In an interview with PC Gamer, Kiciński and managing director Maciej Gołębiewski were asked whether GOG had plans to focus more on Linux going forward, given a growth in pro-Linux and anti-Windows sentiment among some PC players.
“Yes, we are,” Gołębiewski replied, stating that Linux was “one of the things that we’ve put in our strategy for this year to look closer at”.
“I don’t want to commit to any specifics, but certainly you will see this trend, and we also see that Linux is close to the hearts of our users, so we probably could do better on that front, and that’s something that we’ll be looking at,” he added.
Kiciński then addressed the current state of Windows, saying he was “really surprised” that it continues to hold such a large market share despite its issues.
“It’s such poor-quality software and product, and I’m so surprised that it’s [spent] so many years on the market,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
(GOG founded 22 February 2008)
The sad thing is, they had support for Linux in the past. And I mean not only making the launcher run on Linux, but with Linux builds of games:
OS X and Linux support
In October 2012, GOG.com announced support for OS X. They included the previously Steam exclusive (OS X version) The Witcher and The Witcher 2, both made by CD Projekt Red. GOG.com gathered user feedback in a community wishlist, and one of the most demanded feature requests was support for native Linux games, which gathered close to 15,000 votes before it was marked as “in progress”.[20] Originally GOG.com representatives said, that there are technical and operational issues which make it harder than it seems,[21] however it’s something they would love to do, and they have been considering.[22] On 18 March 2014, GOG.com officially announced that they would be adding support for Linux, initially targeting Ubuntu and Linux Mint in the fall of 2014.[23] On 25 July 2014, Linux support was released early, and 50 games were released compatible with the operating system.[24]
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com#OS_X_and_Linux_support
they still do have linux builds of some games
My point is, they should not act like Linux is the new thing they just discovered.
Honestly native builds are bad. Proton is where it’s at, preferably abolishing DirectX while they’re at it.
Don’t they still have it?
“It’s such poor-quality software and product, and I’m so surprised that it’s [spent] so many years on the market,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
Based.
Literally couldn’t agree more
Damn, I was recently thinking about buying some games on GOG instead of steam, but I don’t know if its that convenient. Like on steam we got achievements, easy “play” button, easy updates and social features. And I don’t own anything on GOG and don’t know what to expect, could someone summarize experience on GOG?
I can only speak for the Heroic launcher but this has been my experience:
- One click play button like Steam, but it’s easier to configure Linux-specific settings in the menu.
- Updates are done automatically or can be forced like Steam.
- Cloud saves are available, but need to be done manually from the game settings menu with the risk of user error.
- There is a friends list and chat, but the games I played had their own in-game friends list.
- Unfortunately, no achievements from what I’ve seen.
- No DRM, so you truly own the game. (as far as it’s possible to own something digital.)
- Linux game support seems to not be any worse than Steam
- Built-in Wine/Proton version installer.
Fuck winblows!
Winslop!
I hope they release dos games with the native Linux dosbox. Some games like master of orion have this, while others only have the dosbox windows version. This is a bit inconsistent between games on the store.
