Most of the time the cost arguments for porting to Linux are greatly over exaggerated.

Here's a recent indie dev's story for example that just cropped up: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/OndrejTrhon/20210407/378651/Charles_Games_Year_1_Making_serious_indie_games_business_recap_Part_1.php

So the profitability is fine, but the actual profits are low due to low volumes of course. And that's not going to change anytime soon.

I'm actually just playing Devil's advocate here since I don't even mind too much not having native Linux ports - wine/proton+dxvk does everything I need it to do for me.

Still, I thought it needed to be pointed out.

You already know this, but numbers are not so black and white.

Previous to this all pandemic situation, Linux number usually fluctuate between 1 and 1.5% with some brief 2% appearances. Also, Windows 10 numbers exploded on Steam charts, going from 50-60% to 90+.

I bet a big part of that Windows userbase never bought any "indie" or old game, let alone those who never bought any game at all. Most of the youngsters I know (16 or less) only play free-to-play or Rocket League/GTA V, they spend hundreds of Euros per year on skins/items but 0 on games itself.

I would love to see some stats from GOG.

The title of this thread and the content of the original post are asking two different questions (A better title would be "Why are so many games on GOG labelled as Windows-only")

Easy answer to the post question. DOS games are by definition not Windows-only, also they are easily emulated on Linux or Mac in DOSBox (just as they are emulated on early versions of Windows natively, or later versions of Windows in...DOSBox). Why are they not packaged and marketed as compatible with any DOSBox compatible system...laziness, no commercial incentive, etc. Who knows.

AFAIK they are compatible with some extra work.

--------------------------------

The actual thread title could be a good discussion. Not one I feel particularly comfortable in contributing to as I am not quite that old. But could be a nice philosophical review nonetheless

I have always taken it, that GOG is primarily a Windows game based store, and that any support for MAC or Linux is ambitious at best, and really in the realm of a bonus.

I'm primarily a Windows gamer myself, but also grab every Linux version I can get ... as they say, don't have all your eggs in one basket, and any love I ever felt for Microsoft or Windows, I lost long ago. In fact my computer life started some 3 decades ago with an Apple IIE computer. I migrated from that to Windows 3.1, and never went back to Apple, other than with an iPod many years later. I've played with a few Linux distros, Live Mint being my last favorite ... based on Ubuntu if my memory recall is correct.

So it would be great if GOG had better Linux support at least.

But one has to be realistic.

GOG seem to always be playing catchup, and never do all the stuff they should, let alone spend the extra time required to properly support the likes of MAC or Linux.

Then like others have suggested, much of it could also be down to the DEV/PUB. Much seems to be down to them, including DRM-Free MP and Updates and Bugfixes etc.

So in the general scheme of things, anything not Windows would be a low priority.

Indeed, and I try to use others instead, where it is realistic to do so.

Haven't used Facebook in months, which I had been using less and less of over time.
Haven't used Google in years ... Duck Duck Go is my search engine.
I avoid Microsoft products as much as I can, though alas for several reasons I cannot avoid their OS ... that said, I mostly use Win 7 and sometimes Win XP ... though I have Win 8.1 and Win 10 on my newest laptop (barely used, mostly a gaming machine), and my wife uses Win 8.1, which I assist her with regularly.
Sometimes I fire up Linux, just to enjoy the snappiness etc ... kind of like having a holiday.

We are more or less in the same boat.
Never been a Facebook fan, used it for a while, not anymore.
I'm mainly using DDG, although I'm looking into other options as well.
I still have the XP and 7 disks lying around, but I alternate between 8.1 and 10 for the time being. 8.1 for gaming, as it yields very good results, 10 for testing purposes.
When it comes to Linux, all I can say is freedom. I feel relieved and suddenly get curious about this and that.

Not even a matter of being profitable, but a matter of being abjectly lazy. I can't imagine packaging Dosbox for multiplatform is a herculean effort.

A lot of the old games can actually be run on linux with Wine
Is there a way to get the files though and build your own dosbox for the game you want to play?

Yeah, you can extract the installer and unscramble the files, or just take the files as installed and point them.

If you want to do this exclusively on Linux, you can use InnoExtract to get the files from the installer, then replicate your own dosbox.conf from the sample files that are provided with the game and launch it using dosbox -conf game.conf.