[skittlebrau]

IMO as someone who works on games, developers will come along with high quality Linux builds when there are a significant number of users that demand it. I think anyone who's doing a Linux port now is doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and not as an economic decision. It doesn't matter if you're using an engine that already supports Linux, it's still extra work to develop and test, and it's still more support issues that (in the current market) you are very unlikely to make back in additional sales. I'm certain most Linux gamers also have Windows installs, so while they might complain about having to dual-boot, they still do it.

If Proton bridges the gap to the point where people are 1) more willing to be on Linux and 2) less willing to deal with dual-booting for the few games that don't work without it, then maybe the number of Linux-exclusive gamers will grow. That's when you'd see significant attention paid to proper Linux builds. (There are of course other impediments to people switching over to Linux full-time besides games support, so I don't think the Year of Desktop Linux is quite imminent yet.)

[jimmy1]

> think anyone who's doing a Linux port now is doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and not as an economic decision.

I do think there is more overlap between those who buy the game to play on Windows, and those who would be willing to at least give it a try on Linux. All the stats I see seem to treat them as a disjointed set of users.

[heelix]

I gave several early gen i7 new life with SteamOS. More or less sets up nicely and could play a surprising number games in my library. One of the problems with giving away boxes to family/friends is the OS was worth more than the hardware and this really helps. The normal Linux desktop was a bit harder to get up and running (xterm, of all things, does not work by default) but with a browser and my normal dev tools all more or less work once you get the repos set up.