[account42]

A common trend I see is that game developers tend to target one platform after another instead of developing cross-platform from the start. This lowers the initial cost, but increases the additional cost for each platform as less of the previous implementation can be reused. This leads to thinks like the discarding Vulkan because it's somewhat harder than Metal for the macOS port and then having to still do the Vulkan work for Linux which may cost too much for the expected Linux sales even thoug the the difference between Metal and Vulkan might have easily been covered by the Linux income.

[pjmlp]

Traditionally in the industry many studios focus on a specific platform and there are agencies whose whole business is to do ports.

GNU/Linux just doesn't provide revenue to make it worthwhile.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

[account42]

Now that is a bleeding generalization. As long as Feral is in the Linux market we know that Linux ports can be profitable. There have also been developers that have provided sales numbers for their Linux ports and for many of them porting has been a success.

Maybe that won't be the case for all games, but low market share does not tell you much. Remember that the platform-specific cost - even with rewriting the renderer - of a game will in most cases be dwarfed by design, voice acting, localisation, marketing, etc which all are already covered by the existing target platforms.

Your assertion is also not well defined since "worthwile" could mean profitable (which will be the case for third-party porting companies) or more profitable than other development efforts.