You attribute to companies emotions. This is silly.
Most likely everything is banal.
It is necessary to answer two questions:
1) How many copies of a game sold here in your opinion.
2) What percentage of those purchases made by users of Linux.

Most likely they just not economically interested in such sales to spend on their energy, time and money.

However, of course is easier to sit back and assume that someone is sitting in the company, hates Linux and specially makes nasty things . :)

Hello there, by the way ;)

Ah, I see. I can agree with that. :)


Again, I was talking about DOSBox games, and with those the cost of opportunity for the dev/pub is irrelevant (I'm assuming it's GOG who does the job of configuring and packaging those games so they work out of the box on macOS and on Linux; correct me if I'm wrong). All they have to do is telling GOG to produce macOS and Linux versions, and see the money flow their way.

You are all too simplified. Everything is regulated by the agreement between GOG and publisher.
If publisher do not provide linux version, than GOG, I am sure, does not publish them by their own will.
Otherwise, we would've had a Linux-versions of ALL DOS-games in the catalog. But if it does not, then the decision is made not by the GOG team.
It is obvious conclusions, you only need to give yourself a task to think a little, not a task to resent much.

The number of games for Linux will become the larger, the larger the marketshare of Linux. But it will not increase by loudness of your rage and air shaking.

At a minimum, it would be more meaningful to write your wishes to the publisher, not to pour out his anger on the forum. It will not help.

First, please keep this condescending tone of yours to yourself. Thanks.


The way I understand it, at least for old DOS games, publishers do not provide Linux, nor Mac, not even Windows versions of their games to GOG. If anything, they provide the original DOS games, and it's GOG the one that pre-configures them with DOSBox and packages them as Windows, macOS, and Linux installers. Again, correct me if I'm wrong on that.


Of course, that's why I wondered why the pubs don't allow GOG to release Mac and Linux versions of their DOS games, since it won't cost them any time and money.


Again: of course, but this only applies to new games (or to in-house ports of old Windows games), not to the packaging of old DOS games in DOSBox.

I assume that (at least for some of the games) the publishers do not want GOG to offer their DOSBoxed games on more platforms than Steam.

This is the only way that works. It's my pleasure.

There is more important thing - publishers provide not only game, but RIGHTS. It can be rights only for windows distribution, for example.

It's too difficult for you. Maybe one day...

Errr... that sentence doesn't make much sense, unless you meant Windows instead of Steam. :P



For a pedant and clever 'genius', you're having a really hard time understanding my points:

Whatever it is, rights or the games themselves, it seems like publishers don't want GOG to offer Mac and/or Linux versions. And my question is WHY? Apart from belittling me, you haven't put forward any sensible explanation.

It takes time and effort to adapt a game from Windows to Max or Linux (assuming that you don't have to build the whole game from scratch, which takes even more time and effort). If a company won't do it, it's probably because they think it's not worth the time and effort.

If it gains them too few additional customers, or if they wouldn't lose that many customers by not doing it, then they might be right.

OK, I'm outta here. :\

Why? I'm talking about platforms as in operations systems, i.e. in this case macOS and Linux.
No, it does not take any additional effort DOSBox games. You only have to take into account that Linux (and macOS to some extends) use case sensitive file systems, which is good practive anyway.

I think they meant “[. . .] than on Steam.” It would make sense, at least.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by corporate lethargy and penny-pinching. I doubt Activision has a specific mandate against offering Mac and Linux versions of their older titles, especially if GOG is in charge of creating the builds. More likely it requires more time and money in legal wrangling than they're willing to spend.

Mac user myself, so I'm highly interested in a mac build. But I know that things can easily get very complicated and at some point risky. We often talk about contracts that are older than 15 years, in cases like Activision also from the takeover of another company. The way how the contract was done back then isn't as clear as it should be for todays standard, especially for a service that sells them drm-free and worldwide. Very often there are multiple parties involved, as publishers hired externs for the music, the translations or to port the games to other platforms. Just some examples here: GOG needed to remove the original cd music from the Realms of Arkania games, as the license of the music belongs to the componist and not the musician. Very likely there is a similar reason why the windows port of the first Quake lacks music. While the dosbox version of Quake comes with a complete ripped cd image, the windows lacks music as the port needed ripped music. And already back then it was very common to let specialized publishers let port and release games for other platforms. To give an example here, while for the Civilization 4 steam also offers a mac version GOG can't do this, because the mac version belongs to the publisher Aspyr. Another example would be the Lego or Tropico games, which were ported by the publisher Feral. Without Aspyr or Feral GOG can't release the ports here, nevertheless it's technical possible.

In short: For a publisher it's not easy to release old games in different languages and also other platforms. They need to check the old contracts very careful and must be sure about the licenses. And still then there is a risk that a third party comes around and makes trouble. Some publishers take that risk, others don't want to. Some publishers take the effort and time to check their old their old contracts, others don't want to or even can't to this.

So what's to do? Give GOG feedback that it's worth to take a release the games for other platforms. Maybe with some positive pressure from the bottom some publisher take the time and effort to check their old contracts.

Loger's first post was already wrong on so many levels that it was clear that he is a troll and probably very young, arguing with such people is a waste of time which could be spent on gaming.

That said, although it's a piece of cake putting it into DosBox or ScummVM oneself, I'd rather support an official Linux package.

Well put!

Apart from the legal issues, it always requires *some* effort to repackage a game for a specific platform.
When it's an old game without complex setups like juggling with multiple CDROM images and specific sound formats, things are relatively easy to port.
On the sound formats: Some games feature midi music and the only supported Linux distribution (Ubuntu) does not install a Midi synthesizer(TiMidity for instance) by default. Windows does play Midi out of the box.