It's not entirely clear to me whether it is Croteam or GOG that is being lazy here and/or treating Linux users as second-class. Certainly at least one of them is though.

Could very well be both :/
The original devs for WHATEVER REASON and then GOG for 1.Casually putting up with it 2.Not pushing on original devs enough.

Yeap. I was interested in the technical part - the first link gave the necessary information. )

As far as I know (I could be wrong) the Linux-guy no longer works for Croteam. Therefore, there is no one else to make the necessary changes and make a linux-build of Talos Principle and therefore there are no plans to release a Linux version of Serious Sam 4. (That is why I asked above about launching in wine).
And income from previous sales* most likely does not give hope that Croteam will look for and hire a replacement for the departed one (* the assumption of small income from Linux sales is purely my speculation and assumption, I have no direct or indirect confirmation).

If that is true it would basically mean complete lack of Linux STEAM build support and thus it's abandonment sooner or later.
( I mean, if the supposed only Linux build maintaining dev would supposedly leave then just WHO would maintain new builds should there be a patch or new content release or something? Those builds don't ENTIRELY 100% build themselves [you can automate SOME stuff but not 100% of it] and most certainly there would be no QA without ANYBODY keeping a close eye on it )

The thing is it's not like Steam distrubutes payments in "you only get money for X port if people use it on X platform" way.
It really can't be attributed together like that anymore since Steam started doing crossplay (or whatever the name for "you get all ports when buying a game" thing was called).

When you make crossplatform project you allocate Z amount of total Y amount of resources to specific port.
If you would cut the funding and end support then you not only destroy your PR but also undermine the whole point of the funding in the first place and just essentially are throwing all that past money into slime.
There are only 2 valid ways:
1.No support for other platforms
2.Or "ALL THE WAY"

Anything in between is essentially a PR longterm joke and disaster waiting to happen as well as resources waste.
Same goes for supporting various distribution platforms non equally.
( same goes for going "exclusive first" on "industry destroying inside job of a platform that is secretly funded / owned by certain large controversial country")

Of course they do...

I don't think people expect GOG to sponsor Linux ports. But I do expect them to negotiate games in a way that already existing Linux ports (and language versions) of a game also will be added to the GOG store!

In general GOG aren't against Linux releases. It's up to developers, so if they don't do it. it's developers' fault.

Me sees poster of robot holding a kitten. Instabuy! LOL!! ;)
Heard good things about this game. Surprised and happy to see it on GOG. Nice!

Technically, you're right. But this is theory. In practice: there are no more new builds for the game (neither for the Windows version, nor for the Linux version), respectively, there is no such person now, but he is not needed.

I expect the (or even a) company to see it like this:
"A PR disaster among 0.94% of Steam users? Well, okay."
Or do you think they see it differently?

So, you think a human walking past a bear trap will be like "OK, this trap is lethal, I'd better not put my leg in it!" and then, walking past a mousetrap the same human will just be like "A small and insignificant trap? Well, okay, let's put in my finger right away!"

The very assumption any sane PR department would willingly inflict a negative PR situation upon itself, however small it is, is beyond stupid. Of course, Deep Silver's PR department AKA "anime fans on a prom night" can not be considered sane.

The real purpose of your post was to sh*t on Linux users at expense of some "company". Luckily, you are most probably not related to PR business (otherwise I pity the company employing yourself ;) ).

I have heard a lot of good things about this game, but never got around to trying it out because I found DRM-infested versions only.
Now that it is finally available DRM-free, I immediately bought it. It is sad though that there is no linux version. I keep an old offline installation of windows around for such games, but would really like to get rid of that.

Does that mean most of the Linux versions on Steam are actually DRM-free and can be played completely offline after installation? And how complicated is that "can be made DRM-free by casual coding means" method?

Are the Linux game installations portable so that I can copy them from one machine to another on upgrades or even create my own offline installer from a game installation?

I got the base game free from Epic earlier this year which was nice, but they don't actually have the DLC there nor the Gold Edition, and having watched a friend play the game I knew I'd enjoy it a lot and want the full experience with the DLC.

So I bought it here with the discount just to get the DLC. Been playing it on and off this last week and really enjoying the game.

Croteam was acquired by Devolver....

I don't know if that is good or bad... Specially for the Linux ports.

First of all most Linux ports on Steam are coded somewhat differently than their direct Windows conterparts in regards to executable logic and such.
Almost all executables for Linux ports are plaintext sh or such. That ALONE makes it so that you can dig in the code to your heart's content.
Sometimes the game is coded in such a way that changing one value in code can make the game totally ommit Steam.
In regards to what how - it depends on the engine - most Unity games for example can be made DRM free by launching executable directly instead of using the launcher.
Some Valve games can be made to run without Steam with a mere launch command variable (Valve had to conciously make that decision and leave it in the code).

Then there is the fact that there is close to no DRM on Steam Linux ports ever. The only one is usually either or few of those:
1.Steamworks - TECHNICALLY not a DRM (rather functionality framework). Relies on steamapi.dll. Can be overriden with steamapi . dll emulators such as goldberg. That alone makes a WHOLE LOT games on Steam truly DRM free (after you legally obtain the files from Steam of course)
2.Steamstub - can be broken too, there do exist unwrappers online, including some directly on github
3.Feral Interactive "DRM" (more like a petty "let's see if nobody notices" gate) - as to this one I have personally dug up something ultra obvious in their runtime flow that I suspect would override entire Steam interactions (their code is on their Github btw) - but I am yet to test if that works (I likely will within few months, cannot do that NOW so don't even ask me, I am busy and such).

And then there is also the fact that some unknown percentage of Linux ports on Steam are just DRM free PERIOD.
Generally speaking in regards to DRM it's the Linux that has upper hand in being free of it. Most Linux ports on Steam don't employ any "real" DRM per se (Denuvo doesn't exist on Linux, same for SecuROM and others). Linux ports are also more likely to be DRM free in general. Regardless if the developer sees Linux as a "not worthy" platform and expects the game to "not sell" "well" "there" and chooses to just "not protect the game so well" or any other reason, it is the fact that many Linux releases are sloppy in regards to DRM protection be it by concious choice or complete coincidence.
Then due to lack of obscurity of executables whatever "small" DRM is used can be removed or overriden FAR more easily than on Windows ports.

Define "portable".
If you mean "I will copy this game onto external drive and try to run it on another computer" then it depends - that works out of the box on some but definitely not on all.

I don't know what is your level of Linux expertise, but Linux is generally built in such a way that you can technically put an entire boot drive in another computer and it will boot just fine (provided you don't have custom crazy code optimisations for very specific parts - those don't come by default and have to be done by hand - so generally most people don't EVER have them).
And the software, even so "non standarized" like games, should work just fine regardless where you put it (provided the game doesn't have some engine scan technique for checking hardware that would mess up automated settings FILES, then manual intervention for those would be required).

As for the installer part alone - you can do that with any software on any system (minus Windows UWP and some other corner cases). The only limitation is your knowledge.
You can even create your own non standard installers for GOG games (whatever OS) - for example for the purpose of creating better compressed files - that of course assumes you know location of any registry keys created during install and so on (MANY games don't create them upon runtime themselves).
You can also repack the installers (same purpose or whatever) directly - but that requires access to some potentially non free software in some cases (the Inno Setup non official editiors required in some cases).

For the offline part - if you make the game DRM free through whatever means then there is no reason for which you could be stopped from creating your true DRM free installers.
And I personally wouldn't call this piracy either - you get the files from legally obtained software - and you just run them LEGALLY just without the launcher component (that would be Steam in this case).

So generally Linux is far superiour platform for DRM freedom and it's much easier to override any DRM on it.