In light of what you just said and in view of the fact there are many more OS X installed desktops in the world than Linux desktops, you still believe GOG should have gone with Linux first? I'd disagree strongly with that and obviously GOG did too.

I'll look forward to reading that article on Inside Mac Games. :D

Because we are talking about different kinds of support. What the community requested in the wishlist is that GOG adds Linux binaries to the list of files one can download after purchasing a game. In this context support simply means that GOG publicly acknowledges that there are Linux users and that their needs are fulfilled by this site. At least those needs that can only be fulfilled by GOG and cannot be fulfilled by the community (eg. buying a license to use the linux binary and a possibility to legally download the said binary). In this context "support" means "GOG declares that they try to help Linux users instead of ignoring them or hindering them".

What we don't need from GOG, at least not now, is technical support, eg. staff who help solve technical problems if something doesn't work. Since providing technical support would be much more problematic and expensive than providing Linux binaries, a huge majority of people declared that they'd rather prefer if GOG offered binaries sooner than technical support. Of course, if GOG wants to offer technical support we can't forbid them, and in fact many people would be glad if this happened at some point in the future, but for now all we need is binaries if this would mean we could get them earlier, rather than wait until they are added along with technical support.

Technical support usually comes with a warranty that software will run on platforms that meet minimum requirements (eg. platforms that are tested and well known to the tech support staff), and people may request a refund if the game doesn't work on their platform only if their platform does meet the requirements, yet tech support wasn't able to solve the problem. This is a simple attempt to diagnose if the fact the game doesn't work was user's fault (not having the right platform to run the game) or provider's fault (claiming the game does work on a certain platform when in fact it doesn't). If it was user's fault, he can't request a refund. If it was provider's fault a refund should be made. Right now it is a problem for Linux users, since they buy the game knowing that their platform is not supported (in the meaning that it is not warrantied to work, not in the "tech support" meaning). So basically, they can't request a refund. The most common suggestion to partially solve the problem was for GOG to officially declare only Ubuntu support (with all the warranty and tech support stuff, since in this case it is necessary), then users of other distros can safely buy games since in worst case they'll have to dual boot into Ubuntu if the game doesn't work on their preferred distro. So, this is the only case when tech support is really necessary from Linux Gamer's perspective.

The way I see it, GOG should:
- first, provide the Linux binaries (and eventually Linux-friendlier installers for games without Linux binaries) without any warranty or tech support. This is for gamers who are willing to risk that the game won't work and no refund will be possible.
- then, when they feel ready for it, announce Ubuntu support, so that gamers no longer take the risk of buying a game they can't run
- then, in distant future if GOG notices that supporting other distros might bring further revenue, they might consider announcing official support for other distros, but this will most likely not be necessary

The problem is that based on GOG's responses, they do not intend to do steps one and two, instead waiting until step three seems profitable, which from our point of view is the least important one.


I'd say our part of the deal is adequate, since I haven't seen people complaining about lack of community support, and whenever I had any problems I could either find a solution, or cope with the fact that something doesn't work perfectly (eg. graphic glitches in wine). I also agree that it doesn't solve the problems of official support, since these are different problems - the three things that community can't do: sell a license, legally distribute binaries, give a warranty that a game will work.



Some users will expect tech support, majority won't, as seen in the wishlist. Solution is simple - those who want tech support wait until it is provided. Others buy games without warranty that it will work, but they buy them earlier.

I know you could say that we should simply wait. Giving GOG time (and money) would allow them to provide excellent Linux support and would satisfy both parties. You could say that the whole problem is caused by impatient players who want to buy those Linux binaries now, instead of waiting until GOG finally provides them. But the truth is, moving such things in time will have other, indirect effects, such as determining which game provider will have a bigger share of the market, which OS will be a more popular gaming platform, or which OSes will be officially supported by that awesome game that will be created at some point in the future. The truth is, providing official Linux support too early might even have a negative effect on Linux's popularity, if many people try it and are dissatisfied for example, but If this is the case then I'd prefer if someone better at "prophesying future", eg. the people who made the decision that Mac will be supported before Linux, publicized their thoughts on this topic. At least I'd know if they care about Linux or not, when they make decisions like that.



Lol,.. do you know how representative democracy works? Everyone can go and do their own thing, and since "everyone" is usually quite a lot of people, things that are better done by small numbers of people, such as making decisions or conducting a discussion, are done by representatives. Simply put, some people declare willingness to be a representative and other people declare that they support (once again the word support is used in a different meaning ;] ) one of them. Thus we can say that those representatives speak on behalf of people who support them. If we have say 7000 people who want Linux support and the majority of them declares that one of them (e.g. Linus Torvalds) can represent their opinions, then if Linus Torvalds says that it is enough if GOG officially supports Ubuntu, then it basically means that GOG can treat it as if 7000 people decided that Ubuntu support is enough for now. I suggested choosing some representatives since it would in my opinion allow a smoother and more significant discussion, than if simply everyone was allowed to ask GOG questions and GOG was not expected to answer every one of them (as it is right now). On the other hand if we choose representatives who ask reasonable questions on behalf of many users, it is quite reasonable to expect that GOG would indeed answer every one of them.

The problem is not whether it is possible to select representatives, but how to do it. I'll just let you know that some Linux communities already have such representatives, who usually form organizations such as Free Software Foundation, Linux Foundation, etc. These people speak on behalf of many users and eg. Linus's voice is important not only because he speaks words of wisdom, but also because for many people he is an authority. That's the kind of people we need to choose to represent the Linux Gamers Community.

I know of some web sites dedicated to Linux games. People who run such websites would be a good choice in my opinion, because they could easily gain many votes. Some Linux gamers on GOG would also make good representatives. All we need to do is design some mechanism to declare our support for certain people, but of course we'd also need GOG's declaration that they will treat such representatives as such, ie. try to answer their questions.

In any case, if you don't agree with me, that's great. Most likely my idea has many flaws and constructive criticism is needed. In fact it is entirely possible that there is no need to make such a discussion as it would only require GOG's focus thus slowing their work on other things, while the only benefit would be that we wouldn't feel ignored. Still, there is nothing wrong with suggesting such a thing, just in case some people actually like the idea, is there?

If you want to run the game yourself on wine without any support, then just buy it for PC on GOG, extract it, port it to Wine yourself. I see no point in creating walls of texts nobody wants to waste time reading.

If this was in response to my post, and I guess that based on you mentioning "walls of texts", then:

1) I don't want to run games on wine if they have Linux binaries provided by the game's developer. If you actually read the post you'd know that. Also, in order to buy a game for PC, it has to be available for PC. Right now none are available natively for Linux PC. Not to mention the fact I already bought 87 games, so apparently I already did what you tell me to do.

2) I'm not sure what definition of porting you use, but the one I've encountered most means "rewrite the game for different platform" or "fix things in the code that don't work on a different platform". Both don't work with closed source software.

3) I completely agree with you that there is no point in writing things nobody wants to read. So far in this topic I've seen some trolling/flaming that I didn't want to read, but apart from that I wanted to read everything else. I suppose there are people who wanted to read even those flaming posts, so in the end there are no posts in this topic that no one wants to read. I suppose that's not what you intended to say. If you wanted to say "I see no point in creating walls of texts I don't want to waste time reading.", then I can't agree with you - there are many very valuable texts that you don't have to read because they are intended for other people.

4) If you don't want to read what I'm writing, just don't. Of course you are free to comment about it, but be constructive about it. Complaining about a text you didn't read is actually quite hard to do constructively, but if you manage to, congratulations :)
I sometimes wonder if I should write short summaries whenever I write something longer, for the convenience of impatient people, but this actually makes the whole post even longer, so most often I opt not to do it.

This is not my interest. But good news for Mac gamers.

@Xinef

I skimmed over your text because it's contents are very much predictable and can be summed in one sentence:

"Give me linux games NOW".

Everything else is just background noise and not of much relevance. You obviously do not care about the level of customer care, because you just want games. But that is not the way GOG does business, it's not steam. And it has been said by TET over and over.

My polish friend has read your post and apparently there is one polish word that pretty much sums up what you and the likes of you are doing. It is "dziadowanie", whatever that means.

Dude, simple truth. GOG is not CURRENTLY supporting linux. Wasting bandwidth on the internet will not change it. If they ever decide to sell linux games and support them, it will be based on market analysis, not forum whining and attention whoring.

And actually linux is the next logical step, because it's the next OS on the popularity list. So I wouldn't be surprised if they made a move in the next few months. But if they do, they want to make their products worth their money, not just throwing chunks of unfinished code at people. It's pretty much natural for anyone who has conducted serious business and not just importing chinese slippers by the bulk (no offense to chinese slippers).

Thanks. I did get the refund. However, I was refunded the entire purchase, despite repeating that I only wanted the difference between the sale prices. Oh, well. When it goes on sale again I'll buy it again. I can't play it yet, anyway.

Oh, and thanks for the words of encouragement, fellow Mac gamers. Sheesh.
Thanks, but I thought it WAS a promo. The wording made it sound like $29.99 was the limited promo price. I don't usually complain about things like this, but I thought dropping the price so much the day after release was a little unfair to those who had bought it just the day before. Apparently others here disagree, but I suppose they're entitle to feel that way. I do not.

Obviously, from a business standpoint, it makes a lot more sense for GOG to have gone with Mac compatibility first, sure; a while ago I wrote a post about explaining about how the Mac would give a much bigger payoff than the Linux community, and would logically be GOG's next move in terms of platform expansion. Nevertheless, I feel really strongly about Linux, because (a) I'm also a Linux user and (b) Linux users are a really passionate set of people who could really help lead the charge for DRM-free gaming.

That being said, I still remain a believer that as Linux continues to mature and gather more users, more and more companies will start to see Linux gaming as a meaningful market to pursue.

Since it seems no matter how hard I try to explain my point of view, it gets misinterpreted because it's too long to read and understand for some people, here's a SHORT SUMMARY of everything I said including this post:

Give us Linux games now. Discuss your decisions with us instead of keeping the reasoning secret. If I find no one interested in my ideas I'll wait and see what GOG does about it.






Long reply (in case anyone does like reading my posts and wants to know the details):

Almost. If you really want a very short summary:
"Give US Linux games now. Discuss your decisions with US instead of keeping them secret."

First of all, I personally don't really need those Linux binaries, since I mostly play DOSBox games, and the few other games work great with CrossOver/Wine. The things I'm writing here are mostly because of other Linux users who are less lucky, and since there are hundreds of comments in the wishlist I am trying to summarize them for people who didn't read them all. I also throw in my own ideas in order to see if anyone likes them or not.

I'd also be happy if Linux support came as soon as possible because I'm hoping it would strengthen Linux as a gaming platform.

Secondly, I was suggesting a discussion with GOG staff, since so far their replies didn't address many of the issues, such as whether they considered our solutions to the problems they mentioned and if so, are there problems with those solutions. This is quite a separate thing from the "Give us Linux games now", so I can't say your one sentence summary sums up all I wrote. In fact, I'm asking if GOG can officially state the reasons why "Give us Linux games now" is a bad option in their opinion, since If I knew those reasons I might consider ceasing to support that idea.



For me customer care means eg. that they are honest with us, or that having to choose between "don't give Linux binaries, since we can't provide technical support" or "give Linux binaries anyway" they choose the option that is better for Linux gamers, whichever it may be.


"dziadowanie" can be roughly translated as complaining, speaking that you want something to change without actually trying to do anything constructive yourself. According to an online dictionary it means "living in poor conditions, begging". It comes from the word "dziad" which is a colloquial term for an old person.

You and your friend are free to think that I am complaining, but the truth is that I spend time on writing those posts and the only thing I am hoping to get in return is a benefit for the Linux Gamers Community. I personally gain very little from it, since I'll spend the foreseeable future writing multiplatform, commercial open source games, rather than playing Linux games, so other Linux Gamers will benefit more from the things I suggest.



As for market analysis... it is, or at least should be based on people's opinions and reading the things they write on forums is one way to get some data for market analysis. There is nothing wrong with trying to get some attention through legitimate means in order to have your opinion heard and considered by more people. I'm not sure if by "whining and attention whoring" you are referring specifically to my posts or other posts too, but I've seen a lot of reasonable discussion in this thread and I think my posts are also constructive. I try to write in a way that doesn't offend anyone and I'm writing a lot of positive things so I certainly don't see much whining in my posts. And for sure writing walls of text is a really bad way to gain attention, since few people are going to read it. If I was trying to gain as much attention as possible I'd resolve to less constructive and polite methods. Apparently, I get the feeling my posts are indeed mostly ignored, so I might have gained too little attention to achieve anything, but at least I can say I tried.

In which case I'll wait and see what GOG is going to do.



One last thing:
If anyone is wondering why do I write so much - I am simply aware that text based communication has many flaws when compared with speaking with someone in-real-life (eg. lack of body language, intonation, it also often takes a lot of time between the moment someone misinterprets something and the moment he is corrected, if at all). Thus text based communication leads to many more misunderstandings (such as people not recognizing irony/sarcasm) and people should take this into account. I personally believe that it is better to explain something too much or in a too simple language, for the majority of readers, than to assume everyone will understand a brief and complex message.

You've probably had this link thrown at you many times before, but it bears repeating: this is the post from GOG Head of Marketing and PR, Trevor Longino (aka TheEnigmaticT, aka TET) on why Linux support isn't right now doable for GOG.

Does that mean that you should give up? Hardly. They know that there is a demand for Linux support, and they know that it's a valuable opportunity. The sad reality of it right now is that there's no easy way that they can see Linux compatibility happening at the level of the experience that they want. But the fact that they are aware of Linux is a huge step nevertheless.

Getting the word out, both about Linux as a meaningful and significant alternative to Windows, and about GOG, is huge. As long as more and more people use Linux, and as long as they make their desires known for GOG's titles, we'll start to see GOG start to put more effort into Linux compatibility. It won't happen for a while, but it will definitely happen.

While it's thrown at me for the first time, as far as I know this one and the one in the wishlist (dated Oct. 15, 2012) are the only official replies, and they don't address the issue that a big majority of people who voted or commented in the wishlist would prefer Linux binaries before technical support (the testing, support and maintenance mentioned by TET). Of course GOG.com has the right to choose not to provide binaries before they can offer technical support. In this case though, they are not doing it for the whole Linux Gamers Community. They are doing it for the 10% of the Linux Gamers Community who actually want the official tech support. In other words the 7000 votes become 700 votes and are therefore less than the number of votes for Mac, and thus a lower priority. Of course I'm oversimplifying things right now, but that's the general idea.

Conclusion: If GOG is indeed not providing the binaries because, as TET said, "that's not really the GOG way of doing business", then in fact they are making decisions based on ideology rather than market analysis. That's fine with me, I respect other people's ideologies as long as they don't involve genocide. But if this is the case, the Linux Gamers Community is most likely suffering because of GOG's decision, so the least I can do is make sure GOG doesn't misunderstand our needs. Maybe if they better understood what we want they would change their ideology. For now, I see a lot of people leaving GOG for other game providers because of this, and if this is what GOG wants... well, not much I can do about it. But if GOG actually does want Linux Gamers to stay here, but is trying to achieve it "the GOG way", then it means they most likely misunderstand our needs, and this is a problem that can actually be solved if we discuss it with them.



Unless of course I am wrong and they better understand the situation (which is very likely), and their decision in fact benefits the Linux Gamers Community. Maybe waiting patiently until full support can be offered, and launching it only then, would be better in the long term. If this is the case though, it would mean that 90 % of the Linux Gamers Community misunderstands GOG, and this is also a problem that could be solved, thus ending the "whining, complaining, demanding and constructive but unnecessary discussions" about it. We'd simply need to have a better explanation of GOG's decision. "because it is the GOG way" isn't a good explanation because not everyone understands the intricacies of the GOG way.

I don't know what you want, there is an official reply. Do you want a big news entry on the front site or a dedicated forum topic? There is no reason to repeat what TET has already said, they are not yet ready to give proper support and they won't do anything half-assed, that's all there is to it. You can agree with that decision, you can disagree, but the cards are on the table, they are not ignoring the issue. What more do you want?

I think the desire to see the Linux binaries on GOG regardless of support is impatient and ultimately self defeating. There are some companies which are prepared to provide Linux versions but have no support or the Linux versions are not up to date. Now it's nice to have this access but look at it from a broader point if view. By doing this you are supporting the view of Linux as the throw-away platform on the idea that some hacker will resolve any issues with a forum post when (not if) things go wrong. Not only is this a pain in the arse but it is very off-putting for new or prospective Linux users who aren't inclined to tinker, undermining the platform's adoption/retention.

It also damages GOG's reputation and brand. GOG (and CDProject) have established themselves through their good quality games and retail model but especially through their user friendliness and costumer service and support. If they just throw out Linux versions without support and many of those games don't work this sullies them. It's past time Linux games have proper support and credibility as a platform and if I have to wait a bit for Steam and GOG to provide this I can wait.

For who? Steam? Origin? Would Linux users embrace digital stores which are almost the exact opposite of GOG just because they're not immediately kowtowing to their needs? Nevermind that the Linux users who really do want to play GOG titles more often than not have the technical acumen to do it on their own with DOSBox, WINE or ScummVM anyway (as it was and is on the Mac), or would buy their games direct from the developers, which is arguably more beneficial to Linux gaming anyway.

GOG isn't deaf to the requests for Linux support. They're not stupid, and they're not ignorant. But at the same time, they're not pursuing some sort of anti-Linux agenda. Remember that they're a business first and foremost, and that for the time being, the cost to GOG of supporting Linux in the way that they want is too high relative to the potential profits it would bring.

My interview with TET is right here: http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=592&Page=1

I tried to get some more details on their Mac plans going forward with respect to WINE and the use of third party ports like with Imperial Glory, and I asked more about the potential for Linux compatibility too. Hope everyone reads it, and I'd be more than happy to hear feedback from the folks here! I've got a review of FTL up as well, which you can find here: http://www.insidemacgames.com/reviews/view.php?ID=1230

As far as I remember most mentioned Steam or buying directly from the developers. I agree with you that buying games with DRM because they are available earlier isn't necessarily a good idea. Buying directly from developers is nice though. Most likely if there was a really good game available directly from a developer I'd buy it there, then later, when it is available on GOG, I'd consider buying it again, if it had some really nice bonus content and was on sale (right now I have Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics both in box form and on GOG). Maybe that's the best solution to the problem.

Well, that's pretty much the discussion I wanted. These arguments, along with the ones in this thread seem convincing enough to make me think that probably we should wait until GOG is ready for full Linux support, and in the meantime anyone who wants only the Linux binaries should get them directly from the developer or (if he ain't afraid of DRM) from Steam/Desura/whatever.

While this solution seems quite good, we still have the whole "Give us Linux binaries" wish in the wishlist, along with the 7418 votes it has right now and 485 comments. Most people either interpreted this as "Give us Linux binaries before you give us technical support", or as a general "Give us Linux support". The fact there were many (like myself) who supported the idea of "binaries first" might cause some more trouble, so it might be worth spreading the word about these reasons a bit here and there, but the problem doesn't seem big since most likely people who indeed wanted those binaries as soon as possible, already got them directly from the developers, or from Steam/Desura/whatever. In other words they already found the good solution.

I think in the end this discussion we had here wasn't entirely pointless - it isn't exactly an obvious thing why a business like GOG would prefer it if it's customers bought products from other sources ;)
I mean apparently, it might be beneficial for GOG if people buy games directly from developers or from Steam, because the alternative was for GOG to sell those games, thus gaining some temporary increase in profits, but at the expense of undermining Linux's and GOG's reputation, which could in long term decrease profits. This is quite a paradox and thus not an obvious thing.

So... thank you everyone for an interesting discussion. I hope we'll meet again in some other hot topic, but for now I have real-time ray tracing to do. See'ya.