attitude that Apple took (disabling 32 bit application support out of the box and their insane and constant flip-flopping of processor architecture between RISC and x86 chips over the last twenty years)

Whereas Microsoft at least include WOW64 to enable 32-bit support out of the box (although I accept that to run 16 bit applications you need to run a VM or emulator). Let's not forget that Microsoft also included code in Windows 95 to fix a memory error in SimCity that caused it to crash.

With the exception of 16-bit applications, there is very little that you cannot get running on Windows 11 x64. While with tinkering, you can probably get the same amount of games running on Linux or even Apple software (not that I'd go near the latter as I've got better things to spend my money on), to single out Microsoft or Windows for a lack of preservation and compatibility just isn't right.

In that regard, from what I remember talking to the guy doing the code for Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, the Linux build is not offered here on GOG because it fails to compile when using GOG's SDK.
Actually, there are titles that do require work. Like how the Learn Japanese to Survive trilogy is highly likely to not work if running through Wine, but it may work if running through a web browser, such as Firefox. Or Mary Skelter 2, which doesn't seem to work as long as the videos folder exists. DRM, while not always, is also often is a hindrance for Wine compatibility, to the point Valve even comments (meekly, but they do) in their docs that, for best Steam Deck compatibility, devs should opt to not use DRM.

Indeed, parity leaves to be desired by a big margin, which makes the presence of such systems, or the slow withering thereof, even more glaring. I wonder where would the "bottleneck" be for that?

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Indeed as well. I forgot to consider their history of going hard on programmed obsolescence. (writing an essay-like post at 3 AM might not have been my best idea)
And it doesn't help there aren't well developed Wine-like tools for Mac programs either, with the best one I could find, Darling, being barely functional for daily use, as well as getting updates at a very slow pace.