Steam now has over 3,500 games for Linux, with GOG having over 700

When I switched to Linux 10 years ago there almost no games at all worth having, 0AD & OpenTTD were about it for me, jump forward 10 years to today & I have Hitman, Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, the Xcom games, most of the Total War games & over 700 more running natively in Linux.

Another perspective on Steam vs GOG:
GOG has 2100 games, 700 for Linux, that's 1/3 of the games.
Steam has about 15000 games, 3500 for Linux, that's less than 1/4.
By ratio, GOG wins.

Those stats are all highly flawed though. The game counts may contain duplicattes due to different editions, DLC and so forth. Dosbox games that don't have a Linux version is another factor and there likely are tons of other issues that distort the statistics.

Perception is another topic altogether. New games frequently use steam for the multiplayer component. GOG has Galaxy to interoperate with steam. Galaxy is not yet available for Linux. As a consequence a fair number of new games have a Linux version on Steam but not on GOG. Those new games are more visible to players for a number of reasons, so we get the impression that there are a lot more Linux games on Steam.

For new games that is actually the case. The problem however lies mostly with Steam and the developers who rely on Steam services.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyProgramming for all those things? Linux. And given that, a lot of education related to programming also teaches Linux. Game designers are part of that community and came through that education, so they too are likely to be familiar with and involved in Linux. There's a mindshare there independent of the actual Linux desktop market; a lot of these people want an excuse to make games available for Linux.

There are still a lot of PC game developers that their gained their experience between 1990 and 2005 when Windows was almost unchallenged. But since then Linux/Unix have certainly been ascendant in the technical community.

However, the money people in gaming, and business in general, remain primarily Windows-oriented, as are PC gamers themselves. With gaming ( and other software ) increasingly bypassing the desktop to mobile platforms and streamed services, and PC/Laptop sales seemingly in a long slow decline, I still struggle to see where the growth of Linux on the Desktop will come from.

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: iiariI'm actually more optimistic for Linux gaming in the future than even today, as I think eventually gaming will largely be streaming, and as long as the streaming clients exist for Linux, then we'll be good. That way, if anything, we'll have an even bigger selection than we do today...

I don't think streaming games per se has much of a future. In contrast to music (tiny files) and movies (you usually watch them only once) there is no compelling reason to stream games over installing them. You -still- need a gaming capable PC to run streamed games, and the performance of locally rendered games will ALWAYS be better compared to sending data to the other side of Earth and back and keeping everything in sync. But we will probably see more client/server online games like MMOs and online FPS games. The days of pure offline games might actually end sooner rather than later.

If streaming games become the norm ( and I actually think they will, but not for a while ), it will be because the companies producing games choose to do it that way, not because gamers necessarily think it a good idea. The driving forces are fairly strong - elimination of piracy, greater control of revenue generation, reduced support and development costs. But it will need a better global infrastructure than we have now, and there will likely always be a niche market for installable titles that someone will service.

Quoting: Sir_DiealotAnother perspective on Steam vs GOG:
GOG has 2100 games, 700 for Linux, that's 1/3 of the games.
Steam has about 15000 games, 3500 for Linux, that's less than 1/4.
By ratio, GOG wins.

Those stats are all highly flawed though. The game counts may contain duplicattes due to different editions, DLC and so forth. Dosbox games that don't have a Linux version is another factor and there likely are tons of other issues that distort the statistics.

Perception is another topic altogether. New games frequently use steam for the multiplayer component. GOG has Galaxy to interoperate with steam. Galaxy is not yet available for Linux. As a consequence a fair number of new games have a Linux version on Steam but not on GOG. Those new games are more visible to players for a number of reasons, so we get the impression that there are a lot more Linux games on Steam.

For new games that is actually the case. The problem however lies mostly with Steam and the developers who rely on Steam services.

The assumption that most games are published on Steam exclusively either due to Steamworks or Galaxf missing is highly flawed.

I think you're missing the most important factor when it comes to GOG releases: Quality Control.

They are really selective about what goes into GOG and only accept stuff they think is worth it even if the publishers themselves would want to release DRM-free on GOG. They have certainly become less restrictive as of late with games "In Development" (ie Early Access, but less of a shitshow) and even games bound to Galaxy (Gwent), but they're far from ending up like Steam and itch.io. I can't remember the title, but I remember wondering whether a really nice game I liked would ever get released on GOG only to find out the devs reached out to them and they refused stating they liked the game but had a lot of similar games in their store.

Since GOG only releases but some of the PC games available and most of the games released exclusively on GOG, but not on Steam, are merely dosbox titles and therefore usually have linux support, it's safe to assume that the percentage difference between GOG and Steam Windows/Linux ratio is just a lucky side-effect of GOG's business model and the fact they only release some of the games shared among the PC world.

It's also important to note how some games are also missing linux binaries on GOG even though they technically hove been ported to linux. This is most of the times due to publishers not giving a hot damn about drm-free/gog builds or considering them unmaintainable for a niche of a niche market. GOG is not without blame since they should be pushing harder on these devs and haven't been leading by example (in regards to Galaxy) themselves either.

A welcome realization, made by others in the past, is how most publishers caring the most about their customers do release linux builds af their games, and if dosbox is not the primary source of gog ports then perhaps gog's quality checks are in line with this, confirming the assumption of how most great game releases end up receiving linux support sooner or later.


Last edited by kon14 on 15 August 2017 at 10:39 am UTC

Quoting: wolfyrionThe biggest surprise that I had with GOG is when I discovered that is a Cypriot based company :D
(I was like no way!!! but then I understood the reasons like all other foreign companies that have a company in my country)

Proof: https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-User-Agreement

This Agreement is a contract between you and GOG Ltd, 7 Florinis Street, Greg Tower, 6th floor, 1065 Nicosia, Cyprus and applies to www.GOG.com, your GOG user account, the GOG Downloader, GOG Galaxy, any games or videos or other content which you purchase or access via us, the GOG web forums, GOG customer and technical support and other services we provide to you (we'll just call all this “GOG services” for short).

GOG is owned by CDProjekt which also owns CDProjekt RED (guys behind Witcher series). GOG operates from Warsaw and other offices in Poland however it has something registered in Cyprus for tax purposes as along with Ireland it's European "tax heaven". So instead of paying all the taxes in Poland where the actual work is being done and they have the offices they transfer some of that to Cyprus because they have lower taxes. They probably maintain an office and a "manager" like hundreds of other companies. That's bullshit.

296 linux games on my STEAM library. Loving it. Now waiting for the other 400 windows-games to arrive...lmaaaaaoo

Quoting: Mountain ManEven 5-years ago, I honestly never thought we'd see this day and was prepared to content myself with dual-booting and the occasional indie release for Linux.

But even as successful as Linux gaming has been, I'm still somewhat concerned about our minuscule presence and a little afraid, perhaps irrationally, that it could all just suddenly go away.

I'm really happy that Valve are pushing Linux gaming...
Hired LunarG...
Introduced Steam machines...
Raised the need for Vulkan...
Now hiring developers to improve mesa...
...

I think the next step should be to release a "Steam/Linux only" AAA game... Halflife 3 for example.
There are always exclusive titles released for a special platform ported/released later to other platforms.
Hey Valve... how about making a deal with Nintendo and release their games on a buildin dolphin/mupen64 emu inside SteamOS!?
Also think about other emus for Playstation, C64, neogeo..
This would of course raise a huge shitstorm against Valve but it would also bring Valve and linux gaming into the news... lots of people still don't know what Linux is and that you can have it for FREE and also install it BESIDE windows.

All gaming magazines would report about it - maybe also TV.
Windows gamers would give SteamOS a try and maybe would realise how easy and stable Linux is... No more hassle with drivers, etc. Everything is ALREADY installed!!!

This is of course only an idea.


Last edited by johndoe on 15 August 2017 at 12:16 pm UTC

Quoting: kon14

Quoting: Sir_Diealot...

The assumption that most games are published on Steam exclusively either due to Steamworks or Galaxf missing is highly flawed.

I never said that I did not talk about why there are more games on Steam in general. The reason most games are published on Steam is that it's the biggest platform. Many devs put their games on steam and are done with it, assuming most everyone uses steam anyway, no need to deal with any other stores. Maybe some want to release on other stores after the fact, but if they depend on Steam for multiplay or Steamworks they have a problem at this point, because releasing anywhere else just became so much more effort. Galaxy seems to be GOGs offer to aleviate this and get the games on GOG anyway. AFAIK it allows for at least multiplayer between Steam and GOG users.

I'm not happy about this. Multiplayer should work independent of Steam or GOG. I guess it's simply easier for devs to use the Steam infrastructure than to do their own thing.

Quoting: kon14... .
It's also important to note how some games are also missing linux binaries on GOG even though they technically hove been ported to linux. This is most of the times due to publishers not giving a hot damn about drm-free/gog builds or considering them unmaintainable for a niche of a niche market. GOG is not without blame since they should be pushing harder on these devs and haven't been leading by example (in regards to Galaxy) themselves either.

I think this is mostly due to Steam interop issues, no Galaxy for Linux. In some cases the ports may just be too poor. Steam and Humble bundle don't seem to care much about that, GOG have working games, for the most part...

Sure there's plenty of blame to go around.
Why does it take CD Project so long to do Galaxy for Linux? They have related job offers posted for a long time now. They likely could do something to get those developers. Pay more, allow them to work from wherever they are instead of Warsaw, anything really.
I also wonder why they apparently can't come to an agreement with some developers or publishers. Have a look at the godawful Nuclear Throne situation. And they are still selling the game, even though it's completely out of date and doesn't have a Linux version on GOG.
I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. There might be difficult situations, but they ought to be able to do something.

To those that think GOG was polish based. That's true. As another said, this is just a tax and or responsibility evasion scheme. GOG is indeed polish, as when they tried to hire programmers, one of the requirements was that you would be able to work on location in <insert polish city>.