3 Sep 2020 - Children of Morta - Linux

Looks like THQ Nordic decided to give GOG Linux users the short end of the stick with Desperados III. We aren't getting the game. Someone quoting their response from Discord:

Again. And yet there will still be the periodic unconditional love for THQ Noridc threads.

Also: Hey, keep your bad news to the 2nd class citizen thread. This is supposed to be a good news thread.

Do we have such thread? I didn't know about it :) Please share the link, I'll subscribe to it.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_that_treat_gog_customers_as_second_class_citizens_v2

Oh, well. And I was planning on getting Desperados III.

I would assume GOG shares the download statistics for the standalone installers with them.

When I asked different developers, they said GOG doesn't. And some like those who port to Linux and only are paid for the Linux versions even said it prevents them from releasing on GOG. So how THQ Nordic or Mimi know the percentage of Linux users who buy their games is not clear.

Mimi might think they have an idea through Unity's statistics, as included in Shadow Tactics? Of course, Linux users are more likely to block such things (I know I did)...

May be, but how would they differentiate GOG version there? But I guess they could, if it has some kind of identifier.

For those interested, I've managed to squeeze a little bit more on as to why exactly there won't be a Linux version of Desperados III on GOG.

In short, yes, Linux userbase on GOG is perceived to be too small and to not be profitable (the infamous "return on investment" case).
Also, apparently, there are high maintenance costs involved in making separate builds for "each" store. Probably, the Steam integration is too deep and its removal is too costly. Or something is not well optimized in the building process (requires a lot of manual labor?).

Every time I buy a Windows-only game in the hopes that wine or a 3rd party native binary will make it work on my machine, I am counted as a Windows user, even if the game ends up not working for me. This make any statistics gathering mechanism less than worthless. In fact, it self-reinforces the idea that a Windows version is always sufficient. At least on Steam, with the automatic proton/wine service, there might be hope that stats are more accurate, but even there, it's up to them how to account for users. There really isn't a fair way to do it, other than intrusive network statistics, which I always disable and which probably don't distinguish between wine and real Windows, either.

Too bad, looks like one more developer bites the dust for GOG releases.

By reading the chat, it seems to me like they're trying to cover it all up due to a workflow issue on their end. Other devs don't have this issue.

In comparison, the game Northgard comes to mind, those guys put out an update for all 3 OS's almost every week. Other frequently updated games such as Dead Cells and Fell Seal also have multi platform versions and none of them have this issue.