[BirAdam]

WINE was not the first Windows on *nix implementation. Sun had Wabi which was Win16 and was also released for AIX, HPUX, and Caldera Linux.

While Linux may be a pain to release software for, had anyone been interested enough, a solution could have been found. No one cared because Windows was the market and everything else was a rounding error.

[pjmlp]

Yes, and?

Which game studios were targeting Solaris?

[BirAdam]

No my point is, there were Solaris targeted proprietary applications despite Solaris also making a Windows compatibility layer. Linux is solid, and it is gaining some market share and such, but for a games maker it's simply not worth the investment. Finding a packaging solution and all that would be possible, but why? For 4% of the market, why?

Essentially, this is a financial decision within a business. It's no failure of Valve or anyone else. If the Linux desktop market share continues to grow, I fully expect this to change, but perhaps the answer will still be just using Win32 and DirectX.